Dogz on Walkz

In case you haven't noticed, I haven't posted much on here.  In fact, I haven't posted anything since late June of last year.  Life has happened, repeatedly in a variety of ways.  But I've had many adventures since June and I could have written a lot, but I just haven't.

And so I'm starting fresh again.  My daughter suggested something to me last week that grabbed ahold of me and sort of kindled a spark in me.  We talked and laughed about it, but then I started thinking and realized that I could really get into this.  And so, Dogz on Walkz was born.

I decided that if I was going to do this up right I wanted to get a good Instagram feed going, so I went through all of my past photos and found as many Dogz on Walkz photos that I could find.  Then I created the Facebook page and the Instagram page and now I'm trying to post a new photo every day of a dog I encounter on my hikes and walks.  After all, the title of this blog is a Photo a day, so why not get back into it.  I even decided to re-join 365 Project as Dogz on Walkz.  And so it goes.

I also practiced first.  I decided that on my walk/hike on Saturday of last weekend, I'd just greet every dog that walked by just to get a feel for it.  I didn't bring my camera, although I had my phone with me, so I could have taken shots with that if need be, but I just wanted to practice that day.  Sunday would be different.

On Sunday, I literally picked up my camera for the first time this year.  I can't even remember the last time I used it, maybe this summer when I was on vacation?  It's become so easy just to pull the phone out and take a photo on that, that I'd forgotten how I used to enjoy taking photos.  One of the first things I noticed was how heavy the camera is.  That will take some getting used to again, but it didn't take long for me to get back into photographer mode.

The first dog I met on the trail that day was Annie, pictured her.  She's only 7 months old and according to her people friend, she's a Pit Bull/Boxer mix and was a rescue dog.  Annie was so thrilled for pets from me that when I sat down to take photos, she jumped into my lap and schmooosed the front of my camera, a fact that I didn't even noticed until after I left her and her people friend.  Then I noticed all the dog drool on the front of my lens.  Nothing like dog slobber to really get a lens nice and clean right?

So this is my attempt at really doing a photo a day for this blog.  Sometimes, it might just be the daily dog photo, but I'm going to try this again.  Wish me luck.

As always, any comments, words of encouragement would be greatly appreciated.  Please like our page on Facebook.  Also, please follow us in Instagram.  Tell all of your dog loving friends to follow us in Instagram as well.

Imagine that - Day 18 of the Chill

Back in December, when I first looked over the list of prompts for this challenge, I thought to myself, "Self, imagine that you can actually get to the end of this challenge."  I laughed a little too at that notion.  I'm not there yet as I still have two more posts to get to the end of this challenge, but the light at the end of the tunnel is no longer a train bearing down on me, threatening to derail my thought process and stop me in some crazy way.  Imagine that.

You see, I'm a casual blogger.  I have high hopes and visions of grandeur.  Even the title of my blog has visions of grandeur, otherwise, it wouldn't be entitled A Photo a Day.  When I first set this blog up in 2012, I was in the midst of my second full year at the 365 Project, a website that challenges you to take a photo every day for a year.  I did it for two entire years.  I figured I'd just go on and on and so I'd just blog about the photo I took that day and the blog would write itself.  Imagine that?

But at the same time I was having visions of grandeur, I also had realistic expectations.  At the top, there's a short description of what this blog is about and I state that I might not post every day.  It goes on to say, in fact, I'm positive I won't post every day, but I would like to post twice a week.  Last year I posted a grand total of 25 times.  I only posted about once every other week.  And yet, I think I had the best year photographically of any since I started doing a 365 project.  Imagine that.

This year has been a different story, due exclusively to this  20 Days of Chill Writing Challenge.  This will be my 20th post this year.  Imagine that.  I have to be honest, I wasn't sure if I was going to make it or not, but I'm pretty sure my OCD kicked in and got me through some of the rougher spots in the road, especially on prompts that I really didn't like.  And no, I don't really have OCD.  Ask anyone at work, or just come look at my desk and you'll probably understand that I don't have OCD.

