Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to everyone!

I've been thinking a lot about what typically happens around this time of year: New Years Resolutions.  I'm not much for resolutions, those make it or break it types of desperate goal-making so many do as they head into the new year.  Instead, I tend toward goals, those things I'd like to achieve, those things I can strive for and work toward.

So here are some of my dog-related goals for 2013:

1. Learn to relax at trials and stop babysitting obstacles. Dahlia doesn't need the babysitting.  She will take the jump even if I don't stand near it and coax her anymore.  In fact, she finds this somewhat confusing.  So I will practice running at trials like I run at class.  If she misses a jump so what?  We may forfeit the Q, but we can continue to work on getting her to TTFJ (Take The F'in Jump!).

2. Get to more trials.  Well, maybe not more trials, but I would very much like to go to more two-day trials.  I enjoy having my Sundays to relax, but I think it would work better for Dahlia and I if we could settle into the trial atmosphere a bit more by being there both days.

3. Get Dahlia her Level 2 CPE title.  This may not be possible but I'm going to work toward it nonetheless!  We have two Q's toward the full title (Wildcard and Colors), but have a long way to go (14 more Q's, with 4 of those being in Standard).  Since Standard at this level includes all obstacles, it's going to be a bit rough going.  Dahlia can weave pretty well, she gets the teeter sometimes, but her dog walk is falling apart. At the very least, I hope to get her titles in Fun (Full House and Jumpers), Handler (Wildcard and Colors - we're halfway to this one!), and maybe even Strategy (Jackpot and Snooker).  If we can obtain those three I'll consider it a good year for us!

4. Work on Dahlia's dog walk issues.  This one is somewhat tough as we don't own a dog walk and we can only work on it in class. I'm hoping our instructor will have another "Happy Hour" drop-in class or another contacts and weaves class.  We definitely need one!  So what is Dahlia's dog walk issue?  She blows past it almost every single time we get to it.  Sometimes if I take her back and show her it, she'll get on it.  Sometimes she runs right by it time and time again. I'm starting to wonder if she even sees it. I read this article about how dog's color vision affects them in sports. It says, of equipment, "This way, if a dogwalk sits on a dirt brown surface, the yellow contact zone may be harder for the dog to see, but the rest of the dogwalk's up ramp will be easily seen."  Our dog walk does sit on a dirt brown surface in a building that is not all that bright late at night. It's possible that at speed it just blends into the ground and she doesn't see anything there at first.  She has also tried to jump up onto it from the side, again hinting that she may not be able to see the end of it as well as the blue part up above.  It's obviously something we need to work on, but I'm not sure how to work on it just yet.

5. Get in better shape.  Yes, this is related to dogs and agility! As Dahlia picks up speed, I need to be able to run better. I'm terribly out of shape and it hasn't much mattered until recently.  I'm not always able to beat my dog to where I need to be and we've had some crashes in class and some problems with my falling behind and not being able to tell her where to go next.  So I need to start to work on getting in better shape...for my dog!

6. Work on rear  crosses.  Coupled with #5, I also need to work on getting Dahlia understanding rear crosses.  As she starts to get more comfortable getting out in front of me, I need to be able to "steer from behind" on occasion.

So those are my goals for the new year.  Do you have any dog-related goals?

I'll leave you with a picture I took of Dahlia in Vermont on New Years Eve.  Every scenic photo is improved by the addition of a dog, don't you think?

Wednesday: The non-wordless edition

I guess I haven't had much to say here lately.  Sometimes I get so caught up in my life I just forget that some interesting things are happening. 


Agility
Dahlia and I continue to improve in our agility classes.  We have not made it to another trial since the one in December.  Unfortunately, the handful of indoor trials in central NY during the winter months get overrun with entries and we were wait-listed in both January and February and never got into either trial.  After a rather disastrous "show 'n' go" in which Dahlia refused to (yet again) get up on the A-Frame and Dog Walk and acted like she had never done agility a day in her life, I wasn't terribly disappointed at not getting in.

