Nikki and the flower

My friends who had owned Turbo (the subject of my last post) are going to take a look at a brindle boy named "Teddy" and may end up adopting him. When I saw a couple of pictures of him posted on Greytalk yesterday I immediately noticed the white stripe running down the middle of his face. This reminded me of a picture I took of Nikki, who also had a white stripe when she was young.



This is a scan of a print from a roll of color negative film -- probably Kodacolor.

The occasion for taking this picture was a little photoshoot I was asked to do for a story that appeared in Celebrating Greyhounds magazine over 10 years ago about the many types of collars available for sighthounds. While we waited to get the collars together we had Nikki in an exercise pen that sat in the shade next to a friend's house. As she was standing next to a flower I thought I'd position myself so that it would be next to her collar as they were a little similar in color.

I'm positive I just used 1/60 sec as the shutter speed since I used a film camera (I'm not sure if it was a Nikon N70 or a Canon AE-1 Program) and knew nothing about fill-flash. The more I've looked at it the more mistakes I think I made here (could've removed the ex-pen, a background that's too bright and distracting, the light is too harsh...I'm sure there are others).

But I will say what redeems this picture to me: Nikki's youthful face without a hint of age, her alert expression, and her bright eyes. Funny, and a bit sad, that I don't really remember her looking this way. I just remember all the white on her face as she matured. But, either way, she was a gorgeous greyhound.

Turbo (2001 - 2011)

I am lucky that we have greyhounds to photograph. But I am also lucky that people allow me to photograph their hounds, too. In this way I have met many of them, if even for the most fleeting of moments. I've tried to see and photograph "things" in the four greyhounds that we've adopted (first with Alex, then with Nikki, and now with Sadie and Katie), so that you might know a little about them as we know them. As I have tried to do with our hounds, so too have I tried to do the same with others.

But in pursuing these things therein lies a toll, and I find that I grieve for others' greyhounds as I have grieved for our own.

When I was at Greyhounds in Gettysburg a number of us went to have lunch at a friend's house. While there I took a number of pictures of Turbo:

...lying on his bed:

...looking out the front door:

...and napping on a favorite couch:

She'd asked me to take a family picture of her, her husband, and Turbo at Dewey last year but we didn't get the chance. Just before I had to leave for my flight home I asked her if we could spend a few moments to get that family picture she'd wanted. We stepped outside in the wet grass of their front lawn under overcast skies and took two photos. I used fill-flash to lighten the shadows a bit as well as add a catchlight in Turbo's eyes. I was done within a few minutes. I hoped I got some good images.

Then it was time for me to go.

Turbo passed away unexpectedly on 25 June. He was only 10.

(Shot with the Nikon D300 using the 50mm f/1.8 lens; first three photos camera set to aperture-priority with aperture set to f/2, f/2, and f/2.5 respectively; camera chose shutter speeds of 1/1600, 1/160, and 1/80 respectively; ISO 800; exposure compensation set to +0.7, +0.7, and 0 respectively; auto white balance; fourth picture camera set to program mode and slow-sync with SB-800 flash attached; camera chose 1/320 sec @ f/10; ISO 800; auto white balance. All pictures RAW and processed in Lightroom.)