A Nice Break from the Routine

I had a nice little pat on the back this week. I am a reader of Pioneer Woman the last few years (since her first SXSW recognition)and thoroughly enjoy her site. If you aren't familiar with her, google her and you will read quite an incredible success story in the blogging world. Anyway, she has a pretty good photography section to her blog and periodically runs assignments/contests. PW is infamous in the blogging community for her contests across all of her web site, she is very generous. I have entered a few pictures over the last year in her photography assignments, but this one hit home for me. The assignment was dog pictures. Well since my animals are my main models, you bet I had a few I could enter for that. I entered 4 pictures and she chose this one as one of her final 10 (out of approximately 10,000 entries). I feel a little special right now.. and very much inspired. It's amazing what a little positive recognition does ones soul. And for those who are interested in the technical aspects: shot with a Nikon D300, 70-200 2.8. I shot this the first week I had this camera and the second week I had the lens. I believe I was wide open and probably at 1/1500 at ISO 200-400 (my standard outside although I may have been on auto ISO at the time since the camera was new) I loved my D50 but the focusing system on the D300 is excellent for action of my calibre and for driving the 70-200 and I knew I wanted to be able to capture more pictures like this, hence the move up in equipment.

But there is sort of a downside to this story.. I don't have my raw file of the above shot. In fact, I had to download the picture off of my smugmug account, as I didn't even have the jpg. In December I made a major boo boo and blew away (like the alliteration?) my external hard drive with all of my photos on it. I have a general backup here in Florida, but it didn't contain this shot (I lost most everything I had shot last summer)and I am keeping my fingers crossed that I backed up the photography external to another general external that is at the cabin. I remember distinctly backing up before we came down, but I am thinking I was backing up from my hard drive rather than my photography external.. so I am bummed.. in a bittersweet kind of way. I also blew away the photos in the previous post of the dogs in the snow last spring.. and only have the web sized photos of those too. Not a good year - but I have learned my lesson and now have good a good backup procedure in place so I hopefully won't ever be in that position again.. makes me so mad at myself. But hey! Watchya gonna do? I know that I would never be able to enter any picture in any professional contest (if I ever choose to) without having the raw file to back me up.. Anyway - it was fun to be a small part of PW's site and see the comments from her readers. It has inspired me to keep on keeping on!

I confess... I am totally having an affair

..with our "new" puppy, Rosie. Well we have had her a year, and I am amazed how much I am in love with her. I don't know if you have ever heard the saying "What's time to a dog" - meaning they greet you with the exact same enthusiasm if you've been gone an hour, a day, a week... you get the picture. Well to paraphrase that saying, I am so in love with that dog, it happened very quickly and it's as if I have loved her for years and years. But I was that way with Mattie, and with Tucker. Some animals reach into your soul so quickly (if you let them and they want to) in a way, it alters time. You can't imagine your life without them.

After Lass passed, we weren't sure about another dog. We didn't know if Mattie would accept another dog. We considered a (older) rescue, but since we just came off a 10 year situation, we didn't want to subject ourselves or Mattie to that again. If we were to get another dog, we figured it would be a puppy and it would be the best opportunity for Mattie to be accepting of another dog.I love the aussie temperament and kept my eyes open locally but nothing jumped at us.I also watched aussie rescue (in Florida and Georgia) for 6 months for a puppy. I knew I wanted a dog that I could do agility with but also hopefully do some therapy work with. Aussies aren't like Golden Retriever's, a friendly outgoing dog to strangers. And we live in the country most of the time which means a fair amount of isolation. We came across a breeder of aussies who did a lot of therapy work with some of her dogs and her dogs seemed ideal. We fell in love over the internet..


Rosie comes with papers.. but what she also comes with is a history..at this moment in time, we wanted a (false?) sense of security in this dog. 10 years of living in a powder keg will do that to you.











Mat loves this pup as if it is her own. I am in love. In my dog hall of fame I count Tucker, Mattie and now Rosebud. We are excited for the future.

