Glowing

Dog Blog Post #250: Two hundred and fifty posts? Gee... had I realized that before this moment, I might have done something special.

Rats.

Anyway, today's Daily Shoot assignment is:

Make a photograph of something that is glowing today. Use any meaning of the word you like.

I don't know about you, but the first few things that flitted through my brain were all combustible, and therefore totally incompatible with a fur covered life-form. Thankfully, yesterday's post was hanging about, with Zachary's glowing face staring right at me.

Perfect! All I had to do was recreated it.

So this morning, I grabbed my new backboard, by stretchy black velvet fabric, the piece of leopard print fabric, the dog pillow, and set things up in my kitchen to take advantage of the morning sunbeam.

All 12"-18" of it.

Given the time of day, that meant I was actually hunched over underneath the kitchen table to get the shot, while Zachary basked in the sunshine, on a "fur" covered pillow, eating a dog treat every 15-30 seconds while I wiped his muzzle between each shot.

No wonder he was glowing.

For the record, I uploaded the first photo. While my son preferred the bottom one, I felt the additional black around the top picture made Zachary (especially in square thumbnail form) look even more glowy.

(BTW: That really is the color straight out of the camera. I did a bit of cropping, a smidgen of sharpening, but otherwise left it as is.)

© 2011 BZ Training - All Rights Reserved

Connection

Dog Blog Post #249: Many thanks to all for the words of encouragement yesterday. You're the best. :)

You're right, of course. It was just an assignment, you do learn from failures and experiments, and I clearly see today that I was blowing things waaaaay out of proportion.

Plus, as houndstooth pointed out, "there's always a new assignment tomorrow on the Daily Shoot".

Speaking of the Daily Shoot we have:

Make a photograph that illustrates the idea of connection.

First thing that popped into my mind was a dog on a leash, perhaps with the camera positioned on the leash, looking down the length toward the dog.

It would have made a nice Depth Of Field shot (people like those) but I was so convinced there would be a dozen shots Just Like That, that I didn't do it.

(In hindsight, I probably should have, as I haven't seen a one yet and the day is almost over. Ok... there was a cat on leash, but that's... different!)

Next thought was a picture of me petting a dog, or my hand on the head of the dog, which leads us straight to the Missing Skill of the Day, as both dogs were so convinced my hand reaching toward them (while holding the camera in the other hand) must have something to do with cookies, and I couldn't get either of them to sit for the shot!

Next!

Since they were so transfixed on my hand, I decided to use it to my advantage. I smeared some yogurt on it, and extended it for their appreciation. Bingo! We have our shot of the day...

It won't win any prizes anywhere, but it fits the theme and doesn't give me the willies so I guess we'll call it a success!

The rest of the photographic portion of the day was spent playing in beams of light. The morning sun beam had the boys on the leopard print fabric tossed over the big pillow in the kitchen, and the afternoon sun beam was with the black stretchy velvet fabric on the backboard.

(Love that black stretchy velvet fabric. No wrinkles, no shadows, just seems to vanish when photographed!)

Ah yes, the backboard. Bought that addition to my growing pile of photography "props" today. It's one of those "Science Fair" cardboard tri-fold things, and it turned out to make a superb holder for a fabric backdrop. Plus it only cost me $4.99! Woo Hoo!

I waited for the sun to hit the back of the room, propped the tri-fold up so it was square in the sunlight, as flat as I could get it, and took the picture at the top of the post and below...

I wonder if he's wondering what tomorrow will bring? :)

(Editor's Note: Sorry greygirl25, I've seen too many of your shots to believe you suck a photographing anything!)

© 2011 BZ Training - All Rights Reserved

Yikes!

Dog Blog Post #248: One drawback of doing something diligently every day, is there's going to come a time when the results, while appropriate in context, aren't something you are necessarily proud of.

At all.

The Daily Shoot assignment for today?

Make a photograph featuring strong horizontal lines today.

I was mulling this over in my head as I was combing my hair, when it hit me - right on my big toe.

(Just kidding)

I could take a picture "looking through" their comb. It would look stark and cold and be something completely different. Cool!

And so I did. I brought out the black fabric (part of that stark and cold thing) and the comb and the tripod and went to the cold window with the cold light and snapped a few pictures off. Time was short, so I just gave them a quick look on the LCD (at least a few seemed crisp) and went about my day.

Night falls, and it's time to upload from the camera and see what I have...

