ASCA Muddy Paws Agility

Here's the link:  Day 1 of the ASCA Muddy Paws Agility Trial

I think I shot too much... 

More to come tomorrow. Enjoy!

All the way from Ohio... meet Toby

What to do on vacation, on the road, far away from your comfortable home studio environment, when you want a portrait of a very important person.... err, companion animal, who means the world to his family, and who happens to be... family? You enlist your brother-in-law to serve as set designer (yeah Jeff!), throw up a few sheets and turn an ordinary foyer into a home-away-from-home studio.

The end result is this shot of Toby, a three year old Corgi of the Pembroke variety. Hard to believe it, especialy when you spend a little time around him, but Toby was actually given up by his first owners and became a rescue dog before landing in his forever home with Jeff, Lillian, Catherine and Michael.

And since we think of them as cousins, we couldn't pass up the chance to get a shot of Toby with Wyatt (our corgi).

As corgis go, they couldn't physically be more different, with Wyatt's long, lean body and that fluffy coat, compared to Toby's stocky linebacker-like build with his beautiful short hair. Surely there's not a female corgi who wouldn't absolutely drool over one or maybe even BOTH of them!

Probably the most remarkable thing about Toby is his drive. We had serious discussions about whether to whisk him away in the middle of the night and make him Super Agility Corgi but for some reason we thought better of it...

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Agility Photos!

It took much more work than I thought, but I've finally built an online 'storefront' for last weekend's USDAA Agility Trial in South Jordan! 

Here's a link to the gallery:  Agility Photos!

It was a wet but fun weekend and we had a blast. Wyatt, our litte bundle of paradox, (above) ran much faster than usual, probably because of the cool weather and the fact that we are now running him at 8" instead of 12". Had I not been guilty of some poor handling at a key moment in Steeplechase, we might've even finished in the money!

As for the photos, the site is organized in sections; select your class and go right to it. I'm new to the crazy world of html (code) so please, please let me know if there are any issues. 

We are now only taking orders by e-mail, telephone and snail mail but we hope to be set up with PayPal soon.

Enjoy the gallery!

Cesar

This week we were able to sit down with Cesar, a standard Schnauzer.

Cesar and his owner Marianne have been a fixture in local agility and obedience circles. He is currently working on his UD in obedience and a MACH (Masters Agility Champion, I think). Advancing this far is a pretty big deal, especially for a schnauzer.

For our shoot all that training and discipline meant "Ceeze" could hold a pose, like, FOREVER!

We tried several different lighting set-ups and came away with an extremely high number of keepers, thanks to his spectacularly good looks.

Here's a second shot:

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Tia & Callie

Sometimes I feel like I really nail a shot while at other times it really is all the dog. This photo of a pair of Australian Shepherds, Tia, on the left, and Callie is one of my favorites so far. That amazing look of Tia's gave me goose bumps the first time I pulled it up on a monitor.

Hit the 'read more' link for two more shots.




More Tia. So photogenic! Most of the shots of Tia that didn't turn out were errors on my part - bad focus or underexposure. It happens. But we came away with so many 'keepers' that Tia & Callie's owners, Coleen and Kevin, and I had a difficult time paring things down to a select few for printing.



This shot of Tia didn't make the cut -- for Coleen and Kevin anyway. It's one of my favorites though so I thought I would 

share.

What do you think?

Meet Mitzi!

... and David and Erin, too.

I tend to focus primarily on the dogs themselves but I also like shooting family portraits; either way, without fail, a sitting becomes a window into the love and affection we have for our companions. And in this case there was the doting -- lots and lots of doting -- over Mitzi. It was priceless. I knew it going in but our session confirmed that Mitzi means the world to David and Erin.
More after the jump.


Mitzi's a Miniature Schnauzer. She was 4 months old at the time of this photo. ManyMost dogs are just plain cute. Some have a sort of regal air about them. Mitzi has both. At her young age she hasn't spent a lot of time around other dogs, so it was great to see how she reacted to our Wyatt and Josie, who are both pretty gentle around younger animals. (I wonder if they feel the same sort of emotions we do around human babies?) It's thought that Mitzi may actually believe she's a person, so no telling what she thought of these two other... beings. She seemed a little timid at first but before long she was romping around, play bowing and having a blast with her new buddies.

Note Cards

Starting in March, I'll be adding note cards to my photographic quiver.

I'll use Josie here to illustrate the style -- very simple, just Jose against a white background. 

(Full disclosure and shameless plug: Josie is our girl. She's a big time cuddler with serious herding 'cred' in her lineage. She's two now. She almost killed us with abject fear last year when she ate a rug and had to have it surgically removed. This was no ordinary meal -- she ate the darn thing Lady and the Tramp style (think their spaghetti date). She unraveled it into a strand that ultimately went from her mouth all the way to her, hmmm, other end -- in one piece. I wanted to kill hug her and never let go.
More after the jump.
I got the idea for the cards this past Christmas after getting comments about a really hastily thrown together Christmas card:



We got so much positive feedback from this that we will be taking orders for Holiday Cards in September, possibly earlier. Here again, it's just shot against a simple white background, nothing to distract the eye from our subjects. 

(I've already introduced Wyatt and Josie. On the left is Digger. In January, just two weeks shy of his 15th birthday, Digger left us. I still can't 'talk' about it beyond that. We miss him a whole lot, but sadly his time had come.)



I'll leave you with this last example, a shot of Craig, a beautiful border collie. He's from strong herding stock as well (like Josie, from Idaho). Craig belongs to Marianne, a very good friend of ours. 
We'll be taking printed note cards of Craig, along with a few other samples, to our next agility trial. I think that will be the DOCNA trial March 14/15 at the Legacy Center in Farmington. I'll add a note to this post when we know for sure.

Thanks for visiting. I'll try and have another post up by Monday.

Enjoy your weekend!