Working with natural light, especially on a bright sunny day can be challenging at times. However, the resulting warm and engaging portraits created from shooting in late afternoon sunshine make it all worthwhile.

Backlighting your subject is a beautiful way to separate them from the background, giving your images an instant glow-up. That is exactly what we wanted to see for challenge number 10, Glow-Up. Beautiful, golden hour, warm glowy backlit images, with a clearly defined rim light around the subject.

As always. we were not disappointed, with a stunning set of submissions for the Glow-Up challenge. These are our top 10. Huge congratulations to all the photographers.

- Craig & Charlotte 📸 🐶 ✨

Valerie Howes 

Great sense of the location, beautiful golden backlight and a lovely engaging expression.

Rachel Wynn | WynnDog Photography

A really simple image, beautifully crafted. An excellent rim light around the subject and the icing on the cake is that tiny bit of steam coming from the dog.

Annabel Richman

Great posing and expression, really nicely edited in the black and white fur. The bokeh looks great and the image has the lovely warm light coming from behind the subject that we're looking for in the Glow-Up challenge.

Chantal Levesque | Chantal Levesque Photo

Beautiful expression, the backlight is fantastic and the lens flare adds a little extra magic.

Pauliina Saarinen | Pauliina Saarinen Photography 

Lovely posing, a great expression and really gorgeous colour palette. The backlight is really well handled too.

Paul Tadday | Paul Tadday Photography - Paws & Claws

Lovely posing with the dog looking up, great use of negative space too. This is a great example of colour toning really working in an images favour too.

Fiona Lovett

Fantastic warm light which is being filtered through dust and creates an almost fiery atmosphere, the little hints of foliage really add to the image and sense of the location.

Kim Hawkins 

A great expression and the backlight is wonderful. It really helps the dog pop against the dark hillside and adds a touch of magic to the golden grasses.

Kine Pedersen | Fotograf Kine Pedersen

Beautiful rim light around the subject, warm glowing light, great expression and catchlights in the eyes. All we are looking for in the Glow-Up challenge.

Nadia Hall | Barking Dog Images

Very lovely puppy with a super engaging expression. The foliage really illustrates the small size! The rim light is gorgeous and clearly defined all around the dog.

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 2023.