Winter white

We had snow here in middle Tennessee last night, and even though it was only about 5 or 6 inches, it was the most snow we'd seen for many years. My two dogs loved it. Since my favorite color scheme in nature is white on white, I spent some time this morning photographing my great Pyrenees, Princey, with a snowy background. Because I live in a subdivision, it was hard to find the perfect nature background. So, I photographed the hillside that surrounds the subdivision with a telephoto lens and then composited that behind Princey. I used a layer mask, pasted the landscape onto the background image, and then used the brush tool to paint away the trees to reveal the dog. Because of the challenge for Photoshop with hair, it's not perfect but pretty close. At the edge of Princey's body, I used the brush tool at various opacities in an attempt to blend the hair with the new background. My settings for the picture of Princey were 1/500, f/11, and 500 ISO. I used a 100-400mm Canon zoom.