Shooting landscapes was an early photographic love for both Craig and Charlotte!

When photographing your canine friends these days, there's a real storytelling value in incorporating elements of landscape photography into your work.

We've also found that clients often choose art for their walls that incorporates landscape elements in addition to displaying the beauty and character of their dog.

The Dogscapes challenge is one of the more, erm... challenging challenges of Embark (try saying that after a few gins!)

What we're asking for is simple, an image of a dog in a landscape, somewhere that gives the image a sense of place. In practice, it's actually quite a different discipline. One where you need to think more like a landscape photographer first and a dog photographer second. A genre mashup if you will.

We had so many beautiful images celebrating dogs at amazing places in beautiful light. But these were our top 10 for this challenge.

Congratulations to the photographers.

Charlotte & Craig 🐶 📸 ✨

Brittani White

Magical warm pink light, which also caught the slobber! A really great feature of the location in the pier and a wonderfully balanced composition.

Debora Stacker 

Beautiful posing and a great sense of place without actually revealing much, it's the mysterious weather conditions that make this shot a successful Dogscape!

Desiree Nickerson | Born 2 Run Photography

Another moody and mysterious Dogscape. Lovely colours and textures, the dog standing out clearly as the main subject of the image, with the surroundings all supporting elements of the composition.

Emily Pickett | Embark Photography

What a great location and really graphic composition. The log adds symmetry and is a leading line to the subject, perfectly posed and looking towards the light.

Eva Duerkop 

Beautiful posing, gorgeous light, and there's just enough detail revealed in the landscape to make this an excellent example of a Dogscape.

Gabriela Ciobanu | LightStories

There's a really sweet, whimsical story happening here and the image has a strong sense of the location. Bonus points if you can spot the little penguin-shaped easter egg hiding in the shadows!

Janeane Sanborn | Sweet Light Pet Photography

This dog matches the location beautifully, the colours and textures all just fit. This feels like a dog who belongs here and the head tilt is super sweet and engaging.. 

Julie Cork | J Cork Photography

A fantastic sense of place. Beautiful colour tones, light and a great pose and expression from the dog.

Shandess Griffin | Shand and Your Dogs Photography

The side light has been handled really well here with the dog looking into the light. Fantastic tones and the composition holds you in the image. The dog almost feels like it is part of the mountainscape behind.

Teran Buckner | Phido Photography

This is a well-balanced and symmetrical composition, the dog placed perfectly under the waterfall and amongst the misty spray giving this a great sense of place for the Dogscapes challenge.

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.