Hmmm.... Ok. Well, yes, I have crisp. I have cold. And on one the lines were even horizontal! But let's face it, it looks like it belongs on the cover of a paperback horror. :(

Is that really a photo I wanted to have on my account?

Ummmm... no. Not really.

In fact, I pretty much hate it. But it was too late to do anything about it, and I wasn't about to not upload something, so I gritted my teeth and pushed the button, feeling miserable as I did so.

(I'm hoping that I learned something from this experience, and as soon as I figure out what it is, I'll let you know.)

As for yesterday's pictures - I think houndstooth got it right. The dismal lighting, with it's warm and cozy yellow cast, is actually what made the shot work. It is everything the one above isn't.

(Editor's Note: I so hated today's picture, that I later rummaged through iPhoto and uploaded the picture at the top of the post to my flickr account, in futile effort to bury the one before it. It's soft, and warm, and fuzzy, and I guess that's just the sort of photographer I want to be.)

© 2011 BZ Training - All Rights Reserved

Peaceful

Dog Blog Post #247: Did you know that Flickr magically chooses pictures each day and displays them in on their Explore/Interestingness page? Wasn't I tickled to find both Scale and Yellow made the cut. How cool is that?

There's even a unrelated web site called Scout where you can go to that creates a cute little image for you displaying what's been on Explore. At the moment, mine looks like this:

(If I'm behind the times, please humor me. I tend to be rather glacial in staying in tune with things.)

Speaking of moving at a slower pace... today's Daily Shoot assignment was:

Illustrate your idea of peace and harmony--or maybe just peace and quiet--today with a photograph.

On the one hand, I figured this was easy - two dogs sleeping, two dogs snuggling, two dogs chilling out... how hard could it be.

On the other, I was a bit disappointed, as I'm sure everyone is getting tired of "Look Sad" pictures and I was hoping for something a bit more... perky.

Anyway, I dutifully set things up in the kitchen, and snapped the picture at the top of this post and then the one below...

And yet... I don't know. They seemed a bit posed. They were, of course, down to tucking ducky under Henry's paw, but I guess I was hoping they wouldn't look it.


(Note Zachary's conspicuous absence, as he equates ducky to "find the hedgehog" and was not about to "Look Sad", making that two days in a row he gets the Missing Skill of the Day award.)

I took another stab at it in the evening, long after the sun had gone down and lighting was (as usual) poor. That said, it led to the picture I ultimately uploaded...

... are they really sleeping? I'll never tell! But I defy anyone to tell me they don't look peaceful. :)

© 2011 BZ Training - All Rights Reserved

Beauty

Dog Blog Post #246: Had one of those "mind is more powerful than photography skills" days. This should have been an easy Daily Shoot:

Beauty is all around us. Make a photo of some naturally occurring beauty in your area today.

But while I was able to get something for the various things I tried, it was never quite what I had in mind.

First try was to get a nice view of one of the flowering plums. Alas, they aren't quite in full bloom yet, and most of the blooms are up fairly high up, resulting in a lovely(?) picture of tree trunk. (The majority of the flowers you do see belong to the other tree, which appear lower, since it's further, but they really aren't.)

For the curious, this was taken on a tripod with the 10 second timer set, so I could hustle over to the tree (just out of view on the left) call Zachary over, and wave a cookie in the air as high as I could reach.

I actually wanted him rearing up, but he won't stay up that long and after a few bungled timing issues - I got him up too early or too late - I gave up. Had I had no other ideas, I probably would have tried a bit harder. Given enough shots, I'm sure I would have gotten it. Eventually. But it probably wouldn't have looked that great anyway.

Next

The next idea was to take a picture of the further plum, with both dogs sitting up on the hill below it.

I thought that was a clever idea, since that would put them higher (and closer) to the flowers, however, you don't see an example of that anywhere since I couldn't get them to cooperate at all. Zachary was too busy snuffling the rose bush (behind the tree, of course), and Henry was too busy watching Zachary.

Missing Skill of the Day? Just about everything dealing with that effort was missing, from Henry's non-stay to Zachary totally blowing me off. He almost never does that, so I'm guessing there must have been a really great smell there, but still...

Next

The next effort also isn't pictured, where I tried to get the dogs to snuffle the lone flower that was low enough to snuffle on the further plum tree. Henry promptly grabbed the little twig, ripped it off the tree, and ate it.

Next

But he did give me an idea, and so I ripped my own twig off a tree (leaving the remaining billion-2) focused on it, and had one dog or the other in the background. That actually worked fairly well, and the chosen picture is the one below...

