Social media and the internet is full of faked photos. I would say it’s hard to spot what’s a real photo and what’s been given the AI treatment, but often it’s fairly obvious. However, when I posted this photo of our dog next to a tennis ball, I was met with confused responses.
“How’d you make your dog so tiny, Peter?”
“Is your dog one of those new miniature Bichon Frisé breeds!?”
No, and, er, no.
As our dog is standing beside the tennis ball on the grass, I haven’t played with perspective - eg when the ball (or toy car) is in the foreground and the dog (or subject) is in the background to make them appear the same size.
So I must’ve used some Photoshoppery? Or a little bit of AI generative fill stuff?
No, and again, no.
So what’s the secret?
Big balls. Big tennis balls, to be specific. Ever since my children were given giant tennis balls to play with, I knew there was a great photo op just waiting to happen.
It’s simply a large tennis ball! To confirm, our Cavapoochon dog is a normal medium-size pooch, it’s the tennis ball in the photo which is big. It’s actually bigger than most soccer balls.
It’s not a trick of the camera, it’s more a trick of the mind. We associate tennis balls as a certain size, so our brain thinks the thing next to it must be equally small.
I shot low to the ground at around 50mm with a Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L lens, and at f/4 to keep the dog and ball on the same focus plane, and the background blurred. A bit of High-Speed Sync fill flash to brighten the shadows helped the exposure on this sunny day.
Anyone for tennis? Well, anyone for soccer? My balls are too big for tennis!
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