“Weimaraner Chess” was created by Margaret Bryant, of Carrollton, Texas. This whimsical image of dogs playing chess was created as an assignment for the Weimaraner Rescue calendar. “While William Wegman likes to pose his Weimaraners in quirky poses, or dressed up for children’s books, I am a little different,” explains Margaret. “I like to anthropomorphize the dogs. I like to imagine dogs doing human things. This image is comprised of several images (I’m not THAT good!). I set up the two chairs, the wood box, and the chess board on top of the wood box. My camera was on a tripod. No chess pieces were in place however, because I was certain they would be knocked off while I was getting the dogs into place. Each dog was photographed separately, with several poses of each dog looking in different directions, so I had a variety of expressions to choose from. When the right dog gave me this look like he was losing the game, I knew the left dog needed to be looking at the chess board. (While I had images of the right dog looking at the chess board too, I thought his expression in the final image was the best). To get the left dog looking at the chess board, I simply placed a treat at the far end of the chess board. The dog is not contemplating his next move in chess, he is contemplating his next move to grab the treat!” To finish off the image for the calendar, Margaret put in the background a “drawing” to give the shot a sense of place. “I thought of these two as playing a game of chess in the park, so I had a park like background that I converted to a drawing in Photoshop. In total the image was 5 shots. It is one of my favorites!”