... I actually liked the rich tones of the vertical one with Zachary better, but I stupidly didn't noticed the shadow across the flower until I got back to the computer.

(sigh)

Sometimes photography feels like keeping a dozen spinning plates on the ends of sticks without letting any of them fall.

Going back to yesterday's Wordless Wednesday post, the Daily Shoot was:

Make a photograph today that illustrates of the act of waiting.

Unlike today, everything I tried actually worked out fairly well. My favorite was the one at the top of the post, but I could just as easily have picked any of the others. What they were waiting for? Well, the top one looked to me like they were waiting for a bus, although a commenter on flickr suggested they were looking at girls. In reality, a noise on the other side of the wall drew their sharp attention, and I was merely lucky enough to catch it.

The rest were good old "Look Sad", Zachary looking at the window at something (have no idea what - yet another lucky break) and Henry staring dreamily at the cookie jar I had put on the ledge, just out of view.

How's that for disillusionment!

... I wonder what tomorrow will bring?

© 2011 BZ Training - All Rights Reserved

Wordless Wednesday - Waiting

© 2011 BZ Training - All Rights Reserved

Trick 8

Dog Blog Post #244: At last, the trick you have all been waiting for...

Just kidding. But it is one of the Two Dog tricks they have been practicing. This is by far the easier of the two, as it involved a skill both dogs learned very young in life.

Now, now... I'm not cheating in my rules. See, the hard part this week (and bits of last) were to get them to do it together.

And now, without further ado, I present:

Tandem Spin

Wow, did I learn a lot about how (my) dogs think trying to teach this one. First off, the skill itself (spin) is admittedly one of the easiest ones out there. I've always taught it with luring. Have cookie, show it to dog, move arm in a big circle while the dog follows the cookie.

Ta-Da!

Now repeat a few dozen times (with the occasional break to keep the dog from getting dizzy) and you have the basics down.

One would think that to do this with two dogs requires nothing more than, well, two dogs, two cookies, and two arms.

And one would be wrong.

It seems that my boys were conditioned to only notice my right hand for this trick, even when the left has cookies. And so either both were trying to be the right hand dog (and falling over each other in the process) or only the right hand dog would spin, turning this simple trick into a strategic nightmare.

My solution (after spending way too much time thinking I could just "fix" what I had) was to go back and teach each dog to spin, again, paying attention to my left hand. At that point, I could put them together, and each would look at the hand closest to them.

Whew!

On to The Daily Shoot assignment:

Who are you? Make a self portrait today and show the rest of us what you look like.

Ugh. I'm way to self-conscious for this sort of thing, and so I totally wimped out...

... my description for it reads, "To my dogs, at least, I am a hand with cookies..."

© 2011 BZ Training - All Rights Reserved

Scale

Dog Blog Post #243: Sun today! Weeee!!!!!

Not that I took advantage of it for the for today's Daily Shoot assignment:

Work with scale today and make a photograph that features a subject either larger or smaller than expected.

... which led to my latest theory that the amount of time it takes me to come up with a "good" shot is directly proportional to the amount of time I have available to make said shot.

First idea was make the boys look like stuffed animals on a bed. We have two really big stuffed animals, and I put them on the floor on the old leopard-spot bedspread (don't ask), set up the big tripod,  then called the dogs over. 37 shots later, I gave up on the idea. Perhaps had I been able to look down on them from a ladder (which I wasn't about to climb) it might have worked.

Missing Skill of the Day? Henry's iffy stays and Zachary's shifting when Henry tramples him (can't really blame him) were the biggest problem, but that ol' reliable "Look Sad" came in handy yet again! For the curious, I'm crouched down out of shot on the lower right. I set the camera timer to 2 seconds, hit the button, and had just enough time to duck out of the way and give my "Look Sad" cue - a closed fist at the level for their heads to be (ie: on the floor). At least three shots showed this clearly as my head was visible, and an additional two had my hand visible. (sigh)

Next!

Here was what I figured the assignment was supposed to be - something small in front of something large, and trying to make it so that the large thing seems about the same size as the small things. Zebra returns from a much needed vacation, bringing Raccoon with him, for a cute little threesome that finds absolutely nothing in focus. (Don't believe me? Click on the image!)

