Category Archives: Dogs

True Colors

Posted by dkrashb on

As Tisen and I stroll along Stringer’s ridge, my feet drag through a thick layer of leaves.  As they crunch and swirl in front of my feet, I remember what fall meant to me as a child.

Halloween was, of course, central to the fall experience.  Dressing up in some costume that never quite looked as glorious as I expected it to (except the year my mother cut and sewed her wedding dress into a Cinderella gown for my costume), parading through the yards of our neighbors to go door-to-door for halloween candy.

Even though it was a special occasion, we were only allowed to walk through the yards where adjacent neighbors had their porch lights on and were giving out candy.  Some yards, we got to crunch our way through un-raked leaves while other yards were sparsely dotted only with leaves that had fallen in the past hour.

Stringer’s ridge has no gardener to obsessively clear the leaves away.  They fall and create a weaving of color over the broken and dilapidated asphalt that marks the ridge’s recent history.  As we leave the nearby urban residential area and enter into the preserve, the leaves become denser and the views become more colorful.

Tisen has taken his time getting here.  Me with my camera stopping to shoot frequently had nothing to do with how long our walk has taken, I’m sure.  Tisen needed to sniff and mark every mailbox on the way through the neighborhood.  I tried to coax him on his way, but he insisted in at least making an attempt to leave his mark, even if it was only a gesture by the time we got to about the 10th mailbox.

As we crunch our way through the leaves now, I don’t hurry him, but I do occasionally try to get him to sniff a yard or two in one direction or another so I can shoot while he sniffs.  I wonder how many photographers struggle to get the angle they want because they are walking a 70 pound dog who doesn’t always cooperate?  Sometimes it makes me wonder if I’m the one on the leash.

Given the slowness of our progress and my need to be somewhere in the near future, we take the shortest route to the overlook.  It’s not an overlook in the sense that anyone built a structure or anything.  But, they did clear a few small trees so the view of downtown was unobstructed.

I love this view.  You can see the best part of the riverfront as you look across a sea of colorful trees.  It’s hard to believe there are so many trees between me and home as I look down the ridge and across the neighborhood Tisen and I have just walked through.

I say a silent thank you to the good people of Chattanooga who had the foresight to make this a preserve and then we turn to walk home.

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HDR Life Lessons

Posted by dkrashb on

Between “feeling puny” (as a former relative used to say) and being caught off guard by the early sunset (I somehow failed to notice that the sunset an hour earlier yesterday), I didn’t make it out to do a new shoot today.

But, never fear!  I have new photos to share.  I did a series of 5 exposures each of two compositions from the balcony at the same time I shot the images I posted yesterday.  These were just taken later in the shoot.

I included 3 images for comparison for each composition.  The first is exposed based on what the camera thinks is the correct exposure.  The second is under exposed by 1 stop.  I included the second image because I am particularly drawn to the high contrast of post-sunset skies at this exposure level.  To me, it looks the most like reality.  However, the buildings and landscape features get completely clipped at this exposure and I’d like to have a more detail in the landscape below the sky.

Since I shot 5 exposures, I thought I’d give HDR a try.

Even when I was shooting the 5 exposures, I knew HDR was going to be a long shot.  Literally.  By the time I got to the over-exposed images, the exposure times were multiple seconds.  The wind was blowing at about 15 miles per hour on the ground and who knows how fast higher up.  I could stand there and watch the clouds moving faster than a multi-second exposure.  Rapidly-moving clouds blur in long exposures.  Even the under-exposed image shows some blurring; the over-exposed images turn the clouds into undefined wisps.

But, I’m slightly feverish, so I have a good excuse to think it might create something interesting anyway.  I selected the options to remove ghosts and noise and to align the images when I processed the 5 exposures.  The third image is the result.

Photomatix got confused when it tried to align things and remove ghosts because of the differences in the amount of blurring between the multiple exposures.  So, the really dark clouds turned into floating dark blobs.  It actually did a better job than I predicted, so kudos to Photomatix.

The second series of photos is a different composition, but otherwise the same as the first series.  Same results.

I guess today’s life lesson from photography is that even though a camera can capture many moments in a single image and HDR processing can multiply that effect, sometimes we really are better off just enjoying each moment individually.

As a side note, Nurse Tisen seems to be ready for retirement.  Moving from the couch back to my office chair has him convinced I’m no longer in need of special attention. It was all I could do to keep him at a normal walking pace when I took him outside today.  Tomorrow he’s going to doggie daycare so he can run around.

