Eastern Antlered Dog

or: a confluence of strange happenings leads to a happy outcome.

 

I loved this photo of Bella that I shot when I went to Marblehead lighthouse, but it wasn't sharp on her face (f2.0 and she's moving). And the light was drab and with the slight backlight, details on Bella were rather underexposed. So I let it sit for a few days.

 

Yesterday I started playing around aimlessly with a few other photos and came up with a soft, hazy split-tone development that I also liked for this photo.

 

While cloning out a few stray bits in some of the photos, camera raw did a big booboo and cloned a piece of tree over the snout... it was weird but appealing, but I couldn't make it work with that image.

 

And then I saw Karen P's Western Antlered Dog again... which led me down this path! (Ah yes, and at 100% in the original, the head was still too soft, so I dropped in another one of Bella shot from a similar angle an hour later.)

 

Now all I need is a line of geese flying oof in the distance - or would that be too much?

Done