06-30-09

Driving back from PC today I notice a thistle plant right along the lake with huge purple flowers. I turned around and took pictures of it. And I played around with HDR. The top one is the original and the other 4 are my attempts at HDR.

06-22-09

Well I went out again to try to get the perfect sunset. And again forgot my wide angle lens. Thinking I'm going to make it a weekly thing, going out to the beach and taking a picture from the same spot. Might be interesting to see the change in the seasons and a change in the beach as it used to be a public beach but is now a wildlife area, so it is no longer being maintained and allowed to go back to it's wild state. Not enough clouds this night, but the sun was pretty colored. Might try working this one in HDR since I tried it with another picture.

06-21-09

Tonight looked like it was going to be a great sunset. Unfortunately there were too many clouds to get a real low sunset, but I liked how this one turned out with the lone seagull in flight.

06-20-09

This old gentleman came into an area pound and had a microchip from 2001 that was registered to Planned Pethood Evidently he had been rescued from a pound back in 2001 that microchipped the dogs at that time and was rescued by Planned Pethood. Once he was adopted, his new family should have had the microchip transferred to their name, but they failed to do that. So he was still ided as being a Planned Pethood dog. And once a Planned Pethood dog, always a Planned Pethood dog, so he came back into the program. By chance a couple had applied for another dog, but she wasn't active enough for them. But one of our fosters knew about them and knew about this old guy, and they were happily hooked up. So on the day that Tucker, the name that he finally responded to from the hundreds we had tried, was sprung from the pound he went to his new home. How's that for a happy ending for a lucky dog.

06-18-09

Just out playing with the dogs and taking some pictures. I took these 2 pictures of our foster dogs Bingo, a rat terrier and Ariel and ball obsessed labrador. Although you'd probably think that Bingo is from the pictures of him with the ball in his mouth. But his favorite game is to grab the ball from Ariel and get her to chase him.

06-14-09

My mother in law died last week after a stroke. Her funeral is tomorrow and visitation was this afternoon. She was cremated, so the had this set up with her ashes. The 3 angels represent her 3 sons. The other arrangement was from the grandchildren, great grandchildren and the great great grandchild, with the red roses representing the grandchildren, the pink ones representing the great grand and the peach rose the great great grandchild.

06-13-09

Yesterday was Planned Pethood's 30th birthday party. I was asked to take portraits of the dogs there. I have a background stand and white paper, but didn't really want to use the paper since they were predicting rain and it had been raining off and on the past day or so. So I bought a 8ftx10ft blue tarp and used that hooked up to the background stand with alligator clips and duct tape. Note to self, get another blue tarp and some more tent stakes. They also had an agility course set up next to me. This girl with a beautiful little sheltie wanted pictures and was lamenting that had to retire her sheltie from agility because of a knee problem and she never had any pictures of him doing agility other than a few snap shots. I told her I could do some for her. So we ran him though the course and I snapped a few pictures. I really liked them for it being my first time ever trying agility. I think I'm going to contact a few local agility groups and see if I can stop by sometime and snap some pictures. And then at the end I took a few formal portraits of him for her.

06-06-09

Another Saturday and another Planned Pethood adoption event. This time I took along my background and got some pictures of the dogs in front of it. I think a nice clean background really makes the dogs stand out. Of course the photographers dogs have no pictures and I haven't taken my own fosters dogs in front of the background. Next week is the Planned Pethood's 30th birthday party and I'm suppose to take pictures of the participants there.

06-05-09

I spent part of the day on Friday at the Toledo Zoo They have a wonderful aviary for taking pictures. In some of the rooms the birds are free flying and there are murals painted on the walls to simulate trees, sky, clouds etc. With a little adjustment the background fades out. I stayed out of the aquarium for once. Usually I go in there and end up sitting in front of the jellyfish for hours. But I did find my way to the rose garden where the flowers were in full bloom.