Balcony Shooting

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On weekends like this one, I’m grateful I have a view from the balcony. Although I’m a bit overloaded on shots like these, having been the sickest I’ve been in a lot of years all weekend, I don’t know what I would have had to post today had it not been for this wonderful view.

Granted, I found myself really wanting to move the building across the street (or at least run up to the roof to shoot over it).  But, since I was barely standing up straight and the sun was setting quickly, it seemed improbable that I would make it up to the roof in time.  And, since I am not embodied with any superpowers that might allow me to move a building even on the best of days, there wasn’t much point in contemplating that possibility.

One effect of shooting from the balcony with the building across the street in the foreground is the extreme distortion that occurs, making the building seem like it’s bending towards the center of the frame.  This is a consequence of using a very wide angle lens and being so close to the building.

I used the-built-in level to make sure I was shooting straight (I do try to be a straight shooter), but the distortion was so great that I ended up changing the angle slightly in post-processing to try to make it look a little straighter.

These are also processed using HDR. Each image is actually a combination of 5 images with 5 slightly different exposures.  This allows me to get some of the detail in the buildings in the foreground at the same time I have the detail in the bright parts of the sky.  I’m starting to like HDR for these kinds of images the more I get used to it.

Tisen, it turns out, is a great companion for someone who is sick.  He was quite content to cuddle on the couch with me for endless hours.  He likes the down comforter and the animal print pillow almost as much as he likes me.  On the rare occasions when I made it off the couch, he would just lie there like he was in heaven.  Unfortunately, I was only able to get a blurry shot of him.  I’d blame it on being sick–couldn’t hold the camera steady–but I think most of my iPhone images of Tisen are blurry, too.

If I were guessing, I would say that Tisen feels needed.  He makes a great heating pad and seems to know just where to cuddle up against me to make me feel better.  I had no idea when I brought him home that he would some day be a nurse.  If he could take himself out for walks and feed himself, too, he would be perfect at it.

Welcoming Cow Ball

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I’m beginning to think Lamb is a bit of a tramp.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that.  I’m happy she’s living her life to the fullest.  After all, it’s probably a lot more fun then just hiding under the bed until Tisen decides it’s her turn to go for a walk.  But, first we had the whole disappearance with ‘Possum.  Then we had the Duck incident.  And now, it appears she and Big Dog have run off for some sort of road trip.

I discovered Lamb was, once again, lost when I gathered everyone together for a dual-purpose portrait:  to create a record of all of Tisen’s toys so we can remember when they’ve gone missing, and to practice using my flash on camera since I broke a hot shoe adapter for my light stand and will need the flash for a shoot tonight.

I was playing with a honeycomb grid attachment for my flash unit to see what it looks like on camera (as opposed to on a light stand).  It creates a very tight, spotlight effect which seems like it will work well for shooting at the Haunt tonight.

Cow Ball appears at the far left of the group shot.  I’m at least 50% sure she is, in fact, a cow.  I like her because she matches Tisen’s coloring.  Tisen likes her because a) she has nice soft fur and b) she has a very loud squeak.  Tisen is a sucker for a good squeak.  He tried out Monkey, Pink Elephant, Silly Dog, and Flat Cow, but decided Cow Ball was the one he wanted to take home with him.

This was a Tisen day.  Given how much I’ve been working, Tisen’s been feeling neglected.  And, of couse, I will be gone all evening shooting at the Haunt.

After sleeping late, we took a long walk to a dog-friendly pub, Hair of the Dog, where we sat on the patio for a late lunch.  Tisen enjoyed people watching.  He also enjoyed some of Daddy’s fries.

Tisen was quite a hit walking down the road with Jack in his mouth.  Tisen’s toy-carrying habit is the best PR move for pit bulls ever.  Or it would be–most people don’t recognize him as a pit when they seem him with a toy.  It’s an interesting psychological phenomena.

After our walk and lunch, Tisen and I went looking for a hot shoe adapter to replace my broken one.  Unfortunately, one camera store who might have had it has gone out of business.  The other one closed an hour earlier.  Best Buy had never heard of a hot shoe adapter.

But, we were next to PetsMart, so I took Tisen in to pick out a toy since he’d been so good about guarding the car.  It was hard to get it out of his mouth long enough to scan it at the register.  Hopefully Cow Ball will stay closer to home than Lamb.

