Loving the Fall Weather!

So, as promised I've got what everyone has been waiting for!

More pictures of MY DOGS!  :) 

I just can't help it... beautiful weather, super duper new lens, little critters... how could I resist?

Class last night was good.  You'll soon be seeing pictures of Daisy, Ben & Cole.  And tonight I've got a gig.  I'll be taking pictures of the Dark Show at Absolute Comedy.  Nothing like working for your husband :P  He is filming the event tonight and will use my still shots for the video & promotion.

The pier, Diego and some random Parks

Here are some more random shots. First is the pier where we met Diego. Diego is a stray dog we managed to pick up at the pier. On our first day there, he came up from behind us. We assumed the guy walking close to the dog was his owner, so we gave him a little pat hello. Turns out, Diego was a stray. He followed us for a good 2 hours. He followed us across from the pier, across very busy streets, not always obeying the rules of the road, until finally we made our way back to the pier, had a seat on a bench, and he left our lives as quickly as he came into it. We named him Diego, because he was cute, and I like that name.

The other pictures are of random parks we came across on our various walks around the city. They are small parks that locals spend time in. One beautiful thing about BA is that it has a lot of parks and greenery.

:) Roon-bop

Poco in the snow

Sunday was a relatively nice day out. Not the best we've had, but certainly much warmer than today! The sun was shining and the wind was taking a break, so I went outside to take some pictures.

First I took pictures of Poco in the snow. He enjoys the snow. Mostly, he enjoys eating it - regardless of colour. I try to teach him the best snow is white, but he can't help sniffing around.

First up are pictures of Poco. Stay tuned for pictures from De La Salle College later this week.

:) Roon-bop

Photography 4

My photography 4 class is starting to wind down. The White Box Assignment has been handed in and we have no more assignments left to hand in.

As such, I am already looking forward to Photography 5. In this class we will focus all our attention on completing a project of 10 photos. I have already decided on my subject matter. Intimacy between pets and owners. I think it will be very good for me. I absolutely LOVE animals, and I really need to start photographing people and dogs other than my family. I am hoping that this will increase my confidence and also give me good experience having a photo shoot with a "client" without the stress of having to get some great shots, because the pictures I'm taking are for me. I will of course share my pictures with my very kind models if they like.

Until then, however... you poor readers are stuck looking at more pictures of the dogs I love most: Miss Dimi and Mr. Poco. They are the most wonderful pups and I'm madly in love.

:) Roon-bop

More Poco and Dimi

Well, I'm sorry to do this to you all, but very soon you are going to be deathly ill from all these puppy photos I'm taking and upload. It can not be helped. I love dogs. However, I promise, once the summer comes, I'll at least have DIFFERENT dogs up. For now you are stuck with Dimi and Poco. I realize that my opinion of their cuteness is biased. But look at them... :)

I hope to have something a little different up soon. I've been working on some pictures of... my husband! lol. These however were done for his new project, website and details to be released shortly.

For now, its still dogs!

:) Roon-bop

Dogs, dogs, dogs!

Well, actually there are only two dogs in these photos!

Here are some pictures of Dimi and our neighbour Sam. We watched him over the weekend... well not last weekend, the one before that. Halloween weekend! (That's the one).

My weekend in Ottawa was great. I'll get up some pictures from the LAN. Though, admittedly, I wasn't trying to be a photographer at that event, however there are still a couple of pictures I'd like to share.

For now, please enjoy the cuteness of these dogs. And note the smile on Sam (Yorkshire Terrier)'s face... very cute.

:) Roon-bop

Pictures from a Picnic

Hello,

Me again! For our first anniversary, my husband and I had two picnics in the park. For the first (lunch), we brought Gouda cheese and a baguette (because that's often what we ate for lunch on our honeymoon in Paris). We brought the dog along for this portion of the day, as well as my camera.

Below you will see some pictures from that beautiful day.

:) Roon-bop

Dimi Loves Baseball

So, as you know, we went to the cottage last weekend. Dimi didn't have any toys with her, so one of the family members graciously let her play with his baseball - under the assumption that there was no way she could destroy it (which turned out to be true). Here are a few pictures I took of my beloved De Minimis Maximus, pooch extraordinaire.

I know, I know... I'm way too crazy about my dog.

