Bored Panda reached out to Mandy to learn more about her and her edits. Mandy shared the full story of how she started the project of combining two images.
“It all started with my six-and-a-half-year-old Great Dane, Elliott. When she was about a year old, I saw someone on Instagram do one for their dog and sent a message asking if they’d be willing to do one for me. They asked me to send a couple of photos and sent the result just a little while later. It was cool, but I was disappointed because it was very obviously photoshopped, as there had been no blending done to bring the two photos together. I figured with my background in art and experience with photography and Photoshop that I maybe could bring the two together in a more realistic fashion, and I’ve been creating them ever since!” wrote Mandy.
We were curious if Mandy studied to become the artist she is today. She shared: “I do have many years worth of formal art education, which helps with my understanding of light, color, and depth. I’m also a self-taught photographer, so have learned a lot about composition and angles as well as an understanding of the Adobe software I use to do these edits.”
Since Mandy has become a professional in her field, we asked her if there is a waitlist of people who want her to combine their pictures. Mandy replied: “Yes. I do run commissions off of a waitlist and book 1-2 months in advance on my website.”
No wonder why Mandy is in such high demand. She shared that to achieve such realism in her photos, she uses “an average of 75+ individual layer masks to make changes to lighting and color to blend the two images together.”
Mandy also revealed that in rare cases, she uses stock photo images of puppies to put next to adult ones.
“Most of the time, the owner will send me a current photo of their dog and a puppy photo of the same dog, and I bring the two together. I also do this for dogs who were rescued as adults and, in those edits, I’ll source a similar-looking stock puppy photo and will then match markings/colors/features to bring to life my most educated guess on what I believe that dog would have looked like as a puppy,” shared Mandy.
And lastly, Mandy added: “I just think they are a really beautiful way to capture the life of our four-legged best friends. We share so much time and love and create so many memories with them and these edits bring all of that together in one image. I feel so very fortunate to get to share not only my talents but love for animals with so many others around the world through my art!”
