Running with scissors

Bean is the doggiest dog we've ever adopted. We got glimpses of what that was like when we met Bean for the first time and watched her play with balls, pinecones, and tree branches in Aimée's backyard. So as she settled into our home Bean noticed that we also had small pinecones in our little backyard. It didn't take too long before she grabbed one and started to run with it in her mouth:

She has a lot of fun playing and running with them but we cringe a bit as we have to be mindful of her weak leg that can sometimes go out from under her and make her fall. The leg doesn't seem to bother her much as long as she doesn't play on hard surfaces like concrete or asphalt for too long. (She often wears a Therapaw on hard surfaces.) Then it seems to get sore and she tries not to put too much weight on it. Still, we want her to have fun -- it's too hard to try and keep a young dog like her down.

(Shot with the Nikon D600 and the 105mm lens; aperture-priority with aperture set to f/4; camera set shutter speed to 1/640 second at ISO 800; auto white balance; normal JPG, processed with Lightroom.)

Three months

It's been three months since Katie's death from lymphoma.

I think of her (and of our other two departed greys, Alex and Nikki) every day. And there are many days where I browse through some of the several thousand pictures that I took of her. She was with us for nearly nine years, and even now those thousands of pictures seem inadequate. Oh, most are terrible and not worth sharing with everyone, to be sure, but I saved them.

I cling to these pictures as a way to hang onto her for as long as I can. I won't say that looking at these pictures always brings me comfort — it doesn't. But when it does I go back and think of how well she recovered from her amputation. We were so pleased and happy for her that she gained weight during her chemo treatments because it can cause appetite loss and Katie was never really food-motivated.

I'm rambling now and I can't write a coherent train of thought, so I will leave you with this picture of Katie as she was back in 2008, a couple of months after Nikki had died:

 

I used light coming in through a window to get this. I added +0.7 exposure compensation because I didn't want the light meter to render her in a dull gray. She had this wondering look on her face as Sadie was standing in front of her. Katie's eyes were wonderful and I tried to capture that.

(Shot with the Nikon D300 and the 18-200mm zoom; aperture-priority with aperture set to f/4.8, ISO 1100 at shutter speed of 1/30 second; cloudy-weather white balance; +0.7 exposure compensation; normal JPG.)

Minty (2003? - 2013) and Hoover (2006? - 2013)

Both taken before their time from smoke inhalation from an overnight fire at home last week.

Minty at Dewey Beach last year:

Hoover at Gettysburg last year:

(Minty: Shot with the Nikon D600 using the 18-35mm zoom at 18mm; aperture-priority with aperture set at f/4; camera set shutter speed to 1/1250 second; matrix-metered; auto white balance; normal JPG.

Hoover: Shot with the Nikon D300 using the 70-200mm VR zoom at 70mm; program mode; shutter speed 1/250 second at f/8; -0.3 exposure compensation; auto white balance; shot in RAW and converted in Lightroom.)

Before and After #2: Ava

I haven't done this in several months, but I thought I'd share another before-and-after shot. This picture of Ava shows her standing on the driveway that leads up to the Richardson house atop Marye's Heights in Fredericksburg, VA.

It's overexposed to a great degree, so I backed off the exposure overall by about a half stop. The sunlit side on the right side of her neck and chest were overexposed as well, so I used an adjustment brush to burn in those areas, but not too much. Adding a vignette darkened her ears too much, so I dodged her ears with another adjustment brush (it's hard to make out since it's such a small area in the picture). Last of all, I cloned out her red leash and its shadow, which wasn't hard to do but it was time-consuming.

And I encountered the memory problem that other Lightroom users have run into when placing more than 10 cloned spots on one picture:. I had to exit out of Lightroom to free up memory. It's somewhat annoying, and I've read it hasn't been fixed in Lightroom 4 yet, either.

Note also that I'm working with an Adobe DNG file: I had to convert it from a Nikon NEF raw file to Adobe DNG because Lightroom 3.6 (the version I use) doesn't support D600 RAW files and never will. (I also didn't want to install Nikon's own software because that would add another step in my workflow.)  Adobe stopped supporting my version months ago, so I have no choice but to upgrade to LR 4 (and Windows 7). Which brings up the problem of software companies always playing catch-up when new cameras are introduced with their particular RAW files if that's what you like to shoot. If I had shot JPEG, no problem.

Dylan on the beach

Late afternoon is a personal favorite time of day for me to photograph. The light turns golden and gives a warmth to everything it touches, unlike at mid-day when colors are at their brightest and the shadows are deepest.

Late Sunday afternoon the group of us that rented a vacation house at Dewey Beach for the Columbus Day weekend were enjoying our last full day on the beach before heading for home. I spied Dylan sitting on the beach and looking over his shoulder. I took several snaps and hoped I got something decent. This is one of those pictures:

 

After I got home it sat unprocessed for a couple of months. When I finally got around and worked on it I straightened the horizon, cloned away his leash, added a graduated filter along the top to darken the sky a bit, and upped the vibrance and clarity. It wasn't until I looked closer afterwards that I noticed I hadn't even gotten his face in focus. Although this is a wide-angle shot and he isn't too blurry as opposed to the waves behind him, I'm annoyed that I thought I had him in focus but apparently I didn't.

I will get a better picture of you, Dylan. I promise.

