No animals were harmed during the shooting of this image!
As a hobby I breed Golden and train Golden retrievers, and have placd 30 into homes. If you know Goldens, they have the gentlest of disposions, and a verbal reprimand has the same effect as beating them! I treated this as any other training session, getting her to take different poses by rewarding with treats, but I reprimanded her when she would do things like try to jump off the table, or take off the hat. She does hate the hat, we bought it for Halloween, and I don't blame her! I will post other examples of a happy golden wearing a hat after the voting. This took two days to shoot, day one she was smiling in all the shots!
Lessons learned...
If your first vote is a 9, don't get your hopes up, you could end up with a 4.6
Don't shoot your own pets, only you know when they are sad,others think them sleepy.
I failed the challenge, for while I made my dog sad and captured it, too many found amusement in the image. I failed in emoting sadness in any but my dog.
The word Hate in my title was misunderstood. I hate Mondays, breakups, and funerals, but they don't send me into a rage. They make me sad.
Few people understand how hard it is to get a good natured animal like a golden to display sadness. Life is Good, as Trixie quoted, Dean Koonts prolific dog. Below are a few outtakes to show just how sad she was during the shoot!
Statistics
Place: 78 out of 104 Avg (all users): 4.6387 Avg (commenters): 6.4286 Avg (participants): 4.7568 Avg (non-participants): 4.6017 Views since voting: 2234 Views during voting: 295 Votes: 155 Comments: 9 Favorites: 0
ha! Nice series. When is a Golden really sad? In your pic, she looks long suffering and slightly pissed off, if only she knew the expression. (Perfect segue to my poncey poodle shot).
Nice focus - I see a little humor and mostly I get the sense that the dog is sleepy. Sadness or any strong emotion is a real challenge to capture. I think a good photo should 'show not tell' and by that I mean the title should be the cherry on top that compliments the photo. Try as I might I just don't see any sadness here at all. Anger and irritation maybe, but that is because you are telling me. Here the title points to the emotion of anger/irritation/hate - you are telling your audience not showing your audience. To me the dog looks rather sleepy - irritation/anger/hate would be strongly communicated visually *within* the photo had it bared teeth in a snarl or maybe even the dog having the hat in it's mouth ripping into it.
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