So, I'm blogging more this year, which means that something has to give.  Ironically, what seems to have fallen by the wayside a little bit this year is my photography.  The photo for this post is only my 10th photo I've decided to publish on-line this year.  We're almost done with the first month and I only have a third of what I should have if I were doing a 365 project.  Imagine that.

But the real thing that counts is I'm OK with that, because I know I'll pick up my camera and take more photos.  I take my camera to school every day and make sure I have it each week for the photo club that I run as an after school club on campus here.  I don't publish those photos here, because I told my students that I wouldn't.  In return, they also know that they're not allowed to post photos of me on their Facebook, or Instagram account, etc.  There's enough images of me out there without having something show up somewhere else that I don't know about.  Imagine that.

And so it goes.  Only two more to go.  Oh, and by the way.  I mentioned above that I don't have OCD.  That's true.  What I really have is CDO, because that's in alphabetical order the way it should be.

Photo Blogging Challenge (Sept. 2014): Black and White

This month's challenge by P.J. was to post 5 photographs in black and white.  Originally, I was going to post something to the effect that I didn't have five B&W shots, but then I started looking through some of the shots I took this past weekend and was pleasantly surprised that I have enough to cover this month's challenge with ease.  And so, without further ado, I submit my shots for the B&W photo challenge.

1.  Grow Old with Me
I've done several of these shots in the past, but this one was actually a re-do of one of the originals I posted for this series earlier in the year.  In each shot, I wanted to emphasize my wife's wedding ring and I didn't do that very well in the first shot, so when she sat down at the piano a couple of nights ago, I had my opportunity to get the shot right.  It's still not quite perfect as I would have liked to have seen the ring straight up on her finger, but I'll take this for now.

2.  Man's Best Friend

This is Jack, our dog.  He's been featured on this blog before and will probably be featured again from time to time.  I started to Instagram earlier this year, but it's really so much easier to do with an iPhone as opposed to an iPad.  Watching football, with your dog at your side or in your lap is a great way to spend a Sunday afternoon.  I just love the contented look on his face as I scratched him under his neck.  I'm sure your dog is probably similar in that if you stop, you'll immediately know that you're not supposed to stop yet, because the paw will come out and scratch the closest body part to you and you know the dog is thinking, "Oh c'mon now.  That wasn't enough scratches.  Keep going there food guy."

3.  The Windmill
For those of you who are long term readers, you'll know that I enjoy going out geocaching.  The best way I've been able to describe geocaching is it's an Easter Egg hunt for adults.  People will go out and hide something, get the geographic coordinates for what they hid using their GPS unit and then return and posted them on the geocaching website.  Once they coordinates and cache get posted, then anyone with a GPS unit or smartphone can go out and look for the cache.  Trust me, it's way more difficult using a smartphone.

This windmill is located in San Dimas, one city to the west of where I live.  It's located behind a small little residential park and there's some fruit trees tucked back in there with a couple of trails.  I noticed on a sign there was going to be a pumpkin patch back there starting next month as well.

This photo represents why I got into geocaching in the first place.  I like to hike, but I've never been very familiar with the hiking trails in the local foothills.  When I first stumbled upon geocaching, the nearest geocache was approximately 7 miles away from our house and a half mile hike from the parking lot.  It was located in the Claremont Wilderness Park.  I had no idea that park even existed.  Now, many of my hides are in the Claremont Wilderness Park.

For me, at least, geocaching has allowed me to discover my own back yard.  I've found so many trails that I never would have known were there, were it not for geocaching.  The hobby has kept me reasonably fit, but I still need work in that area.  The last couple of times I've really been up in the foothills was on the mountain bike, so I'm starting to incorporate biking into my geocaching outings as well.  If you haven't already tried it, I would suggest checking it out.  It's a lot better than sitting on your butt all weekend watching sports.  Well, sometimes it is.

