It's International Dogs Tilting Their Heads day!

Join Katie and have your dogs tilt their heads...or something.

Whale tales...err...tails

Last Tuesday I took two friends of ours from the UK for a whalewatch cruise aboard the catamaran Condor Express (located in Santa Barbara, CA). They had already been on the speedy boat last September when they last visited California and enjoyed it tremendously.

The seas off Santa Barbara have been flat and calm for some time this month; the skies had been sunny. While the seas remained calm on the day of our cruise, the skies went overcast during the night and on into the morning, as they usually do in southern California at this time of year. This makes for very flat lighting and little contrast between the sky, sea, and whales.

Within 45 minutes of leaving the harbor we were intercepted by hundreds of common dolphin:

Our first whale sightings occurred near the Painted Cave of Santa Cruz island:

followed by a sighting of a blue whale cow/calf pair:

Then, a humpback cow/calf pair showed up:

We trailed this pair for some minutes, but when they vanished we sailed west to the channel between Santa Cruz and San Miguel islands. Soon we were seeing blows and tail flukes from a number of whales to the west. Eventually we could see blows and flukes at all points of the compass -- we couldn't decide which whales to watch:

After an amazing two hours or so of watching these whales it was time to head back to Santa Barbara. We certainly got our money's worth.

As far as my camera settings go, I decided I wanted a shutter speed fast enough to prevent blurring because I was standing on the observation deck behind the wheelhouse (I eventually settled on 1/1250 sec.). I also added +0.7 exposure compensation because the whales were going to be too dark in such flat lighting. And I also switched my white balance to "cloudy" because with the overcast the pictures stood a good chance of being bluish. Even then, when I started post-processing these pictures in Lightroom I added more black to stretch out the histogram.

All your bed are belong to us

You may have noticed by now, if you've browsed through Sadie and Katie's photo gallery, that there are more than a handful of pictures of them lying on our bed. Either it's Sadie:



or it's Katie:



or it's both:



Why on the bed? Our bedroom as a south-facing window (if our room had a north-facing window that'd be better but we don't) that lets in a lot of natural light so it's bright. And it gets warm and toasty in there. And most greyhounds would never let an unoccupied bed go to waste like this. So there you are.

Usually I just use natural light and not augment it with bounce flash, but I've also used my flash, too:



(I used the Nikon SB-400 flash for this picture.)

The light is pretty decent, so there will be more Sadie and Katie pictures-on-the-bed, for sure.

Now...if only I can find a spot on the bed for myself...

Roooooooo!

Our girls don't roo. In fact, none of the four greyhounds we've adopted have ever rooed. And Sadie and Katie get nervous whenever a group of greyhounds begin barking and rooing as is sometimes done during, or at the end of, greyhound gatherings.

A pity...I think they'd be good at it.

So I must be content with being with other people's greyhounds to get a rooing picture.

Bootsy is one such greyhound. He roos with the slightest of provocations. I was on my way home from my first-time going to the Greyhounds in Gettysburg event in 2010. I hitched a ride with my friend and her family to BWI, stopping at her sister's home on the way there for a drink or two. The house has enormous amounts of light spilling through the back windows (which I noticed while we were all talking); it was totally wonderful. And the red-painted dining room wall complemented Bootsy's tiger stripes. I don't recall how Bootsy was prompted to roo but he kept going as my friend's sister joined in.

I didn't want to use bounce flash because the light was wonderful already but I still needed to up the ISO so Bootsy would not blur as he rooed. I took a number of pictures -- this one came out best after some cropping.

(Shot with the Nikon D300 using the 18-200mm set to 50mm; program-mode; camera chose 1/80 sec at f/4.8; ISO 800; auto white balance; matrix-metered; normal JPG.)

It's blue-footed booby day

Today is blue-footed booby day. Who could not love boobies?

So put something blue on your feet to show your support for Galapagos conservation.

(Shot with the Nikon D300 using the 18-200mm set at 112mm; program-mode; camera chose 1/250 sec @ f/5.6; ISO 800; auto white balance; normal JPG.)