More photos from Thor's gotcha week. In other news, I'm wondering if the casual use of digital post-processing makes us worse photographers.

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Here are a few pics I snapped of Thor on his Gotcha Day. The quality isn't the best...I was more concerned about enjoying the day than with camera settings. Still, I think you can tell that he's super cute and super fluffy!

Shasta likes her new squeaky toy; she is startled, fascinated and annoyed by his every move.

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I'm working on perfecting my green (or in this case yellow) eye correction on Shasta's photos, and I'm pretty happy with how this one turned out.

I made this edit in GIMP. I used a brush size just slightly larger than Shasta's actual iris set to 35% opacity and a very dark brown-black.

I set the opacity low because I like to be able to control how dark I make the correction. With opacity set to a low number, I can click repeatedly until I get the effect I like for the particular photo I'm editing. Also, since I'm not completely obscuring the underlying photo, I can see exactly where to place the highlights. I chose a dark brown-black because, for this photo, using pure black looked "obviously edited."

To add the highlights, I selected a brush approximately the size of the original highlights, set to white and also with 35% opacity. Again, I clicked until I had the right effect.

Here's a side-by-side of the before and after.

I'm just glad I don't have a cat.

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Shasta was quite possibly the cutest puppy who's ever lived. I know...every dog owner says that, but I have evidence!


This is the photo that appeared in Shasta's newspaper ad. We agreed to meet the breeder, merely, as my husband said, "to look" at the puppy. Yeah, as if.

A couple from a day trip to Mt. Rainier National Park. It was the first week of July, but there was still plenty of snow. Sadly, dogs aren't allowed on the trails in our National Parks. I understand the reasoning, but it sucks all the fun out of visiting the parks.

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As surprising as this may seem, Shasta can sometimes be naughty, as shown in this photo where she has brazenly staked out a spot on Mommy and Daddy's bed.

This was my first attempt at fixing green eye. I chose a photo where the green was obvious, but not glowing like a Goa'uld.

Original on top, my edit below.

Original

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Shasta is not what you would call a bold and independent dog. She loves to go to the dog park and play with the other dogs, but she likes to stay close to Mom and Dad at the same time. These two shots are typical...she runs ahead, then stops to check that we're still coming and waits for us to catch up. When I'm lagging behind, she'll even run part way back to check on me, before sprinting ahead of my husband again.

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I love this shot of my girl. Look at that sweet face...mere mortals are powerless to resist!

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I snagged a couple of good shots yesterday while Shasta was outside playing with Daddy. My Nikon was set to Action Scene mode so, yeah, nothing fancy on my part.

Unedited:

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