Sadly, this was the best of the bunch, as neither focusing on the beenie babies nor focusing on Zachary improved the picture at all. On the bright side, this arrangement took seconds to make, requiring nothing more than me telling Zachary to stay, lying on my stomach with the camera sitting flat on the floor, and taking a few seconds to arrange the critters. Zachary sat stoically through a dozen shots without a single reward, and then basked in a shower of cookies.

Next!

I finally gave on my grand plans, grabbed a chair, the big tripod, Henry's favorite red blankie (the clean spare), Raccoon, and Henry. The blankie was tossed over the chair, the Raccoon was placed on the blankie, I grabbed some cookies, I...

... where's Henry?

... where's Raccoon???

I retrieved Raccoon from Henry (looking mighty guilty on his puffy pillow), put Raccoon back on the blankie facing stage left, used my nose magnet (ie: cookie) to lure Henry next to the other side of the chair facing stage right, and confidently told him to "Look Sad" on the chair seat.

Which he did.

For about a nano-second.

Then he started snuffling Raccoon again.

(sigh)

Suffice it to say that it took a few minutes for the novelty of Raccoon to decrease below the value of my (admittedly mundane) cookies.

But it did.

And this is the result...



I think it's time to teach Henry a new pose, don't you?

© 2011 BZ Training - All Rights Reserved

Rain Rain...

Dog Blog Post #242: It rained today.

Now, normally I wouldn't have minded, as rain is good thing when you live in an area that averages less than 15 inches a year.

BUT

Today the Daily Shoot assignment was:

Make a photograph of something that captures a small bit the flavor of where you live or your culture.

... and showing a piece of where you live sort of requires you leaving the dryness of home for the wetness of elsewhere.

Ewwww...

So I decided to focus on the "culture" aspect, and I took the picture up top,

(What, can't dog people have a culture, too? One that I'm sure includes a large basket of dog toys!)

BUT

... it just seemed like I was being a weather wimp, until hubby had a great idea (no, really, he did!)

He said, "Why don't you just take a picture from within the car?"

See... didn't I tell you it was great idea?

So I grabbed hubby (aka the designated driver) and Henry (the designated dog) and we headed to a not-to-distant winery and the cool house that sits there.

I love my hubby!   :)

© 2011 BZ Training - All Rights Reserved

No Dummy

Dog Blog Post #241: Today's Daily Shoot assignment?

Make a photograph that features the color yellow in some way or another.

Now, you probably couldn't tell from the pictures yesterday, but it just so happens that the book that Zachary was reading was "Strategic Planning for Dummies", and you know what color the cover is?

Yup - yellow.

In fact, all the "for Dummies" books are yellow - at least all the ones I own.

Bingo!

That's two days in a row where I actually knew exactly what I wanted to do, pretty much from the start. Woo Hoo! I'm on a roll! :)

Once again, Henry's "Look Sad" trick came in handy. Once again, Zachary showed that he had, indeed, picked the trick up by osmosis.

It really was a toss-up which picture to use, and in the end I chose Henry's simply because yesterday I had featured Zachary.

Good Boys!

Tip of the day?  If you are going to use flickr as the source of your pictures, be sure and use the right size of your picture. Sorry about the pixelated picture of Zachary wearing glasses (hangs head in shame.)

(I don't suppose there's a Flickr for Dummies...)

Before and After

Dog Blog Post #240: As I found yesterday's assignment so fascinating, and today's was relatively straight forward, I thought I would give a few of yesterday's High Key pictures another go post-processing, based on what I learned laboring to get yesterday's "winning" shot to come out white.

Below is the picture folks seemed to like the best, straight out of the camera...

I bet you didn't believe me when I said it was BLUE!

Here's the same picture, after my "improved" fiddling and a slight crop on the left...

... I really do think that's about as good as I'm going get with the tools and knowledge that I have. (You can click on either to see a slightly larger version.)

Fascinating.

Well, I think it is. I really am having way too much fun with this.

Moving on to today's Daily Shoot assignment:

Happy, sad, frazzled, or joyus? Make an abstract or literal photo that expresses how you feel today.

I only had to think a moment or two about this one. I've been plowing through a stack of Strategic Planning books for work, and so I figured I would take a picture to reflect that.

Back to my favorite(?) window, threw on every light in the room, dragged one of the big floor lamps close to the chosen spot, spread my books (and few extra bits for effect) out on the floor, pulled out the full-sized tripod and shrunk it as low as it would go (18"?), gathered drool rag and treats, then let Zachary in.

