First, my subject had to catch my eye. Late in the afternoon on Sept. 1, 2013, while strolling with my husband on Long Beach just outside of Tofino, BC, I spotted him,  all golden and wet. I called to him but he wouldn't look at me. He had a job to do. His eyes were fixed on the crashing surf, waiting patiently for his owners to return to gather their belongings that he was guarding.

I left my images alone for two weeks, then chose this one to tweak a bit. First I auto-corrected the raw file to my liking by lightened the image, then dodged and burned his fur and the shoes and cleaned up the sand a bit then cropped it to to a more pleasing size, eliminating the distraction of trees at the top. I tweaked him some more by flipping the canvas horizontally, making the colour more harmonious and removing the leash by his feet.

After I cropped the image, I moved the sandals closer to the shoes, and flipped it back to it's original position and called the image "Watchful Eyes". I created the final image in the proper format, 2560 x1440 px, and entered it into our PPOC-BC Northern Branch Fall Salon.

It was an Accepted image, meaning it was of good enough quality to hang in the Salon. I was happy with that. Comments from the judges such as too much negative space in the upper right corner and his eyes weren't looking at you, so the title wasn't the best one would be helpful to me later. Then during the awards, I was surprised to receive a Judge's Choice ribbon for "Watchful Eyes". 

Although "Watchful Eyes" was Accepted at our Northern Branch Salon Competition, I wanted to improve to at least a Merit level. So I went back to the original image, enhanced the colour by dodging and burning as I saw fit, cropped it, removed the leash that lay at his feet and moved the shoes closer to him. I noticed that if I followed the rule of the golden spiral the focus was on the dog's behind! So flipping it again, I removed the negative space from the upper right corner to the upper left. 

Still negative space, so I added two different textures at different opacity, and copied the layer. I enlarged the copied layer and moved it to appear more central in the background and dropped the opacity way down.

I then vignetted the image. Now it was looking more like a Fine Art piece and I was happy with it. To prepare for Provincial Salon, I created the background mat in the standard size required (2560 x 1440 pixels), added the colour and texture, placed the image and created the key line and second lighter mat.

Now my image was ready for submission. I called him "The Guardian". I entered the new image into our Provincial Salon. This time it received two Judge's Choice ribbons and a score of Merit so I decided to enter it into the National Salon held in March 2014. It received a Merit in the National Image Salon.