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?

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