He took one look at the mess, plopped right down in front of the book, arched his neck gracefully, and froze. I quickly snapped the shot, although I wasn't quite ready. Alas, the tripod wasn't in the right spot and it came out a bit blurry, but I included the raw picture below to show just how good he's getting at figuring out what I want...

What a good boy!

Let's see - tip of the day? For the shot below, I tucked a treat under the yellow highlighter to get a better arch to his neck. You can just see it, now that you know it's there...

... I did the same thing to get him looking into the roses in the "blue" shot, way up top. Obviously, one must have a pretty good "Leave it!" for that technique to work!

In the end, my favorite (and uploaded) shot was the one below...

I can't believe he actually let me put my glasses on him!

High Key

Dog Blog Post #240: Today's Daily Shoot was another Googleable Moment...

Make a high key photograph today dominated by bright tones.

As I took one look at it, and immediately switched to Google to try and figure out what they meant.

High Key?
Bright Tones?
Blah Blah... cookie?

After poking around at the results, my best guess was that they were looking for a "white background" picture, instead of my favored "black background" pictures. The mental picture I came away with was a picture of a bride wearing a white dress against a white background.

So, off to the fabric store I scampered, to fetch a few yards of pure white fleece. While there, I picked up a few silk flowers for props, and hurried home to see what I could do.

Lighting, of course, was a problem. The sky was overcast and gray, and the light coming in my window was a blue as the deep blue sea.

Really, the finally pictures were horrible in their original state, and having only a 2004 version of iPhoto to work with, I did the best I could with a tool I know little about and mostly use for cropping.

I pushed a slider here, and pulled a slider there, and wished we could find that equally old version of PhotoShop that we all swear we had at one time but no one can actually locate. (I wouldn't know how to use that either, but there are a lot more knobs to fiddle with!)

In the end, the winner was the picture below. This was hubby's choice, this time, as he felt the white flower created disembodied paws. I think he's right, although I liked the added interest of the flowers. The color is so much "better", because I worked so much longer on it (knowing it was going to get uploaded) to try to get it right.

This was a fun assignment, as I got to read about new things and try something I haven't tried before. Who knows, perhaps the white fleece will repeat for other assignments!

The crossed paws was a whim of mine, to hold the flower better, and much to my surprise he actually kept them that way!

Editor's Note #1:


As greygirl25 noticed, I've been posting twice on Tuesday's - once, as usual, queued up until 12:01AM for the normal daily post (including Monday's Daily Shoot) and a second time, live, in the waning hours with Tuesday's Daily Shoot. This frees up Wordless Wednesday to be whatever I want (in this case, an "out take" from Monday's Valentine shoot).


The other oddity will be the end of the week, when Saturday's post has Friday's date on it, due to time zone issues between here and Pet Blogger Hop.


Editor's Note #2:


And a few days ago, Pup Fan was pondering which pet bloggers are doing the Daily Shoot, and the short answer is "I have no idea!"

The ones that I've spotted on either the Daily Shoot itself or read about in their blog are:

• Itsa Greyt Day (under its wholly owned subsidiary Itsa a Greyt Day for Photo) - where I first learned of this additive activity)
• I Still Want More Puppies
• Luna's Learning Life
• Life with LuLu

I've heard rumblings from Kol's Notes in comments here about trying it, and Tails and Tales remains a stanch holdout. :)

I was almost certain there was another Boston Terrier or possibly French Bulldog person as well, but I can't seem to come up with it.

But as my following/follower list isn't hugely extensive, there could be many others - especially if they are posting pictures of things other than their dogs!)

Wordless Wednesday - Ewwww

Something Old

Dog Blog Post #238: Yet another rush to get this in before Wordless Wednesday...

Today's Daily Shoot assignment:

Make a photograph of something old. Be sure to show us the character that age can give a subject.

Rats.

I don't actually own much of anything old, and if I did, it would probably be fragile, and I wouldn't be willing to pose it near one the bulls in the china shop dogs.

Sooo... we have to think outside the "old" box a bit.

First off, the Ammonite. It actually is old (being a fossil and all) and fairly sturdy (being a rock) but shiny kind of goes against that "character that age can give" bit.

I did like the contrast between the hardness of the rock and the softness of Zachary's fur.

I don't have a picture of the contrast between the fossil and the softness of Henry's fur, as Henry decided the fossil was a Scary Thing, and while he ultimately agreed to sniff it, and sort of sit by it, there was no way he was going to let it touch him.

