This year for my families holiday card, we got ambitious and tried to include us all….. even our recent fowl family members. I have always been a fan of the unusual and crazy, and my family is used to it by now and humours me. I thought I would share the behind the scenes and work that went into it with you!
This image took 15 tries with the self timer, which is not bad and all due to the advance planning. We sat first my husband down and got the lighting right. He is super patient and good at this, and believe it or not he had the same face in almost all photos. Then we added two ducks, and got a few photos in case they ( the ducks) misbehaved and I had to photoshop or head swap. It went well, so my daughter handed me a duck, I added her and the dog in (told to ‘stay’ on his bed), and threw dog cookies all over the set area. Both my daughter and I had many cookies in our hands for him (which explains the final look on his face – a rhodesian ridgeback is always entertained by food). I myself ran a self timer and while holding Dina the Duck, ran into the set each time for the picture. The biggest challenge was jumping over the dog. The ducks are docile and used to us handling them.
Outtakes: the preparation. Daffy (our drake (aka, ‘The Manduck’) gets his hat on. Its a small hair clip that clipped onto the naturally occuring poofy feathers that crest on his head. The ducks all got on ‘diaper’ outfits (cut from holiday socks). It was a challenge to herd them – one ended up in our kitchen cupboard and took a while to get out. The rest prefered to take over our dogs’ bed.
Daffy’s hat (the brown part is actually a naturally occuring poof of feathers on his head):
The work to get our dogs attention was actually the hardest part, as we didn’t even bother getting the ducks attention, although they mostly looked in the general direction of the camera by default because of the flashing red light.
and of course, a ridiculously serious portrait (dog walked away by this time) :
Wishing you all a safe and joyful holiday season, and wonderful 2017!