Sydney Rester: "Ah, the joys of being a puppy!"
Sydney,
Thanks goodness your dog found the leaves! What an excellent match for it's brown coat. The large leaves have a myriad of colors and we love sienna colors, so now this has a chance to be liked as a picture! I find this picture already enjoyable. Continue working with this motif and explore how you might improve the composition even more. I like the simplicity of it. Try this at dusk and under-expose slightly to get richer colors and also consider either taking the picture from a ladder, (without the shadow going over the dog) or going low to the ground and shooting on its level to make it important in its surroundings.
You have made a major departure from pet pictures as soon as you control the background lighting and texture. Good job, but consider it as the first in a series. I'd love to see what you might develop.
Asher
Note, with this amount of blur, you can afford to have much more of the background included. It doesn't have to be centered. Sketch out various positions for the dog against a large background of leaves and try as many different ways as you can. Cropping tightly is a fashion not a requirement. You can decide whether or not it must be done with your picture to make it work. So, perhaps it's worth considering taking pictures much wider in the first place while you are learning of the possible ways your concept might be materialized.