Ever.

(sigh)

So I decided to go with the old sock collection.

Being Retrievers, my boys love to carry things around, and articles of clothing are great favorites. They not only parade these items around for us, they also show them off to anyone who happens to come over for a visit.

Ah, dogs. Gotta love 'em.

Anyway, the winning pictures was the one below. While I'm a sucker for Henry's soft head (top of post) the expression on Zachary's face sold me on the picture.

Wordless Wednesday is right around the corner...

Trick 7

Dog Blog Post #237: This week's trick is...

Touch (the Target Stick)

This is another good beginner shaping trick. You take an item - mine is a nifty folding target stick, but pretty much anything long, slender enough to hold, and won't put your dog's eye out will do (plastic serving spoon, spatula, wooden yard stick, ....) - and you show it to the dog.

Most dogs, being curious, will sniff, or at least look at the object. You click, treat, and pull the object back. Then you lower it down again. Dog shows interest, click and treat, withdraw object.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

Now, I'm a big proponent of the rapid-fire reward. That is, when the dog makes a "big step" in whatever direction I'm heading toward, I'll fire a half-dozen treats, one at a time, and say, "Yes!" I am 100% sure this decreases learning time and increases my dogs enjoyment of shaping.

So the dog is touching the stick, and randomly touches it a few inches closer to the tip than the time before. I say, "Yes!", and 3-6 treats are flicked his way. I continue to give single treats for touching anywhere on the stick, but if it is closer to the tip than the tail, I'll say "Yes!" and give a few extra treats. Over time, I gradually move my "Yes!" window closer and closer to the tip, and gradually stop clicking for touching the stick closer to the tail than the tip.

In just a few sessions, of a few minutes each, Henry was reliably finding and touching the tip of the stick.

Yeah, Henry!

(This is yet another trick that Zachary is quite competent in, and he had a great time showing off to me how well he remembered it!)

On to The Daily Shoot assignment:

Make a photograph featuring strong vertical lines today.

Well, I could try to convince you the pictures below are fine examples of "strong vertical lines" because...

.... because....

... oh, who am I kidding. I had 2 dozen roses hubby had given me for Valentine's Day, and I wanted to take a picture of them with the dogs. It's as simple as that. Technically, the stems do create vertical lines.

So there. :)

Happy Valentine's Day

Dog Blog Post #236: Alas, the Daily Shoot had nothing to do with red... or hearts... or candy... or flowers.

Nope, today's Daily Shoot assignment was all about the sky:

Look up today and make a photograph of the sky. Cloudy, clear, or somewhere in between? Tell the story of your sky today.

Sky? Again? Really?

(In all fairness, this is Sunday's assignment we're talking about, as I won't see Monday's until tomorrow, even though tomorrow's date is on the top of this post, so for you that is today.... (cough)... moving right along...)

You may recall a week-and-a-half ago we had this:

Look upward today. Make a photograph with a low horizon and that emphasizes the sky.

(where I spent forever trying to bribe dogs noses skyward, and finally gave up and took the easy way out)

... and 2 weeks before that there was:

How low can you go? Make a photograph today from a low point of view.

(where I tried to be creative, failed, then crawled around on my hands and knees looking up to find just the right trees for background)

Well, today I put my foot down. I was not bribing. I was not crawling. Period.

Today, I took my camera with us on the morning walk, and when the walk was through I grabbed the nearest dog (Henry), stood in the middle of the street (to avoid trees), asked him to sit (he did), reached down with the camera, pointed it skyward, and snapped the shot.

Take that, perfectionist side.

Then I stood up, and looked to see what I had.

Hmmm... not bad, really. I actually managed to get both dog and sky in the shot. (I would have bet money I was missing one or the other, with a good chance of part of me being in it as well.)

Then I flicked the little "zoom in" knob and did a spot check of the fur.

It actually looked pretty sharp, but hard to tell for sure in the bright sunlight. (Did I mention it was a glorious sunny day with hardly a cloud in the sky? Oh.)

It was a glorious sunny day with barely a cloud in the sky.

And there you have it - my 5 second, one-shot shoot.

(Editor's Note: Nice to read I'm not the only one addicted to the Daily Shoot. I can see it now - hundreds, no thousands, of tweets for pictures of dogs of all shapes and sizes... I'll have started the next new pet fad... I'll be as famous as the creator of the pet rock!!!

Whoever that was.

Hmmm.....)


PS. Happy Valentine's Day!