(Shot with the Nikon D300 using the 18-200mm zoom at 31mm; shutter-priority with shutter speed set at 1/1000 second; camera set aperture to f/5.6 at ISO 400; matrix-metered; daylight white balance; normal JPG.)

Katie waits for a pizza bone

 

(Shot with the Nikon D300 using the 50mm lens; aperture-priority; aperture set to f/2.8, camera chose shutter speed of 1/50 second; ISO 800; auto white balance; converted to black-and-white in Lightroom; normal JPG.) 

Bunny tells a joke

Many of you dog-blog readers follow Carrie, who writes a daily blog called Tales and Tails about her greyhounds Bunny, Lilac, and Blueberry, and her GSD Morgan. Being still a noob at this blogging stuff I chanced upon her blog early this year, read a few posts, became a follower, and made the rare comment. She reciprocated and started commenting on my photo posts.

Then, she told me that she was going to Greyhounds in Gettysburg (aka GIG) in late March and hoped to meet. That didn't happen but when I told her I was going to Dewey she said she was going, too. I only had two appointments on Saturday (all in the morning) so my afternoon was free and I decided I'd go see my artist friends Beth and Pete at their rental house. I texted Carrie and told her I was on my way to see the Wade's and, if she knew where it was, I'd meet her there.

Carrie and Bunny arrived there shortly after I did, and after introductions and chatting a bit I asked Carrie if she wouldn't mind if I tried taking a few pictures of Bunny while we were standing indoors. I had my 50mm prime lens on and so I decided I'd use a wide aperture to blur the background behind Bunny, and just focus on her striking amber eyes.

 

There was something outside that had Bunny's attention but I had no idea what it could be. Whatever it was, Bunny would not look away:

 

As she continued to stare I moved to her left and positioned her to the right of a wooden greyhound figure that just happened to be behind her. I found that interesting, but what I found even more interesting and appealing was how the light illuminated her profile (much in the same way as the photograph of Turbo I had written about in an earlier post):

 

While that picture (which needs to be cropped still) may be more aesthetically pleasing, the funny pictures are these three of Bunny appearing to tell a joke.

Bunny: "At first, I was, like..."

Bunny: "But then I LOL'd...":

 

Bunny: "OMG...that was too funny...":

Suffice it to say that it was a privilege for me to meet both Carrie and Bunny.

(Shot with the Nikon D300 using the 50mm lens; aperture-priority with aperture set to f/2.8; camera chose 1/320 or 1/400 second; matrix-metered; auto white balance; shot in JPG.)

A greyhound threesome in black-and-white

I don't see enough greyhounds rendered in black-and-white. So, if the thought occurs to me and if I think the image might lend itself to being in black-and-white, I give it a try and see what happens. Sometimes it's straight-up b&w; sometimes, it's sepia; sometimes, it's in platinum.

Here is an example of a color photo processed using the Platinum preset in Lightroom. First is the original picture in color:

And here is what it looks like after using the Platinum preset:

I can't say I recall how the three of them ended up arranged this way, but I thought it looked interesting enough to photograph. There's a strong sense of perspective implied by the angles of the greyhounds' forelegs, the edge of the surf behind them, and the tilted horizon line. I think I like the the black-and-white version more.

Greyhounds often lie upright in this "sphinx" position, where they rest on their elbows with forelegs extended in front of them and the back legs supporting a rear end that doesn't touch the ground. It looks uncomfortable (you often hear greyhound owners say this) but they have no problem lying this way. But they often put their heads down on their forelegs, look up at you and give you these big, sad puppy eyes so that you'll feel sorry for them. Sometimes they'll add a loud sigh to enhance the effect. It's one of their tricks.

(Shot with the Nikon D300 using the 18-200mm zoom lens set at 18mm; shutter-priority with shutter speed set at 1/500 second at f/10 and ISO 200; auto white balance; SB-800 provided fill-flash at -0.7 flash compensation; shot in RAW.)

Solvang Thursday at Carivintâs Winery

We arrived in Solvang, CA, last Thursday afternoon after a two-and-a-half-hour drive for the 7th annual West Coast Greyhound Gathering. After unloading our stuff in our Royal Copenhagen Inn hotel room and walking about the town a bit, we stopped by the Carivintâs winery before a special wine-tasting (just for the gathering) started at 6pm.

Carivintâs, as part of their way of doing business, donates a portion of their profits to animal shelters and support groups. For Greyt Legs (the non-profit organization that helps newly-retired greyhounds with leg injuries get needed medical care, and who also puts together the West Coast Greyhound Gathering) whippet-owner Paul Ramos (who is in the second picture) of Carivintâs created two special greyhound-labeled wines (which featured Tennile, one of the first greyhounds helped by Greyt Legs, on the back label).

A percentage of proceeds from those two wines would be donated to Greyt Legs. So if you are ever visiting Solvang, with or without your pups, pay them a visit -- they're wonderful.

Here are a few pictures taken during the wine-tasting:

(All photos: Nikon D300; 18-200mm zoom; SB-800 with diffusion cover and light bounced off the ceiling; auto or flash white balance; exposure compensation +1/3; normal JPG but for the wine bottle, which was shot in RAW. Note also about the bottle picture: flash mode was slow-sync to exposure the background properly. In most of the other pictures, the flash mode was the default.)