Silliness

Dog Blog Post #795

I took exactly one picture today. Well, two, if you count the first one where I forgot to turn on the Speedlight and the picture came out pure black. :)

Photography Assignment

Can there be any more…

Daily Dog Challenge "304. Silliness"

… than a pair of goofy goldens playing bitey-face...

Our Daily Challenge - Aug 30, 2012 - "Inside"

…?

I think not!

End of the Month

I typically don't post each Scavenge Challenge shot here unless the boys are in it, but how about the Mosaic for the month? If anything trips your trigger the links are below the picture, and below that is the description of each challenge.



1. Instruments, 2. Works of Art, 3. The Boys and a Friend, 4. No Dumping, 5. Stay, 6. Rings on her Fingers

7. Masquerade, 8. Downtown, 9. Honey, 10. Henry's Tail, 11. Now?, 12. Stop Light

13. Martha Stewart, 14. Cup of Tea, 15. Rose Leaf, 16. Time, 17. Time for Banana Bread, 18. Mars Curiosity Coin

19. Putto, 20. DIY Dog Tuxedo - Part 1/6, 21. DIY Dog Tuxedo - Part 2/6, 22. DIY Dog Tuxedo - Part 3/6, 23. DIY Dog Tuxedo - Part 4/6, 24. DIY Dog Tuxedo - Part 5/6,

25. DIY Dog Tuxedo - Part 6/6, 26. Sharp Dressed Dogs, 27. Fruit of the Agapanthus, 28. Cup of Tea, 29. Sit Henry Sit, 30. Crayons

Note: 27-30 are "spares"

Challenges

1. Instrument panels may be found in your car (too easy), planes, radio/tv stations, etc.
2. Photograph colored pencils or crayons in a creative way. No pens or markers, please.
3. Cute Critter of the Month: marine mammals (whales, dolphins, porpoises)
4. The theme is protecting wildlife. Show an example of wildlife conservation in your area.
5. Capture someone (even yourself) seated outdoors on a bench, chair, log or rock.
6. A huge ice cream cone, an enormous cow, a gigantic boot - find something "larger than life!"
7. Find or manufacture a mask (be artistic!) and pose yourself or a friend wearing it.
8. "Downtown" may signify skyscrapers or the local country store. Show us a downtown scene.
9. From cheese to beer, soaps to vinegars, feature an artisanal product from your region.
10. Tails are the subject (absolutely NO vulgarity or crude humour here, please!)
11. Create an image which provides the viewer with a sense of anticipation or anxiety.
12. Make a signal light (stoplight, train crossing, etc.) the main subject of a photo.
14. Think of someone (living or dead) whom you admire but have not met in real life. Without using an image of that person as a major prop, create a photograph which relates to them and why you hold them in esteem.
13. It's time to take a coffee/tea break! Make us feel comfortable with a hot beverage.
15. Closeup - A leaf, using black and white
16. Closeup - A piece of jewelry
17. Closeup - A vegetable or fruit
18. Closeup - Coins
19. Closeup - Detail in a sculpture or carving of a human face
20-23 (or 25). Your mission for August is to create a series of FOUR TO SIX (4-6) instructional photographs, a "how-to" explanation of the steps involved in a skill. The subject matter must be covered in a thorough manner so that someone unacquainted with the technique could learn the process from the images.



-- Like the idea of a daily dog photography prompt? Click on Daily Dog Challenge and join us!

© 2012 BZ Training - All Rights Reserved

Where, Oh Where Has My Little Dog Gone

Dog Blog Post #626:

Daily Dog Challenge "134. "Where, oh where has my little dog gone?" - What has your dog been up to today? Been somewhere? Curled up in his favorite hiding spot? Show us with a photo!"

Our Daily Challenge March 13, 2012 - "Words"

Scavenge Challenge March 2012 - "11. Photograph a human simulacrum, i.e., a doll, mannekin, puppet, etc."

-- Like the idea of a daily dog photography prompt? Click on Daily Dog Challenge and join us!

© 2011 BZ Training - All Rights Reserved

Wordless Wednesday - Cookie Chunkin

Above created using My Memories Suite 2

© 2011 BZ Training - All Rights Reserved

All the Pictures

Dog Blog Post #212: You asked for it, you got it.

Here's a pair of Scrapbook pages containing 33 of the 34 pictures I took yesterday (Friday) for the Monochrome daily shoot.

(Yeah, "just" 33. I seem to have "lost" one when I was moving them into PowerPoint, and I was too lazy to figure out which one I was missing!)