We finally discovered Dahlia's problems with A-Frames and Dog Walks and it centers around her not striding properly.  She gets too close to them, has to take a short step, and then doesn't have the back end strength to push herself up onto them and so balks.  We've been working on increasing her back end strength, improving her striding, and making the contact equipment so rewarding that she just can't help but run at them full tilt.  All have been working well, but the latter is the best part.  She now runs out in front of me to take the A-Frame and occasionally does the same on the Dog Walk.  We're currently signed up for a trial later this month, so we may get a chance to see how this all works out in a real trial situation.


Dahlia's health
Dahlia is all healed up after her January surgery.  The hair is growing back and it's starting to be less and less noticeable.  She doesn't look like a Frankendog anymore!  On the flip side, she just recovered from a nasty intestinal thing caused by her taking an impromptu dip in our local (really disgusting and swampy pond) and drinking from it.  Amazingly, she never acted sick throughout the entire illness.  I was thankful for that.


Photography
My photography continues to improve and the major improvement lies with my obtaining a new Sony A580 body.  I absolutely adore the camera.  It's a huge step up from the A230 I was using before.  I've only had it for a few weeks (and unfortunately injured my back rather severely last week and so have not been able to take pictures for over a week now!) and there's still much to learn about it, but what I've gotten out of it so far has thrilled me.  I'll share a couple photos of Dahlia I took at agility class a couple weeks ago (only two days after getting the camera!).  Remember that this is inside the agility barn and all photos were taken at ISO1600.

If you're wondering how I ran her in agility and took photos, I wasn't running her.  My instructor took her out for a spin so I could take photos, which was an awfully nice thing for her to do for us.




 


I promise to post more often in the near future! 

New toys are fun (aka accessorizing your DSLR gets expensive!)

Recently in a community I belong to someone was asking about purchasing a less expensive DSLR camera so she could take better pictures.  While typing up my response about my camera and how little it cost me, I came to a realization: The camera itself might not have cost me too much, but my purchases for it did not end there.  I bought my new camera in April of this year.  Here's the run-down of what it has cost so far:

Sony Alpha A230 with kit lens (18-55mm), refurbished by Sony: $285
Tamron 75-300mm lens: $125 (this was a gift from my wonderful partner)
Minolta 35-80mm lens, used: $30 (eBay)
Minolta 50mm f/1.7 lens, used: $100 (eBay)
Minolta 70-210mm lens, used: FREE (a lucky thing; the guy who sold me the 50mm screwed up and sent me the wrong lens; to make up for it he sent me this free!)
Puffer flash diffuser: $20
External bounce flash: $50
Flash diffuser for bounce flash: $10
Backpack to carry all this stuff in: $30
Extra battery: $20

Total: $670 (if I didn't get the one lens for free that would have been upped to around $800)

So what am I saying?  Even "cheap" DSLRs are not cheap.  The camera and all but one of the lenses were refurbished or used, which was the only way I could afford that many things for it.  All told, it's cost me a lot more money than I had contemplated spending, but it's all well worth it.

What else am I saying here?  I love my new bounce flash.  It was a really cheap one as I didn't want to spend $300+ more on a flash right now, but I think it's great!  Here are a few photos I've taken with it.


 


 


 

How I get my photos

One thing I've learned about canine photography is that it's messy.  I get wet and muddy and that's not always because the dogs are excited and jumping on me.  One of the major keys to getting a nice photo of a dog is getting down on their level.  For many people this probably means just squatting down a bit.  For me, it means, well, crawling around in the grass and dirt to get just the right angle.

Take this photo, for instance, of my friend's dog Nellie.




I absolutely adore this photo.  It's crisp, the colors are beautiful, and it really shows off Nellie's lovely face, eyes, and her awesome personality.

So what did I look like while this photo was being taken?  Well, Nellie's owner was nice enough to snap this photo.




