Black and White Sunday: Halloween

Sometimes, you just find the perfect graffiti for the moment

Family Portraits

Over time, I have come to really value photographs. I think it is pretty obvious on the blog. Blogging has been a huge part of my motivation to document the ups and downs and the various parts of the lives of my dogs. Looking back over photos from previous years, I also go back over the memories from that time. Photos are memories, preserved for all time.

What I don't have, though, are photos of me with my dogs. Or at least, I don't have many of them. This is something I would like to remedy. I have been working on slowly getting into the pictures more often, through the use of creative angles and self timers.

I can get my feet into the photo pretty easily by using a wider lens (Canon 28mm 2.8 lens) and shooting straight down.

Looking up

The self timer lets me get more creative with it. I still like the shots that just include my feet:

At my feet

Our feet together

But with the self timer, I can even get some shots of me and my dogs actually interacting, even if the results aren't always exactly what I was going for when I set out.

Getting kisses

All of those are photos I have shared before, and all of them are ones I cherish. But I simply couldn't figure out how to get a posed family portrait by myself. Luckily, I have some great friends. With an offer on Facebook of doing a photoshoot for a friend willing to help me out, one of my friends volunteered. She mostly takes pictures with her cell phone and has no experience with DSLR cameras. It really didn't end up mattering. We met out at the park. I set up the camera in Manual, choosing the right ISO, shutter speed, and aperture for the location, and I explained to her how to make sure the focus point was over my face. She was quick to get the hand of it and even had a natural eye for avoiding things like cars in the background. I am absolutely thrilled with the results.

Fall family portrait

All of this is to say, you don't need to hire an expensive professional to get pictures of your family. Sometimes, hiring a professional is absolutely the best option. You are pretty much guaranteed to end up with a product that you love. But we can't all haul professional photographers around with us all the time. You can capture so many moments so many ways. I get a lot of photos of my dogs alone, or just the two of them together, and there are many great memories with those photos. As I have been exploring ways to add myself into the photos I take, I manage to build more memories, and show the love and bond I have with my dogs.

While I value in the extreme the quality of the photos I take and have, I also value the moments. Sometimes, a quick cell phone picture is all you can manage to take- but for the right moment, it is way better to grab what you can than to have nothing at all.

Fit Friday: High and Tight

I am so proud of my Koira girl!

Her turns last night at practice were amazing. Her first five were all high, snappy, tight turns, with a fast go out and fast return. All four feet were not only on the box, but well placed. And only one of the first five had any double hitting at all, the rest were all solid. 

Our second set of five, she had two really nice turns and three low-but-four-footed ones. but still a fast go out and fast return on all of them. I think she was just getting lower as she got tired, but since even her absolute worst turn of the night was better than her best turn at our last tournament, I am over the moon. Oh, and yes, all of these turns with with absolutely NO props of any kind in front of the box, just like we will see at a tournament.

I will say that my teammates were all very impressed. There was a bit of ribbing about the fact that Koira's turn improved so much right before I head off to run in Open, at a tournament that no one else from my team is going to. I did put some extra time and effort into training her turn, I'll admit. But, its not like I haven't been putting time and effort into it before now! I think something just finally clicked for her. Of course I have no pictures or video or anything to prove this, but that doesn't make me any less thrilled!

Lets hope she stays solid this weekend in Canada!

After practice, we set up a power jumping grid, which is six flyball jumps all set up ten feet apart. I brought Pallo in for this, and he had a blast. I had him run it four times (Koira came in and ran twice, but she is always a rock star with jumping grids). He has been off flyball completely for a full two months now. He was jumping smoothly, single striding every one, and going for his tug with wild abandon. He'll be doing some full runs at practice next week, so we'll see if some time off is the solution to our previous issues or not. Fingers crossed!