Fright Night

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Halloween is perhaps the most magical holiday there is.  After all, you get to transform yourself into a princess, a witch, a football player, a horse, or whatever your imagination can come up with.  People hand you goodies.  It’s suddenly socially acceptable to scare the pants off of everyone.  And best of all, you don’t have to struggle to figure out what to get in the way of gifts–candy comes in fantastic variety packs that pretty much provide something for everyone.

And, it’s at the best the time of year in the US–the leaves vibrant in the golden light of the sun and the air dry, crisp, and cool–refreshing as a dip in the ocean after a day on a hot beach.  And the harvest moon lighting the night sky with a brilliance not often seen in the summer time.

When you combine all that with bonfires, haunted mazes, s’mores, and scary story telling, there’s just no beating Halloween.

My husband and I have been debating on a costume for Tisen.  We’ve never costumed a dog before, but there’s an upcoming dog party.  I want to dress him as a cow.  Pat wants to dress him as a poodle.  Pat’s idea has two advantages:  first, there are no logistical issues involving an udder and boy-dog naughty bits; second, it’s funnier.  However, neither of us knows how to transform a pit bull into a poodle.

In the meantime, I’ve gotten into the spirit by volunteering at the annual “Acres of Darkness” event at the Audubon Society.

My job is to greet visitors at the entrance to the haunted woods and attempt to scare them with the history of how the woods became haunted, and then send them on their merry way into the pitch-black of the woods at the right time.

It’s a fun job.

Since the first weekend the event ran was a little slow, I took my camera and tripod out with me to see if I could get some pictures of the trail.  It was really dark, but with the ISO set on 25,600 (every time I type that it still blows my mind–I remember when people used to talk about 800 ISO film being really fast), I managed to capture a few images.  In fact, some of them were over exposed.

Capturing the glow-in-the-dark faces on the trees was easy enough–I could shoot them from my position at the entry to the haunted woods.  The rest of the images required walking through the haunted woods.  Since I couldn’t leave my post until after we closed for the night, I was wandering down an already dark trail turning off lights and stopping to shoot every once in a while.  Fortunately for me, the zombies and monsters has worn themselves out on all the earlier visitors, so I made it through the trail unmolested.  Unfortunately, that made for less exciting photos than I was hoping for.

Little Things

Posted by dkrashb on

We have just returned from our annual trek to Portland, Oregon to visit my dad and his wife.  We made this a relatively low-key trip.  In the past, we’ve taken longer trips to Portland to allow time to meet our friends in Seattle and do things like take a side trip to Olympic National Park in Washington or spend a week in Glacier National Park.

This time, we spent a lot of time debating if there was a way to go to Portland with Tisen.

The reality was that we would need to spend 6 days driving if we didn’t fly and there was no way I was going to load Tisen into the cargo hold of a plane.  If we were going to take 6 days to drive to Portland, I wanted to make it an adventure through Yellow Stone–a place I have yet to go.  But, neither Pat nor I could afford to take that kind of time off work.

In the end, we opted for asking our friends to watch Tisen and keeping our trip short.  Our friends from Seattle offered to come down to Portland to spend a day with us so we didn’t have to take 2 or more days to see them.  My dad didn’t plan any multi-day side trips; we would have plenty of flexibility in our schedule to visit with our friends.

So, last Monday morning, the alarm went off at 4:00AM and I hopped out of bed like that was the time I got up every day.  By 5:45AM, Tisen was fed and walked and we were packed and ready to roll.  Tisen excitedly ran for the van just sure he was going on a new adventure with us.  I had a hard time dropping him off at our friends’ house.

We made it to Portland a little early and by 2PM were sitting in my dad’s family room with full bellies (having stopped for lunch on the way from the airport) and suffering from only mild separation anxiety.

It felt good to just sit and hang out, catching up.  I, of course, got out my camera and started looking for things to shoot.

Pat sat across from me with his feet up on a foot rest.  I noticed for the first time that his shoes, which he has had for at least a couple of years, have outlines of the shoemakers on the soles.  I couldn’t resist trying to shoot the soles of his shoes.

Then, my dad was telling a story and chuckling.  I had to capture some of his facial expressions (although most of them didn’t come out so flattering).

Finally, I put my macro lens on my camera and went out to the garden.  My dad’s wife is an amazing gardener and can always be counted on to have beautiful flowers.  Although the surprisingly cool temperatures sent be back inside after only shooting a couple of flowers.

Therapy Dog

Posted by dkrashb on

There are many reasons to love dogs.  Each dog has his or her own unique personality.  Since I was revisiting old photos recently, I discovered this set of not-so-great-shots of one of the best dogs ever, Bogart.

