Dogs in Landscape Photography
I'm a dog photographer. Not a landscape photographer.
That's not a limitation I'd thought much about until the Embark challenge brief arrived: A landscape — either natural or man-made — must be a prominent feature of this image.
I set the brief down and thought: well. This is going to be interesting.
The Failed Mountain Attempt
I had a vision. A sunrise over a valley, photographed from the top of a mountain, with a dog in the foreground and the whole sweep of Georgia or North Carolina behind them.
I set my alarm for 4am. I drove 2.5 hours. I hiked straight up for an hour.
I got to the top just as the sun was rising — and the clouds were completely socked in. I couldn't see the neighboring peak, much less the valley. The vista I'd been planning for didn't exist that morning.
I hiked back down with a camera card full of foggy nothing and a burning determination to find another option.
(The hike did produce a great image for a different challenge, so the morning wasn't a total loss. But it was humbling.)
Thinking Closer to Home
As the deadline approached, I kept dismissing the landscape around me because it didn't feel dramatic enough.
I live on a farm in Morgan County, Georgia. The land is beautiful — wide open fields, old hardwoods, a lake that catches the light in the evenings. But it's not the Scottish Highlands or the coast of Australia. It's just Georgia. And Embark showcases photographers across the globe.
I was getting in my own way. Which is a thing that happens.
Finally, less than 11 hours from the deadline and about an hour before sunset, I asked Renee to come help me. We went down to the lake. I photographed Jack — my Siberian Husky — with the water behind him and the late evening light doing what it does when you let it.
What I Learned About Dogscapes
The image that worked wasn't as dramatic and I had planned. It was honest. Jack and the lake and the light we actually had, not the mountain vista I'd been chasing. But, all the blues and purples of sunset with Jack’s coat had a cinematic feel.
There are a few things I took away from this challenge that changed how I think about dogs in landscapes generally:
Scale relationship matters. For a landscape to read as a landscape in a dog photograph, the dog needs to be small enough relative to the environment that you can feel the size of the place. This requires stepping back further than feels natural for a portrait photographer.
The horizon is a compositional element. Where the horizon lands in the frame — whether it's high, low, or dead center — changes the emotional weight of the image completely.
You don't need a dramatic landscape. You need good light and honest composition. A field in Georgia in the evening is beautiful. It doesn't need to be a national park to work.
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