For many of us pet ownership is a big part of our modern urbanized life. It's become commonplace to see pets out and about in cities and suburbs. Incorporating interesting architecture can add a sense of time and place to our images resulting in more meaningful and widely appreciated art that your clients will love to share.

For the City Slicker challenge, we sent our Embark students out to photograph dogs in urban locations, making sure images had a sense of place, but that the location did not become the primary subject of the image, the dog/pet was still to be the star of the show.

This was our highest quality of submissions to date, showing that our challengers are already growing from their fortnightly submissions and feedback on their images. So a special congratulations to those who made the top 10 this week.

Charlotte & Craig 🐶 📸 ✨

Debora Stacker 

Beautifully composed and the hazy conditions add a lovely feel to soften the city in the distance.

Elle Manton | Rogue Paws Photography

Great use of wide-angle lens, lovely symmetry and colour harmony and the dog is sitting beautifully in front of this building.

Erin Waggoner | Paw Prints Pet Portraiture

Lovely posing and expression, the shapes in the background mirror the shapes of the dog nicely. 

Eva Duerkop 

A clever take on the City Slicker Challenge brief, great angle for the reflection and the inky treatment to the edit really suits the image.

Ginger Wick | Ginger Wick Photography

This is lit beautifully, well composed, framed, and has a great City Slicker atmosphere.

Katherine Gardiner

Lovely low angle and the leaves give it a sense of the time it was taken. The colours of the building echo the colours of the dog beautifully.

Lisa Olson | Pets R Family

A fantastic, engaged expression, simple, clean city backdrop and gorgeous light.

Lori Cegon | Lori Cegon Photography

This is so fun, there's a feeling of meeting a good friend for a coffee and catch up on this. Expression, pose, colour harmony all work very well.

Marie Goldsworthy | Ree's Photo Obsessions

What fantastic framing! the black and white fur has been edited very well too.

Shandess Griffin | Shand and Your Dogs Photography

A striking, statuesque image with stunning composition and incredible tonality.

Embark is made up of 12 challenges over 6 months and is the first interactive course in the Unleashed Challenges series.

Much more than just a challenge, Embark is an invaluable educational resource that will help you build up a go-to list of shots to help create variety in your work. Designed for anyone to be able to complete whether you just want to photograph your own dog or you are a professional pet photographer.

If you'd like to know more head over here to register your interest and we'll send you all the details when enrollment next opens in April 2024.