Unfortunately, Bogart is no longer with us.  But, for over half of his life, he acted as a therapy dog at the assisted living facility where my aunt lived for the last 6 years of her life.

Bogart went to visit every two weeks.  We would sit in the common area outside the dining room at lunch time on Sundays.  As the residents would come out of the dining room, they would stop and pet Bogart.  As a therapy dog, Bogart’s job was to look cute, be calm, and accept love and affection from anyone who wanted to offer it.  He was really good at his job.

Because many of the residents suffered from Alzheimer’s or other forms of dementia, the conversation was the same every two weeks:

“Oh, my!  I’ve never seen such a big dog!  How much does he weight?”

“He has gray on his face–how old is he?”

“What’s his name?”

“How much does he eat?”

These questions were typically repeated about every 3 minutes by each resident.  I went mentally prepared to repeat the answers endlessly with a tone of voice that sounded like I’d never been asked those questions before.  I concentrated on how much they loved my dog and how much joy he brought to them–that made irritation impossible.

Interestingly, my aunt had always been afraid of Bogart prior to his visits.  I don’t know if she just forgot her fear as part of the process of dementia or if seeing others enjoy petting him made her feel proud that he was there to see her and she wanted to claim him.  Whatever the reason, she went from only being comfortable looking at him from a distance to enjoying sitting right next to him and petting his head.

There was one lady in particular who loved Bogart.  I always thought she would be able to remember him because she loved him so much.  And she did remember him sometimes.  But if she missed one of his visits, we would start over the next time we came in.  Although, there is something to be said for being able to be joyfully surprised by the same thing over and over again.

Bogart clearly knew the people.  He knew who was comfortable enough with him that he could stick his giant head in their lap, who was nervous and preferred if he kept his distance, and who would figure out a way to rub his belly, even if it meant they would need to sit in a chair and use their foot because they couldn’t bend over so well.

It made visits with my aunt something I looked forward to–Bogart was quite the ambassador.

Clouds Landing

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When a boy in a cape appeared at the top of the sledding hill (aka, “the volcano”) with a giant cloud rearing up like a monster behind him, well, who can blame me for snapping a few shots?

I took four shots of Super Boy up on the hill before he ran (flew?) away.  I couldn’t decide which one I liked the best, but in the end picked this one because it had the added bonus of the bicycle and the pedestrians moving through the frame below, oblivious to the superhero on top of the hill.  On one hand, the shot with no bike or pedestrians is less busy.  On the other hand, I feel like it’s a more complete story to have the tiny boy on top of the hill, potentially battling the cloud monster, while the adults go about their business like it’s just another ordinary day.

That pretty much sums up the difference between children and adults most days.

I try to imagine myself wandering around the park in a big red cape.  I picture myself at the top of the hill with some sort of mask and my cape blowing in the wind with a fist raised above my head as I shout at the clouds, daring them to transform into something dangerous.  I imagine running down the hill at top speed, pretending to fly as my cape billows out behind me.  It’s ridiculously fun.  I am tempted to start shopping for a cape.

In the meantime, I return to shooting the clouds as they hover close to the ground.  They billow on the horizon, sitting so low that they look like white hills of cotton stacked up against the green hills of the park.  It looks like you could run up the hill and jump onto the clouds.  Now that would have been a good shot of Super Boy–one of him leaping mid air, ready to bounce off a cloud.

I wonder if I bought Pat a cape if he would model for me?

In the meantime, my photographer’s assistant is not doing a very good job of assisting.

He is caught in his own imaginary game.  He is playing “hunter.”  This is a game in which he imagines himself as a pointer or a rhodesian ridgeback or some other great hunting dog.  He freezes in the midst of long grass, cocks his head and listens, sure that there is wild game hidden in the grasses nearby.  He raises one foot, bent at the elbow in a near-perfect approximation of a point.

I turn and watch, but cannot see any sign of prey hidden in the grass below.  Eventually, I sit down on the curb and just wait to see how long Tisen will continue to imagine himself a great hunter.  He outlasts me.  I say his name and he wags his tail as he returns from his imaginary world to follow me home.

Fall Friends

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Tisen and I have been discovering friends new and old on many of our walks of late.  The other day, for example, we crossed the street to enter the park and found Tisen’s girlfriend Twiggy out for a stroll with her mom and dad.

