Some of my favorite photos I took during 2013 (part 2)

Jewel:

Thyme:

Heyokha:

Sadie (belongs to a different owner):

Gypsy:

Laika:

Isis:

Boo:

Violet:

Ringo:

Holly:

Speed Racer:

Mary, Speed Racer, and Trixie:

Cat and Sully:

Rocky:

(All photos taken with the Nikon D600, 50mm, and 105mm lens; shot in RAW, converted to DNG, and imported into Lightroom.)

Some of my favorite photos I took during 2013 (part 1)

Bailee-Mae and Julie:

Andy:

Winston in Marsh Creek:

Tangerine:

Izaskun near the Peach Orchard:

Miami near the Peach Orchard:

Daisy wades in Marsh Creek:

Honda:

Duncan:

Axel, Janel, and Duncan:

PieSky:

(All shot with the Nikon D300 and D600 using the 18-35mm, 50mm, or 105mm lens; shot in RAW, converted to DNG and imported into Lightroom.)

Katie 48 days post-amp

After attempting to take a few more pictures of Katie in the early evening light while I had her standing on our front lawn and not being happy with the results, I led both her and Sadie back to our front door to let them inside. While Katie was standing there, waiting, I took one snap and hoped I could at least get a bit of eye color to show up.

Most of the time her eyes look like a couple of black holes in her face. And if you try to compensate for that by opening up your aperture more, you'll overexpose her white fur too much.

I really cropped closely around her eyes, and used an adjustment brush to lighten them to make them a little more visible. At first I thought I should add a little warmth to eliminate the bluish tint (it comes from standing in the shade) by increasing the white balance temperature but I thought, nah -- I liked it better this way. I also sharpened her eyes and the area between them a little, but not too much.

Katie is coming along nicely: she weighs nearly four pounds more than after losing her leg. She barks at the inivisible mailman, sometimes claws us with her leg, and leaps into the back of our van when she goes for a ride.

Speaking of rides, I have another picture to share...

(Shot with the Nikon D600 using the 50mm f/1.8 lens; aperture-priority, with aperture set to f/2.8; shutter speed 1/500 second at ISO 800; center-weighted; auto white balance; shot in RAW, converted to DNG and imported into Lightroom.)

Cara surveys her domain

The past few weeks I'd been busy getting ready to go as a first-time vendor to the Greyhounds In Gettysburg event in Gettysburg, PA. As a consequence I hadn't been writing much. So I have a lot of catching up to do.

I flew to Baltimore on Wednesday of last week and stayed overnight with greyhound friends of mine. The next day I drove up to Pennsylvania and overnighted with another friend who lives not far from Gettysburg. This particular friend has four dogs (two of them galgos), volunteered for years to move galgos out of Spain, and set up a non-profit to continue rescuing galgos after she moved here from the Netherlands three years ago.

After dinner we spent most of the evening chatting. Soon after her husband excused himself to go to bed, his empty spot on the sofa was soon occupied by her two galgos. Eventually they both fell asleep there, but before they did her white galga, Cara, looked up to see what was going on in the kitchen.

She is a stunning girl. I chose an aperture of f/8 to get as crisp a picture as possible, knowing that in the dim light from the table lamp the shutter speed would be long and the ISO would be high. Fortunately having a VR lens makes getting a picture in lighting situations such as this very easy.

I decided her picture might look better in black-and-white, so after I returned home I imported it into Lightroom to see what I'd get. I just added some underexposure and burned in her tail a bit so it wouldn't disappear in front of her chest.

(Shot with the Nikon D600 using the 105mm VR f/2.8 lens; aperture-priority mode; aperture set to f/8; camera chose shutter speed of 1/20 second at ISO 6400; fluorescent white balance; -0.7 exposure compensation; normal JPG.)

Unexpected departures

Within the span of a week I have learned of the passing of two sighthounds that I have chanced to photograph: one Greyhound (Arrow), and one Saluki (Parker). Both died unexpectedly.

Arrow was a Greyhound that I met after he'd been returned to Fastfriends in 2011 because of food-aggression issues that became too much for his initial adopter (who loved him very much) to overcome. He was a striking brindle boy -- maybe I should say "half-brindle" because he carried most of what little stripes he had on his left side. His head was split right down the middle: stripes on the left half, nothing on the right.

