A Restart
My broken foot has finally healed.
After breaking my foot in August, a recent X-ray shows the fracture has finally healed. Moose has graduated from puppy training, the chaos of a new puppy has settled down, and I’m experiencing more moments like the one in today’s photo. I’m in a great place for this restart to begin.
Here Kitty
Two kittens crash my dog siting assignment.
I’m dog sitting my canine gal pal Bella this weekend while my neighbors are away. She is a beautiful model, and always up for a photo shoot, but today my neighbor’s kittens stole the show.
Beyond the Backyard with Moose
Moose is showing great promise as a dog model.
In my last two posts, I shared that I’ve been training my dogs to be off-leash, and how having well trained off-leash dogs will allow me to take photos of them in a variety of places and backgrounds.
I’ve had Moose since he was eight weeks old and he has been continuously enrolled in a training program since his arrival. He still has a lot to learn, but because of this training so early in his development, he is a very obedient dog. He’s also still small enough for me to pick up which makes controlling him much easier than it is with my full grown dogs.
As a curious puppy, the challenge of photographing him lies in having him be still long enough to capture a good shot. I managed to do that today after several tries. This is the first shot of him away from the house, and I love seeing him in a natural background.
Beyond the Backyard with Ringo
Ringo is the most photogenic of the pack.
As I mentioned in my last post, I’ve been training the dogs to be off-leash. While this is for their safety in general, another benefit is the ability to photograph them beyond the backyard. I took each dog out today for a photo session on my twenty acre property, and love the results.
Ringo actually has the most solid recall response of the three dogs. Training-wise, he is the fastest learner, often picking things up after only a few repetitions. He is also my most distractible dog, so having a solid recall is even more important with Ringo.
Knowing that Ringo always honors the recall command, I was comfortable taking photos of him today without a tether. He is the most photogenic of the pack and I love this new photo of him.
Beyond the Backyard with Rocky
Rocky is a master at the portrait shot.
One of my goals for dog photography is to take more shots of my dogs beyond the backyard. While I love the sense of security I feel when my dogs are enclosed inside a fence, shooting in the backyard often results in distractions in the images that have to be either accepted or edited out of the photo.
As a responsible dog owner, I would never risk the safety of my dogs just for a photo, so I’ve been training them to be off-leash dogs, a process that takes a lot of work and time. Each dog is at a different stage of this process, but today I was comfortable setting each one up in a semi-controlled environment inside my twenty acre property for a photo session.
Rocky has the most experience and already does well off-leash on the property. I’ve photographed him many times here and that practice is showing up in today’s beautiful portrait of him resting on a pile of autumn leaves. 🍁