These are totally raw, no clipping, cropping, no color fidgeting, or retouching. All were taken between 11:58am and 12:11pm (ie: quickly).

If you click on the two images, you'll see much larger versions.

Is that the way I normally "work" (mindlessly banging off shots?)

No.

But on that particular day I was just looking for "gold" and "in the sun" and "black background". I wasn't even sure if I wanted a recognizable piece of a dog or just fur.

Anyway, there you have it. It was a lot of fun and I think the dogs enjoyed the shower of cookies for doing very little - a pleasant change from the more "staged" pictures with props and body parts needing particular placement.

As for today?

Today's Daily Shoot assignment was:

Make a photo that features stripes of some sort today.

Yeah, stripes.

Do you have any idea how many stripes my golden's have?

Right.

None.

So I had to enlist the help of a little striped friend.

Boy were the dogs interested in my little friend. I'm actually surprised they held still for all my fidgeting with them and my friend. Out of a dozen+ shots, here are a couple favorites, minus one.

The missing one?

Well, you'll just have to stop by on Wordless Wednesday to see it!

Scrapbook - Find It!

Step 1: Take a stack of paper (I used 24 sheets of cheap notebook paper) and wad each sheet up into a loose ball.

Step 2:  Toss the paper balls into a paper bag. (To add an element of human enrichment, place the paper bag on the opposite side of the room. Two points if you make it, three if you make it cleanly, and four if you can keep your dog from pulling the wads out as fast as you toss them in.)

Step 3: Take your dog and put him in a sit or down, whichever he is more likely to hold. (Three guesses as to which I put Zachary in.)

Step 4: Dump the paper wads onto the floor in front of the dog. (Is your dog still where he's supposed to be? What a good dog!)

Step 5: Show the dog a cookie, then wad it up in the middle of Yet Anther Piece of Paper.

Step 6: Make a big show of shuffling the wads around. (Is your dog still where you left him? Pat yourself on the back for teaching a great stay!)

Step 7: Stand back, and give your release/Find It! command.

Want to make it harder? Instead of tossing the balls into a bag, put your dog into a down and toss the wads on the ground in front of him. To make it easier, set the whole thing up with your dog blocked out of the room.

Beau didn't have any problems with this at all. He is a careful, methodical searcher and found the right wad the first time, every time. His way of indicating is to take the wad and nose it out of the pile, at which point I open it up and give him the cookie, toss that one paper wad (tainted with cookie smell), put him back in a down, get a clean sheet of paper, and start up at Step 5.

It took Zachary a few tries to figure out what game we were playing. I think he was just having a lot of fun shuffling the wads around, until he finally figured out there was food in one of them. After that, he settled down to searching, but his technique is poor (random and rushed) so it takes him longer. His method of indicating is to put a paw on it and attempt to disembowel the helpless paper wad.

(As always, you can click on the image above to see it larger)

(Editors Note #1: I got this idea from a Zoo's Enrichment page while trying to find a definition for Enrichment that I could actually understand for my Canine Enrichment? post. While I failed in my original quest, I think the boys enjoyed this particular activity.)


(Editors Note #2: The incredibly observant might notice a slight change in the description of this blog. 

1. It was brought to my attention that without the words "dog blog" in either the title or the description, the search engines have a hard time indexing it correctly -and-
2. It can't be "A" journey (singular), as I have TWO dogs.)

4th of July

Scrapbook - 101 Things...

The other night I played "101 Things to do with a Box" using a Basket (Training Levels Four - Trick)

(To read about it CLICK HERE and scroll down until you find "Trick".)

I had been dreading this a bit, as Zachary already plays "101 Things..." with everything I set down in front him, which isn't necessarily a great trait as usually you are only interested one particular thing and not the other 100 he throws in, but I felt I owned him a bit of fun after all that Contacts/Rear-Paw-on-board stuff we've been working on (let's see, that would be on YouTube HERE and HERE.)

Anyway, suffice it to say that "101 Things..." is a game right up his alley. If you want see him in all his video glory, CLICK HERE.

Afterwards, I went through that video frame by frame and was appalled a the number of "Clickable Moments" I missed - a half-dozen or more. Times when he clearly did something different and I missed the difference entirely. Sometimes it was subtle, but often it was a paw switch on his part - doing something with a right front and then trying it later with a left front and me not noticing the change.

Anyway, I grabbed images from the video and put them in a few annotated pages. Time runs top to bottom, left to right, as though you are holding up two film strips side by side. The last page is the final shaping session at the end. Given his "artistic" nature, I didn't want to end the session without reminding him how we normally shape to accomplish something.