Blowing away 10 years of photos in 2 seconds or less

I was trying to format a free drive on an external.. trouble was, I got mixed up in the 8 drive letters and formatted the wrong drive.. Formatted my whole external where I keep and process most of my photos.. AAAARRRRGHH.. I do have a backup with me and one at the cabin.. BUT.. I haven't shot a ton this summer and I hadn't backed up the last several months. I had one set of pictures that I really felt were worth saving at any cost. Trouble is when you go to recover, you don't get to pic and choose.. you get what the program gives you.. and I didn't have enough room any where to recover 140Gig - even though what I really needed was just 10 gig off that drive.. SOOOO I had to take it in.. I told the people they were photos, that they should look for specific extensions (Photoshop PSD&XMP, Nikon Raw NEF and JPG)- told them I was able to recover without a problem using Photo Rec - but I just ran out of room.. well 10 days later and 3 programs on their part, I get the drive back.. and they didn't use a photo recovery program.. the SOB's... they used a general program.. in fairness, I was luckily able to retrieve the photos I was most concerned about (after renaming TIF files to NEF, but no PSDs, which I will live with. But it really disheartens me, because I know they could have been recovered better, but these idiots wouldn't listen to me, even after they told me they were having problems with their recovery programs and I told them what I had been successful with.. it was a freaking free program to boot! I should have been more assertive.. and I should have let them put the data on another external, instead of letting them copy back to the original drive after recovery and let me keep the formatted drive in tact so that I could try to recover on my own again..(in the time they had the drive I was able to order another external) So I realize I am at fault more than they are.. and I am thankful to have the pictures that I do.. but my lesson has been learned (luckily without being burned too bad except in the money department) I will be much more diligent in my backups.. this is a good opportunity to initiate the Lightroom DAM (digital asset manager) that I have been holding off on for the last 3 years.. so here goes nothing.. Chris comes in tomorrow.. Puppies got groomed today and I need to take Christmas photos - I can't believe Christmas is a week away.. It all seems to go by in 2 seconds or less...(picture on the left is taken on N.Boulevard in Tampa - Nikon D300, 70-200f2.8 @70mm f13 with a 13 sec exposure.

Facebook, Twitter, Texting and Blogs - Oh My!

I'm baaaack!

For a middle aged woman I feel I am in tune with some of the world, completely out of tune with other parts and totally deaf for even more of the world. I am pretty geeky so the world of computers, the internet etc does not intimidate me. But I just can't get my head around Facebook and Twitter. Maybe because I don't maintain a large social network or even a very good business network, I find these two applications annoying. As I understand it 20 somethings see text and FB/Twitter as the way to communicate. Email and phone calls are something you do with your parents and business communication. (I am getting better at texting, though I am still pretty slow). Also I am not a huge "follower". Don't get me wrong.. I have an RSS reader full of blogs, so I do follow.. but I don't hang on every post or feel the need or want to keep up with someone via twitter, whether I know them or not.. I guess a lot of "commercial" posters keep their followers on twitter via giveaways etc.. I am not that hard up for a free t-shirt.. I can go to the thrift store for that!

I do see the appeal of FB and Twitter for businesses.. so social network, I am not into them. Professional network..you betcha.. I definitely understand that media side of the apps.

What I have a really hard time with FB and Twitter is the inane status updates and millions (okay hundreds) of pictures of the FB profiler themselves. But I have been reminded that it is called FB for a reason. It all seems very narcissistic to me. "Look at Me Look at Me" - to 200-700 of my closes friends.. eeuuuw... but that seems to be the 20 something's social modus operandi. I just value my privacy a bit more than that. I know I know.. I am writing a blog.. but you don't see my birth date, my face very much and I don't tag my pictures for google to index.. so there is a decent amount of anonymity this way while still sharing with the friends and family that care to read the posts I put up.

So I will be posting a bit more on here.. I will have a link on FB for the blog so any one of my few social network friends who get bored can come cruise if they want..
During the last year we got a new puppy, "lost" a future daughter in law through a break up, and gained a son-in-law. Mattie, Cap'n Steve and the cats are all doing well. So we will get caught back up over the next few weeks.

Christmas at the Cabin

We really had our Christmas back at Thanksgiving when the kids came to visit at the cabin. It was so wonderful to have them there.. so today I post some of the pictures. I shot some portraits because my candids are always so poor...We were so happy to meet Letisia, Chris' fiance and welcome her to our small family. Abbey and Chris were in great spirits and we thoroughly enjoyed having them both together.. they are Steve's blessings and I am so fortunate to get to come along for the ride.. great kids...

If you build it... they will come....

It's going to be a nice Thanksgiving here at the cabin.. well actually it may be more Christmas than Thanksgiving.. Both Chris and Abbey are coming.. It has been years since they have both been here (in Ga.) together..and Chris is bringing a new member to our small family.. a fiance! We are looking forward to meeting her and getting to know her. The weather here this time of year is not nearly as nice as SoCal.. and we actually look a bit dreary with no leaves on the trees.. but I hope to rectify that a bit in the cabin. We are all stocked up on wood as the darn cabin stays pretty cool this time of year without a nice fire going. Abbey hasn't been here since 2000.. though she did come for a wonderful visit a couple of years ago to the Florida home. Wish Abbey could get her friend Heather to join us.. think of her as part of the family too.. but anyway - excited.. imagine they will be camping out in the guest quarters. We put in a wonderful gas stove up there that really heats up the place toasty warm.. plus it is well insulated.. much more comfortable than the cabin.. which is one reason we built it, so we could live there in the winter if we needed or wanted to.. Seeing the kids will be such a nice diversion from all of the politics and financial meltdown.. this has all left me rather disheartened...

It's Girl's Weekend here at the Cabin - Woo Hoo!