He went to the foster home of a long-standing volunteer, who diligently worked on his issues. Eventually, the volunteer adopted him to add to her pack.

It was today when I saw a picture of Arrow roaching for the camera that in the caption were the words "final picture." I was puzzled at first, then I realized and understood what she was saying, although I did not (and do not now) know the circumstances of what happened to him. The suddenness of his passing took my breath away. His stay in his new home was much too short, but I try to dwell on the fact that he was home and with people who loved him.

Parker was a Saluki that I am pretty sure I had seen at a previous Solvang Greyhound gathering. His owner introduced herself to me last year, and reintroduced herself to me this year. She told me that she was writing a travel piece about the gathering for the website Dogster, and so asked me for permission to use some of the photos that I was to take during the Gathering. I had photographed Parker being blessed by Fr. Gerald Barron of Santa Ines Mission in Solvang during the Blessing of the Hounds on Friday:

Later that afternoon, at the pizza dinner, Parker and his owner sat close to us. I grabbed a few shots of him as he was curled up on the grass underneath the party tent where we all ate:

He was a little shy and kept to himself.

Towards the end of last week I was told that a few days after returning from Solvang, Parker had died from hemangiosarcoma. He was full of cancer, but he gave no outward sign that he was in trouble. His owner will still write her travel piece, only now it has turned into a remembrance story. Perhaps a couple of my pictures will accompany her article in Dogster.

I've been thinking tonight about these two. Perhaps there is some comfort in that their passings were short, but I think that it is small comfort nonetheless. There are two big holes in two different households now, and though there will be others to take their place, their holes will not be filled.

Mika (2002 - 2013)

Earlier this week on Monday, which was my wife's birthday, Mika began to abdomen-breathe. Our daughter Rachel noticed it that morning. This was not a good sign, so she took Mika to the animal hospital where she works to consult with the vets there. First an ultrasound was taken, and then an x-ray showed almost nothing visible in her chest but her lungs, and nothing in her abdomen. It was evident that her belly was filling with fluid as her liver failed and a low albumin level was causing her blood vessels to leak. Sure, we could remove fluid as needed but it was a temporary measure and much too stressful for her. Her little body was shutting down.

Rachel brought her back home and sadly spent what few hours remained for them together. Mika jumped off Rachel's bed and walked down the hallway like she had for the past few days when you could not tell that anything was truly wrong. She would step into the kitchen and pause -- and sometimes sit -- and I would ask her in a voice feigning annoyance, "Where are you going, Mika-Mika?" And she would respond with a stare and a gentle to-and-fro swish-swish with the tip of her tail. I became accustomed to seeing this as she seemed to feel better during the past two weeks. And then she would move on with a purpose, as if she was on some mission to take in and explore all the sights and smells that had been denied her for the past two years.

"Seemed" to feel better. It was all fool's-gold.

Late that afternoon, for one last time, she walked into the kitchen and sat, looking at me with her once-green-but-now-sparkling blue eyes. I had my camera in hand, and as I took a few snaps, Sadie walked in to see what we were doing. She gave Mika a thorough, once-over sniff, touching noses in the process:

After a few minutes in the kitchen she walked back to Rachel's room, jumped onto her bed and laid down on her comforter. She didn't curl up as she had in the past, but laid more-or-less straight out. I wonder if that made it easier for her to breathe as it became more difficult for her to do so. As it was dark in the room I turned on a light so I could get a few more photos:

This is my final picture of her:

We drove her back to the vet's a couple of hours later. After Gayle joined us from work, we spent some minutes with Mika after Rachel conferred with the vet that releasing her from her tired body was the best thing to do.

And then it was time to let go. She went quickly and quietly, her eyes still sparkling and blue.

This morning Rachel and I took her to the local pet cemetery where she was to be cremated. After a few hours I brought her home from the crematorium. She's back now, and -- more specifically -- back home with Rachel. This is as it should be.

But it was an all-too-short three weeks. When I wrote in Mika's photo gallery description that it didn't matter whether her days with us were many or few, I said that in the brave spirit that one does when it's easy to say or write the words. But reality often does not play nice nor does it feel the need to oblige the spirit in which those brave and defiant words are uttered. I hate that we got just three weeks.

