As I was snapping away at Willis Tucker last Sunday, I caught a photograph of Shasta greeting another dog. Unfortunately, the photograph, while it captures a sweet moment, has issues.

My issues:

• The focal point of the picture, the noses, isn't centered.
• Another dog has its nose in Shasta's business.
• A random tail makes Shasta look as though she has a horn growing from between her shoulders.
• Shasta has an extra leg growing out of her chest.
• There's a distracting partial human directly above the focal point of the picture.

I tried cropping it a few different ways, but I can't get satisfactory framing that results in a standard sized photo.

Better...the noses are roughly centered, but Shasta still has those unnatural growths.

A square crop isn't an improvement over the original rectangular crop.

This isn't bad. The distracting human is mostly cropped out and Shasta no longer looks deformed. Unfortunately, I've lost the original charm of a sweet interlude amid the chaos.

It may be that I'll just have to settle for this being a cute snapshot rather than a really special photo, but I hope not. Any suggestions?

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I take a lot of pictures of my dog so you might as well resign yourself to that right now if you're going to visit this blog. Last Sunday, we made a trip to the local off-leash dog park and I managed to snag a few good shots with my Nikon set to the pre-programmed action mode.

These first two shots are my favorites on the day. They have their issues, but I love how they capture the action!

The focus here is on the wrong dog, but if I can stop thinking of it as a photograph of Shasta, it's a great shot. Especially for anyone who may have been wondering what a Golden Retrievers would look like if their ears stood erect like a German Shepherd.

The Retriever would chase after Shasta, then body slam her to knock the ball loose. Again, the focus isn't quite right, but I still love this one.

A couple of still shots.

I tried cropping this for a closeup of her adorable face, but she was too slobbery!

I love how this shot captures Shasta's sweet personality.

A random dog.

Of course the photo of some random stranger's dog is in perfect focus.

 And here we're getting ready to leave the park. Shasta waits for her best friend, Daddy, to catch up.

I had a high proportion of photos from this day of shooting that were badly out of focus; many more than from other days of dog park shooting. As I mentioned above, everything was set to automatic, so I'm not sure why. When I got home and tried to upload the photos to my computer, I did find the battery was dead, so I'm wondering if a weak battery could have affected somehow.

This is a blog about me learning to be a better photographer, so if you have tips or suggestions, please, feel free.

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This photo is simply stunning. Brownie points for anyone who knows who it is.

Leave a comment if you want to have a try at it.

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Hey, thanks for dropping by the grand opening of my photography blog. I'm an amateur photographer with a lot of enthusiasm for taking pictures and learning about photography.

My first grown-up camera was a Minolta Maxxum 3xi film SLR. It was a great camera but I used it like a $1,000 point and shoot...I never ventured off the automatic plantation. It was too hard to keep track of the settings I'd used and film processing was too expensive to allow for much experimentation.

Then in 2001, I got my first digital camera, a Fuji FinePix 2800Z, a digital point and shoot. I could take as many pictures as I wanted! Yay! The downside was that it didn't have a lot of options for shooting. In fact, if I recall correctly, it didn't have any! Still it took wonderful snapshots and I used it until it died. RIP, little camera.

The untimely loss of my Fuji left me without a dedicated camera and for several years, I used only the camera in my iPhone. It was mostly adequate, but, again, no options and this time? No flash either!

As you can imagine, I was longing for a new DSLR camera, even after I acquired a shiny, new iPhone 4S, complete with flash. And finally, my hope was fulfilled. Santa (a.k.a. Mr. Snaps) surprised me with a Nikon D5100 for Christmas. Unlike my Fuji and my iPhone, the Nikon has plenty of bells and whistles; some of which seem more useful than others. I'm having fun exploring all the features and learning how to use them to take great photos.

I don't expect to stop taking pictures with my iPhone - it's a pretty good camera, after all, and it fits quite nicely in my pocket - but learning to use and take fantastic photographs with the the Nikon will be the focus of this blog.

That's the story of my blog. I'll be posting semi-regularly...so whenever life doesn't get in the way. Please check back in once in a while and feel free to leave comments any time.

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