This was a fun – a wife contacted me and asked me if I could take a photo of her husband, taken at a wedding in his kilt, and remove him from the background and put him into a photo of a Scottish scene with a castle.

The castle photo was purchased as stock photography, and then I worked on removing him from the original photo. Some minor correction, and into the new scene he went.

Once he was in the castle scene, I had to re-size him so he’d seem proportionally correct to the castle door. I cropped the entire image so that the castle tower would seem to be a much bigger building off camera. Some more correction was needed so the lighting would be right. Then I added a shadow to make it realistic.

After that, I applied painting styles to the entire image so that the end result would look like it was made up of brush strokes. I delivered it to the wife as a gift she could frame and give.

My friend owned her first Jack Russell Terrier since he was a puppy, and I’ve known him most of his life. I took this photograph with my digital phone because I thought his sleeping pose was hilarious.

When I looked at it, my minds eye turned it upside down, and saw a photo art opportunity. I used the image as the basis of a little present for her – Jack the Angel. She loved it when I sent it to her by email later that week.

What we didn’t know then is that Jack had cancer.  She found out a few months later. Devastated, she asked me to go on a little adventure with them one day while she took him for a special trip to the park. I was to take as many photos and videos as I could, so she’d have something to remember him with. It was a late summer day, with beautiful blue skies and a breeze. As sad as the day was, knowing he’d soon be gone, it was also one of the loveliest.

The following Christmas, I created a memorial poster for her, as a gift. I took the best photos of her Jack, and arranged them in an 18″x24″ design, with his name, and had it printed on heavy photographic paper. She can frame it however she wants, and keep him nearby. And she’ll always have Jack the Angel to look over her.