These photos were taken two weeks ago on a lazy Sunday. We have noticed ever since Pippi’s dental in May, she has become a bit of a drooler.  She had only one tooth removed because of an abscess that did not get better even after 14 days of antibiotic treatment.  It was a pre-molar on the left side.  This was the first time Pippi had a dental since we adopted her in February of 2009.  She is a cute, but at the same time, it is a bit of a gross habit.

It made for an unique photo shoot though. 🙂

She can now drool with the best of them.  She has pretty good range on her drool stream.

About a month and a half ago, just a week after her dental, we noticed a raised red mass on the tip of her ear.  A week later, we were back at the vet’s office to have them take a look.  It cropped up over night. I don’t remember what type of tumor they said she has, but vet said it is common and can develop on their side or the tip of the ear.  The vet suggested trying 4 weeks of Hydro-cortisone Cream daily treatment.  In some cases, these tumors will dissipate with the use of the cream.  This was not the case for Pippi’s tumor. It became larger and continued to stay red.  It is also scabby and hard.

We went back in to see the vet after a month of treatment for f/u and to find out what the next step is.  The tumor must be removed and biopsied, so Pippi will be going back in for ear surgery to have the tip of her ear removed.  Because of the location of the tumor, they can only biopsy it after it is removed.  Poor doodle!  The smear they took on our first vet visit did show mast cells, but the tumor could still be benign.  Her surgery is scheduled for 7-11.  Cueball is scheduled for a dental to remove 4 teeth that day also.  Her surgery should be quick.  The vet said she should do well and also heal well. I will be a nervous nelly all day with these under anesthesia.  They are in the best of hands, but I still can’t help but be anxious and nervous any time they have to be under.

Two weeks ago we had a temporary foster for a day and night.  She was returned due to no fault of her own.  We hosted her for a day and night until she could go to her new forever home.  Meet 9 year old Kady who is now affectionately known as Sadie.

We were happy to help her along her journey to her new forever home.  She is a sweetheart.  The senior greyhounds are the best!!

We will keep everyone posted on how Pippi does after her surgery.  Ziva’s 1 year Gotcha Day is Tuesday, we have our Canadian friend Jasteena and her greyhound Zola coming in town this week for a visit and we are also counting down the days until Grapehounds-NY.  Zola will be spending the summer with us while her mom does important work in Afghanistan.    Lots of fun things going on in July for us!  We hope everyone is having a great summer thus far.  🙂

Our frequent boarder, Ms. McGann.  She is a black beauty.

So my last post entitled Lights, Camera…..  was all about the fun I had in my recent photography class, the experience of using studio lights, what a difference an external flash can make and learning to become more and more comfortable shooting in manual mode. 

Today, I took a chance at action shots using manual mode.  I wasn’t sure if I would even get one decent shot.  Prior to, I thought out my settings for apreture, ISO, and shutter speed.  Lucky for me, Ziva was in a spunky mood today and I knew if I let her take a toy outside, she would be a running fool. She did not disappoint! I took a couple of practice shots to make sure the exposure for the lighting was okay and crossed my fingers for good luck and started to shoot. 

I threw her the big Gorilla toy to get her started.  She grabbed it and took off off.

She did a few laps carrying the Gorilla, but he is big and a bit awkward, so she drops him and just continues to zoom around the yard.

The tongue is out and she is starting to get tired.

But with Cueball joining in, she musters up her remaining energy to keep going.  My shooting did slow down a bit, as I was trying to monitor these two to make sure there were no issues.  My fur kids are usually always muzzled and don’t normally get to play un-muzzled in the yard.

Yes, I am the fun/safety police.

One more lap around with Cueball and they were both done.

I think they had a good time.  They sure took a long nap when they came inside and haven’t moved much since.  We don’t have many more of these nice weather weekends left.  Soon it will be too hot and buggy to be outside for more than a pee/poo break.  So we are going to enjoy them while they are here.  All in all, I am proud of how my photos turned out.  I sure had some beautiful models to work with.  Greyhounds are Poetry in Motion. Yes, yes they truly are!

I did get Lightroom 5 this week but I haven’t even opened it yet.  So these are un-edited (SOOC).  I hope to have some free time this week to delve into the software and start playing around with editing.  So much to learn still.

….no action, but just wanted to share a few pics from my Advanced Digital Photography class that I just finished at the end of May. This class was all about lighting and was a lot of fun! I enjoyed setting up the studio lights and using them for still life and portrait photography.

Written permission was given by my model, Heather, to share these pics on my blog. I would love your feedback. For both of these photos, I used manual mode, my 50mm 1:1.4 lens and a Soft Box light set at half strength. I had so much fun working with Heather. She is a professional photographer so she knew exactly how to pose. I didn’t really ask her to do anything, she chose her poses. She also is a belly dancer and had lots of neat scarves, fans, netting, jewelry, etc. to work with. I took several photos of her but am only sharing what I think are my best two. I am shooting at 100% manual mode now and loving it.

These two were from one of our still life projects. I edited them in Photoshop using the solarization tool. I like how they both turned out. Even though they are of the same objects, the two styles of editing completly change the vibe of the photos.

I recently purchased a 430EX II Speedlight flash and it is making a world of difference for my indoor photos. I am also slowly learning editing and am looking forward to the arrival of Lightroom 5, which should be delivered to my house this week.

I took these this afternoon. This one is without any flash. The lighting in my home is very dim. This is SOOC (Straight out of camera). Yes, I could have used some editing software to try to fix the under exposure, but my goal is to do very little editing. I would like to understand completely how to set up various shots by adjusting shutter speed, ISO, aperture, flash exposure, white balance etc. so that my pic SOOC is a very good one. 🙂 Mitch says I am getting in too deep. He may have a valid point. I use to actually read books at night before bed. Now all I read is websites and facebook pages about photography. Until I no longer enjoy it, I will continue on.

She moved so this is not the exact pose, but this was taken seconds after the above shot with the flash bouncing off the ceiling at a 90 degree angle. The only editing I did was cropping Mitch’s leg out.

I hope everyone in blogger land is doing well and I look forward to catching up on your blogs and to your critiques of my photos!