4.  The bicyclist
I live in a college town.  The Claremont Colleges (five separate universities, plus a graduate school) are located about a half mile away from where I live and provide ample opportunities for photography, whether it be architecture, statuary, people shots, or combinations of them.

This particular day, I was shooting a variety of things, walking around the campuses.  I started out at the Harvey Mudd campus at a spot that I've photographed many times before.  There is an old fountain tucked away down in a small plaza.  It has some rather large koi swimming around in it and the area always provides some great color shots.

It's rather obvious that I was looking for some kind of angle to get an interesting view of the architecture of these two buildings.  I love the building to the right totally surrounded by a reflecting pool that is only inches deep.  I'd taken several shots and I could hear a bicyclist coming up so I waited until he came into the frame.  I think that little added piece of the guy in the shot made all the difference with this one.

5.  Three college guys
After getting the shot of the bicyclist, I ended up almost in the middle of a conversation involving these three guys.  They were talking to a fourth one about a paper that was due at the end of the week.  When the one guy left, the other three started walking to the east, presumably back to their dorm rooms to either work on their papers, or to watch some football on TV.  My bet is actually on the latter, based upon the laughter I heard from them as they trailed away from me.

I only had a couple of seconds to compose the shot before they'd be too far away.  As it was, this one had to be cropped because I didn't have my telephoto lens on my camera and was relying on my 50mm fixed lens when I took the shot.  I still think it's an interesting shot.  Were I to do it over again, I think I would have approached them to see if I could have gotten a 100 Strangers shot. I haven't taken one of those since early January of this year.

Well, there you have it.  My installment of P.J.'s monthly photo challenge.  Stop by and see some other blogger's interpretations of the same B&W theme.

Photo Blogging Challenge (December 2013): Festive

Happy New Year.  This being the last day of the year and I have insomnia, it works out well I can put this post out before everyone is up.  We will have our annual New Year's Eve party this evening and I have a hike planned for tomorrow morning.  By the end of the day tomorrow I will probably be exhausted, so I want to make sure this posts for the December Challenge that P.J. put out for this month.  

Festive was the challenge and I had some fun this month taking photos, both with my regular camera as well as my iPad, which I use for my Instagram shots.  The quality isn't quite up to par with my iPad, but I wanted to test it out thoroughly this month.  You'll be able to tell the difference of the two since the Instagram format is square, whereas my regular camera will be more rectangular.  Anyway, here's my five shots for the month of December.

1.   Christmas wreath

When I first started with Instagram, I posted quite a few shots from it on Flicker.  As noted above, I don't think the quality is nearly as good as my regular camera, although there are a couple of images that I've really liked, this one being one of them.  I found this wreath hanging on a gate of a neighbor's house.  It was one of the first signs of Christmas I'd seen, so I wanted to include it here.

I don't really like the way the wreath's bow blends together into a red blob, but I guess that's part of the appeal of Instagram.  Perhaps appeal isn't the right word to use, but it's the best I can come up with for the time being.  The filter I used however, Lo-fi, did a nice job of bringing out the details and textures of the fence the wreath was hanging on so I'll give props for that.

2.  The Spirit of Christmas Present

My parents have an entire Victorian village they put up under their Christmas tree every. Usually one of my nephews who live close to them help put it all together.  Each of the bisque porcelain houses has lights inside them to give it a nighttime glow to it and the set even has the characters from Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol.  

This Instagram shot, shows Ebeneezer Scrooge encountering the Spirit of Christmas Present who will show him things that are including how life is like in the Cratchett household, who celebrate Christmas the best they can even on the meager salary Scrooge pays his employee Bob Cratchett.

The story reminds us all that what's past is past and no matter how much we'd like to, we can't go back and change things.  We can only move forward and if we have regrets, or things that we'd like to change, we can only do so by changing what we do and say in the future so things will turn out differently.  

My parent's village is always displayed differently every year and it's always a festive addition to their holiday decor, so I've included it here.

3.  The Santa Claus bank


This is a bank that originally sat under my grandparent's Christmas tree in Indiana. My dad was the baby of the family and inherited the bank sometime before his mother passed away in 1961 when I was three years old.

