I have come to realize I am down to three obsessions to write about:  Tisen, Photography, and Hang Gliding.  I was hoping to combine all three into a single post today, but hang gliding didn’t happen today due to weather.  Maybe tomorrow–my own little triple play (sorry, it’s a telecom joke from back when I worked in the telecom industry).

After driving to the training hills, getting about 10% into assembling a glider, and then having to put it away and drive home, I consider taking a nap.  However, I have volunteered to help organize a St. Patrick’s Day fund raiser for S.O.A.R., so I decide to do some work on that instead.  I have a photo that I want to use of Cody, a Red-Tail Hawk, but it had a noisy background.  It was also taken with my iPhone–what I can do with it is somewhat limited.  Nonetheless, I end up spending an hour figuring out how to cut the hawk out of the photo and put it in front of a different background.  No wonder I hate editing photos!

Before:

Cody Flaring for Landing - iPhone photo slightly retouched

After:

Cody with New Background

I end up putting a different busy background behind Cody because there are so many places where I either erased something I didn’t mean to or didn’t erase something I should have.  I need the background to distract from my mistakes.  Regardless, I think it will work for a brochure and it turned out better than I thought it would.

After creating a draft poster and brochure, I take Tisen for a long walk.  There are tourists on the Walnut St Bridge taking pictures.  I have to smile to myself–I can’t count the number of times I’ve been up on that bridge shooting.  But, today is not a good day for shooting at all.  It’s gray and misting and I feel lucky I can pick the days I haul my equipment up to Walnut St Bridge.

I realize today that I’ve decided without actually deciding to include photos with each post, even if means grabbing a few shots with the iPhone.  After finishing the walk, I decide to get out my real-deal camera with the 100mm macro lens and start playing.

After seeing some shots on a real photographer’s blog that make me think maybe dog photos can be artistic, I decide to stick with Tisen as my model, but to try to use the macro lens to get something a little different.  Unfortunately, until I am going through the photos later, I don’t realize how much having a logo showing detracts from a picture.  It looks like I was hired to do a shoot for Kong dog toys.  That would have been nice!  While I’m doing an unpaid ad, Tisen does prefer Kong’s tennis balls–they squeak.

If I weren’t tired of photo editing, I would edit out the logos.  But now, I have the great joy of watching Tisen’s tail wag as we head out the door.