Twiggy wasn’t up for romance, however.  Today, her mind is all about the rampant rodent population living in the tall grasses growing on the hillside.  It’s fall, after all, and the busy critters have been breeding all summer.  Now, the entire population is fattening up for winter.  From Twiggy’s perspective, it probably seems like a buffet.

In spite of Twiggy’s amazing leaps and bounds, she comes up empty mouthed.  Tisen, however, looks at her with adoration like he can’t believe her athletic prowess and is imagining her bringing home venison for dinner.

We say our goodbyes and are soon greeted by deep purple flowers that I’m going to guess are some sort of variety of fall asters, although they look far more cultivated than the wild variety that used to grow in our garden up North.

They bob and curtsy at us as our friends the Goldfinches, who are not looking so gold these days, land and depart on the dried seed pods of nearby plants.  I believe these were once our friends the purple coneflowers that have now shriveled into thin, brown mummies.  The goldfinches continue visiting them and harvesting their seed, storing it as fat for their winter coat.

I am reminded of the lateness of the season by all of this activity.  The days are shorter, the temperatures nearly tolerable, and the birds are far quieter.  I pause for a moment and listen.  A month ago, I would have heard a Titmouse, a Chickadee, a Cardinal, a Wren, a Towhee, a Robin, and an Indigo bunting in this park.  Today, all I hear are the cicadas buzzing away with their strange song.

While Twiggy may be too busy hunting to think about romance, for me, this is always the most romantic time of year.  A sense of nostalgia sets in along with the inevitable awareness of time passing that comes with it.  Another year wrapping up.  Autumn is more poignant than new year’s when it comes to reminding me of my own mortality.  In the fall, everything seems to be moving on in one way or another.  Perhaps as a nomad (at least in my imagination), I long for my own migration.

When Tisen and I encounter our next group of friends, the bees and butterflies, so dense on a brilliant white flower I don’t recognize that they’re sharing blossoms, I remember that this is migration season for the butterflies, too.  While the bees will hole up for the winter, the butterflies will take to the winds and head for warmer climates.  I look at these tiny, delicate insect-birds and wonder how they can possibly migrate a few dozen miles, let alone thousands.  One of life’s many wonders.

Dogs and Tents

Posted by dkrashb on

We have decided to take two days to go backpacking.  It’s been a long time since we spent the night in backcountry.  We have chosen a pretty easy place to re-introduce ourselves and expose Tisen for the first time.  At least, we think it will be easy.  What’s 7 miles with 35 pounds on your back?

We have a checklist of things to pack for our dog:

  • Medications (the only one with no insurance is the only one on medication!)
  • Vitamins
  • Special food (because he has allergies, which led to the medication in the first place)
  • Insulated and padded sleeping roll for dogs
  • Collapsible water bowl
  • Water bottle
  • Wipes to remove poison ivy from his fur (for my protection, not his)
  • Super glue (in case he cuts a paw pad)

Given the list, it seemed logical to me that Tisen would carry some of his own stuff.  At least his own food and first aid items.  So, I had him fitted for his own backpack.  Pat vetoed the backpack idea.  He thinks Tisen will be sore from walking so much and doesn’t need to carry any extra weight.  He has a point.

Of course, once we agreed no backpack for Tisen, it was like he knew he wasn’t going to be carrying anything so he started adding to the pile of gear.  First Blue Dog appeared on the pile.  When I moved Blue Dog, Lion showed up.  Most recently, it was Duck.  I haven’t broken it to him that he’s not going to be able to bring any of them on the trail with him.

We have, however, had pre-camping lessons in the living room.  We wanted to see if Tisen would fit in the tent with us.  It’s going to be a tight fit, but if he lays parallel to us, we can put his sleeping mat under our mats (which are narrow at the feet) and he can lay between our sleeping bags.  As long as no one moves, it should be super comfortable.

We also practiced entering and exiting the tent.  We wanted to make sure Tisen would get in and out quickly so we don’t end up with a swarm of mosquitos cuddling up with us.  After a couple of practices, he was coming in and out like a trooper.

Next, I practiced getting up to heed the call of nature (which happens about 8x a night when I am camping just because it’s so inconvenient, I think) and leaving Tisen in the tent.  He did pretty well lying still while I got out and back in again.

I think we’re ready.  Now we just have to figure out how to stuff it all into our backpacks.

On a photography note, what’s really amazing about the shots in the gallery is that all but the first one were shot at 25,600 ISO.  The darker images have some grain, but they look better than the Canon 40D did at 800 ISO.  That’s pretty impressive.