Several weeks ago I spent a few hours with Sora taking pictures on a beautiful November day. I posted some pictures from that session in a previous blog post here. Sora has late-stage insulinoma and is enjoying spending the holidays with her family. Saturday I had the opportunity to create more memories of Sora and the other members of her family. Here are some of those images…

Here’s Sora wearing a Christmas ribbon…

Zoe is watching Sora keep her blood sugar level up by eating honey and peanut butter…

Mom watches from the couch while Sora chews on the squirrel…

This is Zoe and Rex, Sora’s brother and sister. Zoe is a 5 year-old angel, and Rex is a sweet heart of a dog.

A week ago I teamed up with Old Dog Haven to make some holiday photographs. Proceeds from the sessions went to Old Dog Haven. Here are some of my favorites from the day.

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…

This afternoon was absolutely gorgeous. When I got to Enatai Beach Park in Bellevue, the sun was strong and low in the southeastern sky. There were only few people in the park, but a bald eagle soared over nearby trees possibly looking for migrating salmon in the lake. I was there to photographed Sora, an 11 year old European Boxer, who has late stage cancer.

Sora’s mom, Michelle, founded AHELP, the Animal Hospice and End-of-Life Palliative Care Project, after previously losing two boxers to cancer. More about Michelle and AHELP in future posts. We have had Sora’s photo session scheduled for a couple of weeks. Unfortunately, in the past few days Sora has taken a turn for the worse. She had a seizure last night, and today it took quite an effort for Michelle to get her to the location. Once there, Sora was beautiful and happy, and the light was perfect. We knew her energy would fade quickly, so I worked fast to get as many shots of her as I could. Unfortunately, playing at the beach took a lot out of Sora, and she became very stressed and disoriented from the effort. The next half an hour was tough on all three of us as Michelle worked to calm Sora enough to travel the few blocks in the car from the beach to their home. Once home, Sora was able to relax and seemed to enjoy the roasted chicken her mother served her.

It was a tough afternoon for all of us. But I think if Sora could tell us, she’d say that it was worth it.

Here’s Sora…

In late October we had what I thought was going to be the last nice day this fall. Since then we have broken the record high temperature for November with a 76 degrees. Holy cow! Anyway, this day in October was just beautiful. And as usual, there were plenty of dogs out with their owners on Alki Beach. The sun was low in the south and kind of harsh, but the beauty of these fine dogs shined through.

This gorgeous samoyed was chilling with his peeps…

A yellow lab puppy was enjoying the day…

Look what I can do!

A wire haired fox terrier out for a stroll…

A couple of good looking Shiba Inus enjoying the warm fall day…

This past weekend in Seattle was just gorgeous. The sun was out, temps approached the 60′s, and the dog parks were packed with dogs and humans. Unfortunately, during the middle of the day all that bright sun meant harsh lighting. But that is when the dogs were out. So I grabbed my camera and my low rig and headed out for some magic.

About the low rig. I’ve been thinking about ways to get low to the ground without having to crawl around on knee pads. I also want to be able to run with the camera low and have the dogs trail behind. I spent a lot of time searching the internet for a ready made solution to my problem. I considered The $14 Steadycam as an option and nearly purchased all the parts and pieces to make one. Then it occurred to me that I was thinking inside the box— that the camera needed to be right-side-up in order to take a picture. When I was able to wrap my brain around the idea that it didn’t matter to the photograph if the camera is right side up, the solution was simple. And I could put it all together using components I already had. My low rig consists of my camera with a cable release mounted to my monopod. I grab the monopod by the foot and hang the camera upside down. Later, I right the images in post-production. Simple.

Reactions to my rig were mixed: “What the …”

This pug looks sternly disapproving, while most dogs were curious about the low rig and the camera shutter noise.

“Whatchya got there?”

“Go ahead, kick the ball. I dare ya.”

Some dogs were intent on licking my 14-24mm lens, which has such a curved front element that you can’t attach a filter. Yuck!

The next step will be to add some sort of noise maker like a pneumatically controlled squeaky toy to the camera. That should be fun!