And I've caught myself looking at one of her food bowls -- the one festooned with paw prints and fish and mice...and a cat with the words that say, "I'm hungry." It's just a food bowl -- and I miss her.

The cat who came to stay

We took in a 10-year-old female cat named "Mika" (pronounced MEE-ka) a couple of weeks ago. She is very ill, but we will make her remaining days -- however many or few that may be -- as comfortable as possible.

For the first week or so she stayed and slept in her own bed. But as she gained some strength back she's ventured out of her bed, exploring our rooms and hallways, and jumping on and off sofas and beds. Already she has claimed our daughter's bed as her own.

We take her outside to soak in the late winter sun:

and let her wander in the front yard as what may please her:

I used our Nikon 105mm f/2.8 VR macro lens for the preceding photo and for the next two. It's a lens we seldom use -- which is a shame. It's super-sharp but hefty, and a bit fat. I'd like to start using it more often for portraits. All of these pictures are center-weighted, using aperture-priority mode.

She will be cared for, until it's time for her to go.

LouLou

I don't often get the opportunity to photograph a Greyhound and its owner together. Usually the owner begs off. I respect that; I don't like how I appear in photos, either. But it's a nice and pleasant change when the opportunity presents itself.

LouLou is a six-year-old cowdoggie. She acts much the same way that Sadie does with us: raises a paw to you while she's lying down; gets up on her hind feet and plants her front feet on your chest (which I don't mind, by the way) while furiously wagging her tail; inserts her head between your legs so you can rub and scratch her neck.

Early in the photo shoot her owner and I decided to separate her three dogs so we could photograph them individually. While one dog (Bailee-Mae) was in the kitchen and the other Greyhound (Tink) was in a bedroom I managed to catch LouLou give me a curious look while I was trying to make some embarrassing noises to attract her attention:

I'm not good at all with being a noise-maker.

Later on we spent some time outside in the backyard. LouLou plopped herself on a couch, and I knelt down to her eye-level with my 70-200mm zoom attached to my D600. Unfortunately, I was at first too close to her and well within the five-foot minimum focusing distance. So I made several attempts of backing-up, trying to focus, then finding out I hadn't backed up far enough. As I was repeating the process I think LouLou was getting a little leery about what exactly I was trying to accomplish. I think this picture shows her suspicion:

Going back into the house to finish up with a few more photos, LouLou climbed up on the ottoman and laid across her owner's lap. The mood of the picture looks a little more serious than how things actually were:

I played around with cropping and rotating this for awhile, trying to get something that I would be happy with. I think this came out okay.

Bailee-Mae

Last week, on a warm (mid-70s!) January afternoon, I had a photo shoot with three pups: Bailee-Mae, LouLou, and Tink. Bailee-Mae is thirteen and a mixed-breed. Friendly. A tail-wagger. Big puppy feet. And soft, thick fur.

Trying to photograph three dogs individually when all are in the same room is not the ideal way to get any one of them photographed. So after getting a few photos of her (like this one):

Bailee-Mae was put in the kitchen behind a baby gate while I spent some time with the greyhounds LouLou and Tink. She quietly waited for her turn:

Then I went back and shot a few more pictures of the greyhounds. When I looked back at her, she gave me this face:

Ack! Okay, I said, let's try and take everyone out into the backyard and see what we can get. Switching from my 50mm to the 70-200mm I tried to back away far enough so that I was outside that zoom lens' minimum focusing distance of five feet:

I think perhaps the following photo turned out just as I had imagined it:

Focusing on Bailee-Mae's face, a relatively wide aperture (f/4) makes a nice transition from her to her owner.

With a bit of good fortune and a pleased owner I'll get to do another photo shoot with these pups again.

It's been two months...

...since I last photographed Sadie.

 

(Shot with the Nikon D600 using the 50mm f/1.8 lens; aperture-priority, with aperture set to f/4; camera chose 1/50 second at ISO 320; auto white balance; center-weighted metered; converted to black-and-white using Lightroom; normal JPG.) 

Ava and Daisy at the Richardson House, Fredericksburg, VA

(Shot with the Nikon D600 using the 70-200mm VR zoom and SB-800 flash; shutter-priority, shutter speed set to 1/500 second at f/5 at ISO 100; slow-sync; auto white balance; processed in Lightroom and DxO FilmPack 3.)