(As always, click to see larger)

Scrapbook - Jump

As we were working on Training Levels Four - High Jump (yes, it is supposed to be 2" high)  I realized what a wonderful way to capture "action" it would be (see Photography.)

... and here is the results.

(As always, click to see larger)

Bet you can't tell which dog is faster!  (grin)

Scrapbook - Catch

I was looking for "action shots" of the boys for Photography, and I figured what better way to generate action than to throw cookies, right?

Or maybe not...

Scrapbook - Share?

Another lovely spring day and what was I doing?  Crawling around on my belly snapping "dog's eye view" pictures!

To see the rest of their scrapbook, click HERE.

(As always, click to see larger.)

Scrapbook - Retriever (Golden)

I was watching the Golden Retriever video from the Westminster Kennel Club 2010 Dog Show today. Such gorgeous dogs!

The video was labeled as the AKC always does: "Retriever (Golden)"

In case the glorious, gleaming golds don't give it away - this is Beau.

(As always, click for something larger)

Scrapbook - Light 2

Here's another pair taken in "dramatic lighting". I was trying for shots of Beau, but unfortunately they didn't turn out. It seems the contrast between a dark background and a light subject only happens when the subject is actually, well, light.

Zachary's light fur causes the camera to underexpose the background in a way that seems hard to reproduce with Beau's richer coloring.

Still, I think the shots of Zachary I took at the same time came out pretty nice, especially the first one (below) that should meet the "Formal Portrait" requirement of the Photography Elective.

(As always, click to see it bigger.)

Scrapbook - Flowers

My little helpers followed me out back on President's Day, taking great interest in my pruning of the long-dead Hydrangea blossoms.

While the flowers had no special smell to me, the dogs sure took great interest in them!

It was a beautiful pre-Spring day, the sun was out, the air was warm, and it was a pleasure to spend time with my favorite furry friends.

Scrapbook - Fetch

For as much as Beau has Obsessive Compulsive Friendliness Disorder (OCFD) Zachary is afflicted with Obsessive Compulsive Ball-Retrieval Disorder (OCBRD). He would follow me to the ends of the earth so long as I had a tennis ball in my hand, and he would climb any mountain or swim any sea where I might throw it.

I honestly do not understand why he enjoys it so much.

If I just give him the ball he drops it at my feet. If I throw it and Beau gets it, Zachary will wait more or less patiently until Beau drops it (Beau doesn't do retrieval now that Zachary is around.) I therefore presume that possession isn't the point of the game.

Should I throw it into the bushes and he can't find it, his world comes crashing down around him. He's frantic, totally frantic, as he scours the yard trying locate the precious ball. Another ball just won't do. It has to be that ball - even though the other ball might have been the object of desire just the day before.

Beau joins in the hunt when the ball gets lost, but his searching is  one of friendly competition, "Can I find it first?"

With Zachary it is an act of desperation.

The ball must be found.

(Click to see a larger version)

Scrapbook - Light and Shadow

These two Scrapbook pages should speak for themselves. The pictures were taken using late afternoon light that was streaming through the living room window. A good solid stay (and a cookie or two) was all I needed, as nature supplied the rest.

While I haven't a clue what this has to do with Homeschooling my dogs, I can't help but think that anything that helps you see the beauty in your students can't be a total waste of time.

... plus it meets Photography's "dramatic lighting" requirement, which was a February Syllabus item.

(As always, click for something larger)

Scrapbook - The Muddy Paw

Recently, while strolling through the local Library (one of my favoritest places in the whole wide world) looking for nothing in particular, I stumbled across a book on Scrapbooking. Knowing the last thing in the world that I need is another hobby, I checked out the book.

Later that day, ensconced on the sofa with a nice cup of coffee, a Snuggie (don't knock it until you tried it) and a couple of furry lap warmers, I flipped through the pages admiring the work of people who obviously have less to do during the week than I.

Or manage their time better.

Or possibly both.

Anyway, as I sighed longingly and flipped some more pages, I realized that there isn't any reason I couldn't do something like that.

No, really.

But not with paper (the dogs might eat the paper)...

No cropped photographs (the dogs might eat the scissors)...

No fancy albums (have you seen how crowded my study is???)...

But I could give it a go on my loyal computer.

(Besides, I'm still looking for something useful to do with all these pictures I like to take!)

So here it is, my very first Scrapbook page:

(As always, click to see larger)

Recess is over, students are restless, time to get back to teaching...