So there ya go.  Me crawling around on the (rather wet) grass to get photos of dogs.  I think it was well worth it!

The bad news and the good news

I didn't mention in my post about the new lens that what I had actually ordered was a 50mm f/1.7 lens.  Somehow the person I bought it from sent me the wrong lens, a much more expensive lens.  Alas, it had to go onto its rightful owner and I was sent the proper 50mm f/1.7.

So there's the bad news.  The good news?  The new lens is almost as good and it's hard to tell the photos apart.

On wonderful new lenses and all that...

Sorry folks, I'm on a bit of a photography kick right now.

Recently I ordered a new lens: a Minolta 50mm f/1.4.  I've been pretty pleased with my new camera, as anyone who reads this blog knows, but this new lens?  Wow!  I tossed it on the camera yesterday when I got home from work and took a few photos and what came out of my camera even blew me away.





 


Both of these were taken with the f-stop at 1.4 because hey, it's a new lens and I might as well try that aspect out.  They look so beautiful and naturally colored, so crisp and the bokeh is just amazing.  I'm in love with my new lens!

Even good photos can be edited

Here's another photo I took this past weekend.



 

Now, I love this photo.  I think it says a lot about the relationship between Dahlia and her Daddy (whose hand you see in the photo).  The earnest look on her face, the angle of her body and leg leading to joining with her Daddy's hand.  I just really like this photo.

But in looking at it, I wondered what it would look like in sepia tone and with a softer focus.  Would it take some of the eye away from the contrast of black fur against green grass?  Would it give more of a focus on the joining of canine paw and human hand?  So I took to the editing programs to see what I could do.  I altered the photo to be in a fairly low-key sepia, softened the focus, and added a bit of vignetting.  I also photoshopped out that annoying little piece of grass hanging off her foot and the tags hanging from her collar.

This is what I ended up with.




And again, I like it quite a bit.  So moral of the story: Play with your photos and see if you can make something else of them!

How to make a bad photo better (aka not every photo comes out good!)

On Sunday I took a large group of photos.  Some came out great.  Some came out horrible.  And then there were ones you looked at and thought Wow that would have been a great photo if only...

This was one of them.

It's easy to see what is wrong with this photo, but let me give you a short rundown:

1. It's washed out.
2. The colors are all wrong (too blue).
3. The highlights are blown out.

How did this happen?  It was a cloudy day and I was not quite aware of which direction the sun was coming from when I squatted down to get this photo.  As soon as I took it, I realized the mistake and moved to keep the light behind me.  But I didn't get another shot quite like this.

In attempts to edit it, I ultimately ended up with this as a photo.

This is somewhat better.  She's not quite as faded.  The colors are somewhat better though her face is still blue and washed out funny.  The background is still blown out a bit.  And after editing it, another flaw was brought to light: there's something hanging out in the top lefthand corner of the photo.  What was it?  A treat bag that had floated into the photo.

At this point, I was ready to give up, but I had one more thing to try.  I got into Adobe Lightroom and turned the photo B&W, which immediately improved it.  I lowered the exposure quite a bit (-1.24), increased the blacks (17), and also increased the contrast (+9).  Then I edited out the baggy by using the cloning tool in Adobe Photoshop.  And voila!  This photo.






I'm really quite pleased with it.

So basically, what I'm trying to say is: Don't give up on a photo just because it didn't come out good right from the camera!

Action shots

Someone recently asked me about action shots on my camera. For those who don't regularly read the blog, I bought a Sony Alpha A230 DSLR camera back in April. I don't have a lot of money (understatement) and couldn't spend much on a new camera. I also needed one that was fairly light since I have wrist problems. I settled on the Sony because it was both cheap ($285 refurbished) and one of the lighter models out there.

I haven't had a lot of experience taking action shots with the camera yet, but I thought I'd share some that I had gotten with it.  Please note that all of these are taken in fairly bright sunlit situations.















I'm still trying to figure action shots out, but overall, I'm fairly pleased with the cameras ability to capture them.