Category: Dogs

labraday #3

whbeebe
Bookends

We continue on with my photos of Max and Ruby. The two at this point in their lives were a tight pair. They played together, they ate together, they went on walks together, and they slept together. For example, in the photo above, Ruby is on the left and Max is on the right. At this point Ruby is nine months old and Max is 8 1/2. That sofa has long since gone the way of all flesh, but while it was around it was their sofa, not the humans.

I shot this hand-held with my E-3. I was sitting down in the other room and had both elbows braced, then carefully breathed out while I tripped the shutter. It’s still not as sharp as it would have been had I mounted my E-3 on a tripod, but sometimes you don’t have the luxury of time to fully set up before a shot.

This photo also underscores (for me at least) the importance of the in-body image stabilization of the E-3. This shot might be soft, but it would have been blurrycam-tastic if I had tried this with my E-300 body. That and the fact that shooting ISO 800 with the E-300 would have been a lot noisier.

Profiles

Here we are two years later in 2011. Max on the left and Ruby on the right. There was a dog park we would take them too on weekends, and there were plenty of water fountains around the parking lot. I would grab one of our chrome steel water bowls, fill it up for them, and then just let them drink as much as they wanted. That’s why you see all the drool and water down the side of the Prius door. It’s been years since a visit to any dog park or area where owners gather with their dogs; first the pandemic pretty much ended that, and now there’s the fear of our dogs catching canine influenza. So I keep everyone at home.

Taken with my E-3 and the wonderful Digital Zuiko 50-200mm.

Morning has Broken

Probably one of my favorite of the pair at this point in their lives. One of my daughters had come home in December of that year from college, and slept out in the back porch room on that sofa. When she got up to go to the bathroom, the two gremlins settled right on in her place. This was taken with my Olympus E-P2 and the plastic fantastic M.Zuiko 17mm/2.8. I used the in-camera sepia effect. It was just the right combination of morning light to get a lot of detail and broad mid-tones in the photo. And of course, the classic poses of those two.

labraday

whbeebe

This is supposed to be a Caturday post, but I need to give more press to the canine members of the household. After all, Labs and Doodles, but principally Labs, have been a part of us since we started dating in 1982. And a part of my wife’s life since 1979. These are photographs from many years ago.

Dinnertime!

This photo is of our oldest living Lab, Ruby. She’s now 15 and still with us. She’s the second from the left of the dam’s right foreleg, with the darkest markings. They say that a puppy choses their person. My wife and I were visiting this group and low and behold our future Ruby sauntered right up to us and leaned against my wife’s shoe. This was taken December 2008 with my Olympus Four Thirds E-300 and the original Zuiko Digital 14-54mm f/3.5-4.5 zoom. I miss that combination, I really do.

Two Labs and a Wife

It’s now June 2009 and we’re up at Florida State University to pick up daughter #2 and bring her back home. The red Prius is mine, and believe it or not three humans and two Labs will make it back home just fine. Max is far left, Ruby is center, and of course that woman leaning out is my beloved. Funnily enough everyone has their mouths open and tongues hanging out. This was taken with my nearly new (at the time) Olympus Four Thirds E-3 and Sigma 30mm/1.4.

Max and Ruby. Max always did have a big happy smile to share.

A month later and the wife and I are back in Tallahassee, this time loaded up in our Kia Sedona van with a mattress, a sofa, and two Labs. We had to transport the mattress and sofa up to daughter #2 as her new residence at the time didn’t have any furniture. We’d spent the night at a local motel, and that morning on the way back home we’d stopped off at a local eatery for breakfast. When I look for that spot today it’s now Burnett Park on W. Gaines St. Taken with my E-3 and the Zuiko Digital 12-60mm/2.8-4. Both that camera and lens were stolen out of the back of my car in 2012. Although replaced since then with demonstrably better equipment, I still have a small empty spot in my heart for that lost equipment.

Max managed to keep his hat on straight, but not so much Ruby.

Thanksgiving 2011. I’d just come back from a trip up to Detroit, Michigan, and we were visiting our vet to have some photos made. I was there with my camera of course to get some of the tamer moments with our two minions. At this point Max was 11 and Ruby was 4. Both of them were hale and hearty little creatures. I can’t recall the name of the vet tech fixing Ruby’s costume; it’s been 13 years since that photo was taken. Once again I used the E-3 and the 12-60mm. That was a rugged workhorse combination.

I have a lot more Lab photos, and I will start to drop them into posts from this point forward. I hope nobody minds.