Greyhounds make you realize...

...you need to practice how to pan:

I got a clear shot of the back three-quarters of this hound, despite the fact that I was shooting at three frames/second. <sarcastic> Awesome... </sarcastic>

This is the second of two photos I took of two black greyhounds running at the 2006 Solvang Streak held during the West Coast Greyhound Gathering (WCGG). This particular hound was in full stretch as it passed by me. The result was disappointing on the one hand, but pretty funny (to me, anyway) on the other.

There are very few opportunities (other than the WCGG) for me to see greyhounds running at speed so I don't get to practice panning much. Well, it's wait 'til next year and try again...

(Shot with my Nikon D200 set to aperture-priority, using a 70-200mm VR zoom at f/6.3 and 1/750th second, ISO 200.)

Introduction

I have loved photography for most of my life. I photograph anything that catches my eye. Anyway, for the last fifteen years or so my photography has centered on our retired racing greyhounds. So in this blog I'll post pictures that I've taken of them, of other greyhounds, of other dogs, and of many other things, and share the who-what-when-where-and-why about each picture.

But, about our first greyhound...

We adopted our first retired racing greyhound, Alex, in the fall of 1993. He was four years old at the time, so he'd been racing for a few years. We don't know how many races he ran, nor do we know what tracks he raced on (other than the last track), but we do know he was born in Oklahoma and finished racing at the Caliente racetrack in Tijuana, Mexico.

He was a striking white greyhound with black "ticking" (spots) over his entire body, and a thick black eyebrow over each eye. He was part of a group of dogs named after classical music composers by the adoption group: he was named Amadeus. But he was also nicknamed Groucho because of his eyebrows. Alex was with us for nearly ten years. But even ten years was not enough time spent with him. Though he's been gone for nearly eight years, I think of him still.

This picture of Alex is from a scanned print. I think this was taken with my Nikon N70 film SLR, using Kodacolor print film. The sky was overcast so there isn't much in the way of shadows. You can see that he's overexposed; white greyhounds are somewhat harder to photograph well than are greyhounds of other colors. As time went on I would underexpose so as not to blow out his highlights.