Friday, November 19, 2010

Astrid Plays Dice

There are so many things to do with your dog once they have learned the simple behavior 'touch'. Simple things become quick and rewarding bonding times throughout the day. Here Astrid plays a game of dice.

Thursday, November 18, 2010

A Game Of Touch

When Astrid learned to play 'touch', it was really the launching pad to all kinds of fun stuff to learn and do. We learned to play the game using a clicker which makes learning so much faster and more fun. She, actually I should say 'we', never tire of the game especially on a nice Autumn morning!





Monday, November 1, 2010

Better Pictures

With Autumn in full swing, Halloween just gone by, Thanksgiving around the bend and Christmas coming up shortly thereafter, Astrid and I are in 'full picture mode'.  Who can ever have too many pictures of their dog, anyway? Two problems, though. Astrid is a big black dog and she's a great little poser. Action pictures are few and far between and her sweet face always looks like a blur of black. Those beautiful eyes of hers always blend right into her face in the pictures! So, I decided to turn to the internet this morning for some answers. I got really specific on this one....into the search box, I typed "how to take better pictures of my big, black dog". Can't get more specific than that. Can't get more specific than the #1 site that came up, either....How To Photograph Your Big Black Dog. Full of beautiful pictures and lots of good ideas, we've decided to give it a go. We are going to try all of the suggestions in this blog that we are able to accomplish with our iPhone camera applications and/or our still shot feature on our video camera. 


First, he recommends that we don't worry about expensive equipment so much. That part is easy as we don't have a real camera, only our iPhone camera and a video camera that will do still shots. That out of the way, we moved on to the suggestion of turning on the flash, even out of doors on a sunny day. Here, we have for you the results.


Picture #1 and #2 were taken with our iPhone and the application called Camera Plus as are the other pictures shown. While I am a morning person, maybe pointing the camera east at 9am is not a good idea. These pictures were very washed out. Too bad because Astrid automatically sits and poses for pictures, so getting ones of her standing would have been a very good thing.



















Picture #3 is still washed out, but I'm discovering that if I am going to take pictures at 9am facing east, getting closer is better. 


Picture #4 is of Astrid having gone into 'pose' mode finally. The lesson learned in this last picture is that facing east at 9am with the flash on will defintely produce a washed out picture, but still, closer is always better. The one real improvement is that Astrid's beautiful eyes can be seen in all of these pictures. 


Later this week, I'm going to continue to follow the suggestions in this blog. We will still be a morning human/dog team but we think that turning on the flash will continue to produce better results. What we will work on is our positioning. Maybe we will face west next time.