Puppy curiosity

Photographers love photographing beautiful doors and windows because of the artistic graphic designs and colors that so many of them have. I found this stunning combination of red and purple on a house in Westport, County Mayo, Ireland. Anyone can photograph a pretty door and window, though, so to take this to the next level I added a row of yellow tulips that came from Keukenhof Gardens in Holland. Finally, to add an adorable focal point and to make the picture more engaging, I added a picture of my great Pyrenees, Princey, when he was an eight-week-old puppy. Princey was originally photographed against black, and the contrast between white and black allowed me to paste his photo into the window and use the blend mode 'lighten'. This dropped out the black background and retained all of the fine white hair around the periphery of his head and body. This is the kind of thing I demonstrate in my bi-annual Photoshop workshops in my home. My camera settings for the door shot were 1/400, f/4, 200 ISO, and I used a 70-200mm lens.