A red donut

This is how he falls asleep.

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Guess who loves to retrieve and swim?

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Dock Diving Dogs

These were taken at this weekend's Flying Fur extravaganza, put on by the owner of Paw Law. Paw Law does dog training of so many types it is hard to keep track. I have my dog enrolled in one of the classes and can't wait to enroll him in more.

I've had some fun with some of these images, as you can tell.

I'm still learning about what all of this involves. It appears as though they measure how high the item the dog will be getting is, and then they have the dogs try for it. They start out low, and keep raising the bar until all but one dog is left.

It may appear as though these are all the same dog, but there were a number of yellow labs there competing. There was also a chocolate lab and a black lab, and a number of other dogs that I didn't see compete.

The dogs need to know how to swim very well, and my dog is still on the low end of the beginning of the learning curve. But I hope that next year we'll get further along, so he'll be able to compete. It is a lot of fun, and great exercise for the dogs.

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Using Picnik

Picnik is an extremely easy-to-use online photo editing resource that is free. I do not have the paid version yet, but you can see what dramatic images can be created just with the free version in this post.

This collection of four photos was made into a collage with Picnik. There are many more options for creating collages in the paid version of Picnik.

This is an enhanced version of the original photograph of a man giving his dog coaching about what to focus on during dock diving, with the facilitator standing there smiling at them.

This is a comparison of the before and after images of a snap of the dock diving event I attended. The "before" image was good, but the "after" image has much deeper richer colors, and really brings the characters into the forefront.

The free version of Picnik includes HDR-looking conversions, which you can see in this shot of the green heron. The original was almost backlit, as the heron was standing in the shade with dappled sunlight on the grass in the background. I wasn't very happy with it; but the HDR image punches up the detail of the bird, and makes it more interesting. Here are more effects using the free version of Picnik to enhance that photo.

I would strongly suggest trying Picnik out to enhance your photos; the effects you can get even in the 'free version' of it are spectacular. And applying effects like this to a mediocre photo can bring you surprisingly good results.

Just with the free version alone, there are so many possibilities for combinations of effects, it boggles the mind!

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A cold wet nose!

A big wet nose and sad eyes; that's what this dog has. The challenge is capturing him when he's moving around so much. Pet portraits can present a definite challenge and take a long time to produce good snaps.

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