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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Last night's full moon was a supermoon, 14% bigger and 30% brighter than an average full moon. Sadly for me, the cloud cover in the Puget Sound Convergence Zone cleared so late that the moon was already high above the horizon, so while I could see that the moon was, indeed, bright, I lacked a good frame of reference for it's size.

I still took some photos, mostly just so I could say I did but...they're nothing out of the ordinary.

I used the same settings I had used on my previous moon photos. I didn't think about it at the time, but I probably should have made some adjustments to accommodate the extra brightness of the supermoon.

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I'm still amazed at the amount of detail I can achieve with my Nikon 5100, even with my mediocre photography skills, from 20 to 30 feet with a zoom lens. If I thought I could have set up my tripod without scaring the ducks, I could have achieved sharper focus for better results.

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Despite the fact that I had snow on the ground - again! - this morning, spring is almost upon us. A sure sign in our neighborhood is the appearance of Donald and Daisy Duck.

We've lived in this neighborhood since November of 2003 and each spring has seen the arrival of Donald and Daisy. They fly in, stay a few weeks and then move on to who-knows-where. Today I snapped a few pics. They let me approach to within about 20 feet and I used my 55-300mm lens zoomed in all the way. I'm going to try to make it down to DeYoung's this week for some feed. If they have reason to expect a handout, they'll come right up to me.

While it's true that I live on a very quiet street, I still wonder why Daisy thinks this particular spot at edge of the road is a good place for a nap.

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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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