:) Roon-bop

Also...

I also wanted to post a couple other non-X pictures from that weekend. I didn't really take many shots because I was pretty busy running the BBQ, but I got a good shot of my brother, Bob & my parent's dog, Poopsie-Daisy. It's okay to love her name, it is my creation - I have a gift for names. In any case, here are two more pictures. I tried to save them differently, so fingers crossed that they load in the right colours.

:) Roon-bop





oh snap! I may be a genious!!! I'll go back and fix the others!

Photography 1 - Last class

Well everyone, the final day of Photography 1 has come and gone. It's all over. I don't feel too badly about it because I'm excited to take more classes. Unfortunately, I'm going to have to wait until September until the next class.

Overall everyone's submitted pictures were good. There were some very creative people in the class. The good news is that I didn't feel like my pictures were the worst. I'd say average. I won't post all of the pics. Some are already in the blog, like Dimi with a ball under Curtis' foot; the Photocell band shot; and Curtis' portrait, but I'll attach a few of them.

We had to write a test as well last night... probably the easiest test I've ever written. I think I'm a little too used to university tests, because I was kind of inclined to write paragraphs, when all she wanted was one sentence, one word, one "circle the correct answer"... meh... that's my style and I'm sticking to it.

So, I hope you enjoy the pics. Hopefully they will only get better from here.

:) Roon-bop

Other People's Dogs

I have definitely thought that taking pictures of other people: families, pets, etc, would be fun. I am always taking pictures of my own family, and think that catching the spirit of people and those they love is, well... nice.

This weekend, my husband and I had the pleasure of dog-sitting for a friend of ours. Sam is a sweet 5 year old male Yorkie and Dimi just loves him. I thought this would be a great opportunity to practice taking pictures of another person's dog.

When I take pictures of Dimi, she listens, she stops to look at the camera, she ignores me... she is pretty much as close to a perfect dog subject that I will get. I have discovered that other people's dogs, even Sam who knows me and has lived with me the past 3 days, are a little more challenging to capture. When shooting Sam, he moved around a lot, which created blurry pictures, he wasn't interested in having his picture taken and because we were in my home and not a place that is familiar to him, he didn't interact much with toys and things around him. This just proves the importance of taking pictures where people / dogs feel comfortable. I also took some pictures indoors at night with bad lighting, so the flash was used and so I see the difference in quality between good natural lighting and that of a small camera flash.

Another struggle was taking pictures of the two dogs together. Trying to get their attention to look at me; taking pictures in places where the background is less than ideal, because I'm just so thankful the two of them are in the same shot; getting them both to sit still. The best pictures of the two of them were taken when they were playing and interacting with one another. Getting them to sit pretty for the camera, just didn't work. I did manage to get one picture of the two of them sitting pretty. This was completely by fluke. They were play fighting on the couch and the phone rang, which much to my dismay ended the photo shoot, but when I answered the phone, they both took a spot on the couch one up and one below and watched me while I was on the phone, so I snapped a couple photos and got a nice picture (which of course, would have been nicer had there not been a blanket on the couch and if everything looked a little neater, but that is another lesson in itself).

Here are some of the pictures I took of Dimi and Sam. Please note, there is nothing fancy going on with any of these pictures. I just wanted to share my experience and be forced to really think about what worked and what didn't and how I might be able to get better at taking pictures of other people's dog. If you have any advice / comments, please share.

:) Roon-bop

Starting Point

I thought I would start off by posting some pictures I've recently taken to show my starting point. I have to admit, I'm not a complete blank slate. After I signed up for my first photography classes I borrowed a book from the Toronto Public Library (props to Deer Park for having it in). This book helped me see photography and photographs differently. The book was John Hedgecoe's The Art of Digital Photography. I really enjoyed this book because it wasn't full of technical camera information, but was great at showing the importance of framing and planning a shot. I've also been reading blogs. Primarily Digital Photography School and Natalie Norton's Pics and Kicks. Basically, as of late, I've been surrounding myself with photography.

These are some pictures I took this past weekend. My husband and I took the dog (Dimi - rhymes with Timmy and is short for de minimis maximus) to the dog park and I used it as an opportunity. None of these pictures have been processed. I don't have Photoshop yet, so they come to you direct from the camera.