It then became a fixture under our family tree while we were growing up. About 10 years ago, my parents gift wrapped it and gave it to me and it now sits under our tree every year. Some time in the future, one of my three children will inherit it and the cycle will continue.  The bank is probably close to 70 years old.

I've always liked this bank and it gives me a connection to my grandmother, who I never really got to know.  It's a connection to my past, or more importantly, my father's past, one that I am familiar with, but have no memories of, so this gives me some consolation.  The bank also keeps the festiveness going beyond the actual day of Christmas, because it reminds me that even Santa Claus needs to take a day off now and then.

4.  Are you going to give that to me anytime soon?

This is Jack, our dog.  Jack turned 9 years old early in the month, which roughly translates to 63 in people years if you subscribe to the 7 dog years theory.  If this theory holds any water, then Jack is very spry for his age and all I can say about it is I hope I have as much energy as he has when I'm 63.  Of course, Jack also sleeps many hours of the day.  When he's tired, he takes a nap, which I think we should all subscribe to as a regular part of our daily regimen.  I think the world would be a better place if everyone took a nap every single day.  Unfortunately, we can't, but I think it's still a good regimen to follow.

Jack went to the groomers about three days before Christmas and it's our groomers policy to put a bandana on the neck of each of her clients that represents the time of year.  We have bandanas for Jack from every time of year and this particular bandana had a very festive look to it, both in color and style, so it's included here.  He'll wear the bandana for another week or so until it becomes too dirty and then it will have to be removed.  We keep all of the bandanas as keepsakes, so I could probably find another one that's been washed to replace this one after the season is over.

5.  Happy birthday

Christmas Eve is my dad's birthday.  This year, the family celebrated it on the 28th, because it was convenient plus it made it a little easier on everyone since it was also one of those milestone birthdays.  My dad turned 80 a week ago.

We gathered at my sister's house last Saturday to celebrate his life and wish him well.  He was very appreciative of the time we spent with him, both on that day and on all days when we've been able to get together as family, either as a small unit, or a much larger unit as was the case this past weekend.

My sister cooked a couple of pineapple upside down cakes as his birthday cakes for this year.  Both of my sisters and I noted at the time that none of us had ever attempted this type of cake in the past.  It turned out rather well and if dinner hadn't been so good, I might have been tempted to eat a second piece, but I refrained and my waist thanked me for that decision later on.

My uncle (Dad's oldest surviving brother), turned 90 two days before Dad did, so there's some longevity in the family.  My uncle came out here in July for a visit and both of them noted at that time that having a birthday around Christmas isn't a bad thing at all, especially if it's before Christmas.  As my dad said and uncle agreed with, "Everybody's in the giving mood."  I will never get tired of him saying that.

Well, there you have it, another challenge accepted and delivered.  Please comment below and also please check out P.J.'s photos and the link at the bottom of his blog to see other's interpretations of the theme festive.

That's it for this year.  75 posts, which fell a little short of the 100 that I thought I could write when I started this blog two years ago, but still well over the 28 I posted in 2012, so I would call this a success for this year.  I hope to continue with this on a regular basis next year.  Here's hoping you all have a very prosperous and happy 2014.  Thank you all for reading this and for all of your comments.  They are truly appreciated.

Instagram

Yes, I can say it.  I've finally drunk the Kool-Aid and am now posting photos on Instagram.  I blame my daughter.  Well, I'd actually been thinking about it for awhile before that, but when I was up visiting over Veteran's Day weekend, I finally got around to downloading the app onto my iPad and have been playing around with it ever since.

I don't believe for an instant that this will ever replace my DSLR camera.  In fact, I still want to upgrade that sometime in the near future, but it's fun to take a couple of shots, play around with the different settings and then post them.  Just something else that I need in my life right?

If you're interesting in following me, you can find me by clicking on the link.  Right now, there's only a modest collection of shots, nothing to write home about, but I actually like this one I've posted here.