My theme for this years calendar

[rpcrowe]

My theme for this year's calendar will be a portrait of the dog as he/she is or was when adopted with a small image showing what the dog looked like when we received it.

I purposefully did not include any horrible looking images because I don't think that people want to look at a horrible image for a full month.

Here are two examples of my theme...





The image size of the calendar will be 11x14 inches or 22x14 inches when opened...

I am going to do a second calendar with the theme "Fantasy Puppies"...

[Manfred M]

Richard - you are definitely having far too much fun!

I think both themes should be well received. although I must admit, I have trouble thinking about 2017 in early September 2016.

[NorthernFocus]

Great idea with the before and after shots, Richard. Inspiring.

[bnnrcn]

Great ideas Richard, especially the first one

[Shadowman]

Nice concepts.

[bje07]

Good idea, nice shots.

[Dave Humphries]

Just a couple of random thoughts Richard;

With the 'before' and 'after' calendar version, in your example I am left wondering what happened to the bandaged, splinted right rear leg as we cannot see it in the 'after' shot - this makes me worry that may be it had to be amputated, or has remained deformed in some way. I hope that wasn't the case, but the fact I thought that is something you might want to consider when choosing pictures or even when shooting the 'after' shots.

Perhaps my thought on the Fantasy idea is less relevant, I'd like to see a better match of the illumination of the dog to match the lighting of the scene it is to be pasted in to. However, maybe that thought won't occur to the people that might buy the calendar.

All the best with the calendar projects - and if you need someone to cast a pair of eyes over the final image choices (before committing to production) to identify potential issues (e.g. as above), consider me a volunteer.

Dave

[rpcrowe]

Thanks for the comments, I agree with Dave, in that folks might wonder about the rear leg. However, we plan to include a short blurb on each dog which will clear that up.

My wife liked the images until I got them all done and then she said that she didn't like the 11x14 format and wanted a square 12x12 format.

She then wanted the front cover changed to another dog. Well back to the drawing boards...

I went back to the drawing boards and reformatted all the images.

[rpcrowe]

Here are a few pages from the calendar...

June:



February:



This is March:



September:



October:



December:



The cover's teal and lavender is the color scheme of the organization



You can view all of the pages here: http://rpcrowe.smugmug.com/

[Minerva]

Wonderful concept Richard, you are one of a kind.

[rpcrowe]

Wonderful concept Richard, you are one of a kind.

That is what my wife often tells me but, not in a complimentary way

[tbob]

I hope you sell a million of these. Let me know how people can get copies and i will pass the word around.

[rpcrowe]

Thanks Trevor, I will do that...

I also did a smaller (less expensive calendar). The cover of this edition features Lulu, who is one of the twenty dogs we recently rescued from a Korean dog meat market. I thought that was significant enough to reside on the front page of the calendar.



I also changed the July layout to reflect our Independence Day, July Fourth.



Of course, the final print will not have the "trim area" annotations.

[rpcrowe]

The master file system that I use has really come in handy since I have needed several different sizes and crops of these images...

[rpcrowe]

I received the first copies of the 12 x 12 inch calendars that I ordered and I am very happy and impressed with them. I would recommend www.createphotocalendars.com to anyone desiring to do calendars. It's not the least expensive company but, the quality of their work is outstanding...

[rpcrowe]

The software cropped the images somewhat arbitrarily. Here is the way I cropped the image...



Here is the way it turned out...



The feet were cut off on several images. I finally said, "The heck with it!" and decided to live with the cut-off crop...

YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR

COSTCO (a national discount warehouse) had a calendar on sale for about 2/3 the price of www.createphotocalendars.com and I tried one for a test. It is horrible. The images are dull and muddy in comparison to the createphotocalendars example.