Today I had the extreme pleasure of photographing Casey and Zoe. These two senior citizens live with their mom Catherine in the Madison Valley neighborhood of Seattle. Casey is a 13.5 year old mix of “…maybe sheltie and spaniel, and possibly some golden,” says Catherine. While she’s not 100% sure of Casey’s heritage, one thing she knows for certain is that he is a very sweet dog. And I can attest to that. He spent most of the session wanting to get closer to me so that I would pet him and cuddle.

Zoe is a 9 year old chihuahua, who is missing her right front paw. Zoe was a bit standoffish at first, but her curiosity soon won and she investigated what Casey and I were doing. It is clear that this little girl is full of personality.

Despite Casey’s advanced age, he still looks like a puppy…

Zoe has good looks and a charming personality…

Group shots…

Two more…

If you’ve never been to a dog agility trial before, you might find it to be a loud, frenetic affair…especially if it is held indoors. And here in the Northwest, all agility trials during winter months are indoors. Dogs who are on the course are often barking out their frustrations to their handlers. Some dogs express their joy and excitement at full volume with the sound reverberating off of the walls and ceilings. Add to this cacophony the black and white streak of a Border Collie running at over 20 mph and the deer-in-the-headlights stare of a beginning mixed breed dog who is acting like he’s never seen the weave poles before, and you have the Extreme Agility Team (EAT) sponsored agility trial at Argus Ranch in Auburn past this weekend.

So there I am in the middle of this circus on a mission to capture images of each dog’s performance that the owner simply cannot resist buying. Now wait a minute. Photographing dogs with black faces going 20 mph in poor indoor lighting–how’s that going to happen? Ta Da! The Nikon D700 to the rescue. Okay, bare with me. I’m going to get all photo-geeky on you for a moment. I absolutely love this camera. Using the D700 and a Nikon 70-200 f2.8 VR lens, I set the ISO to 6400, use a neutral colored chair to set the white balance, and manually set the exposure. Then I shoot around 5000 images over the two days using the best technique I can muster. After culling out the blurry images due to subject/camera movement and missed focus, I usually end up with around 40-50% keepers. Using fixed settings on the camera allows me to use presets in Lightroom to do batch processing on the high number of images. Check out some results below.

Here is a beautiful Belgian Tervuren in mid jump.

Wee, the Chihauhau, loves agility.

This Border Collie is moving.

It’s a bird. It’s a plane. No, it’s Super Boston!

Max is patiently waiting for a treat from his mom.

Yes, even Great Danes can do agility. Believe it or not, this giant girl loves to dive into the tunnels.