A Pet Photo Shoot

Posted on November 16, 2012November 16, 2012 by Dusty Roads | 2 Comments

I have a vision. I know what I want on my personal Christmas card this year. I can see it in my mind. It includes one or both of my cats. I can be flexible. But working with animals can be tricky even the most cooperative ones.

Step one: Get the set ready.

Step 2: Set up camera and pre focus.

Step 3: Call the Cat. That was the easy part. Rocky came running, jumped into the set and slid taking the drape and set with him.

Step 4: Set the set back up.

Step 5: Catch a cat…don’t call it. Once again Rocky was more willing. He thinks he’s a little kitty rock star and that everyone should worship him.

Step 6. Try to communicate what you want him to do.

Step 7: Use cat toys, treats, funny noises to try to get your animal actor to perform.

Step 8. Pick up to try again another day Rocky let me know when he was done. Tail in the air he walked away like a true Prima Donna. I found him curled up asleep on my bed. I guess I wore him out.

It wasn’t a total loss. I managed to get a couple of nice pictures so I could create this combo that I call “Twins”, but it’s not what I want for the card.

I am not giving up. I’ll be trying again next time I have an hour or so to fuss around. Maybe a bit of turkey will hold his attention.

Just a Day in The Life

Posted on November 14, 2012November 14, 2012 by Dusty Roads | 4 Comments

Not much to share. I missed my Monday post because I haven’t done anything newsworthy lately. Monday I had a busy day.

I started the day with a photo shoot for Christmas Cards at my friend Nancy’s house. We hung the stockings on the mantle and moved the love seat in front of it. Then we squeezed everyone, including the dog, into the love seat. It took more time to set up than take the pictures…kind of like cooking that Thanksgiving meal..hours of cooking for 30 minutes of eating! LOL. But I got to try out my new studio light set and it made all the difference in the world..no shadows..no motion blur from the puppy.

Then it was pack up and head to my next shoot. This one was a location shoot but at the last minute it canceled so I met the family for a consultation instead. Probably a good thing because it took longer to get to work than I expected and if we’d actually done that shoot I might have been late.

Finished the day off by working overtime 3pm – 8pm. So as you can see, not much to talk about and not much time to write even if I did have something to say.

I’m not going to give away the picture that the family chose for their cards but I will share one picture of Dawn. I love her eyes in this picture.

By the way, that’s not “dirt” on her face…it’s one of those temporary tattoos of a dog. 🙂

Prepping for Thanksgiving

Posted on November 7, 2012November 7, 2012 by Dusty Roads

My sister gave me a challenge last week. She said she wished I had a turkey for a Thanksgiving card.

Well I do have a turkey picture but I decided I wanted to be a bit more ambitious. I decided I wanted to have a picture of a Thanksgiving table all decked out with food and candles and wine glasses.

I have a table. That’s the easy part. I have wine glasses and nice china. So now I need the food. The biggest food item is, of course , the centerpiece of the meal, the turkey.

Now since I plan to eat the props I want to be sure the turkey comes out nice and golden brown and doesn’t just look good, but also tastes good. I usually cook a mean turkey..nice and brown and very moist…perfect…except the last 2 turkey’s I cooked didn’t cook evenly. I think my old oven is nearing the end of its days.

I wanted to get the best price I could so I went to Walmart and bought a frozen turkey. Usually I buy fresh but this isn’t really Thanksgiving Dinner..it’s just a “fake” one. 🙂 So frozen will do. I had a gift card too. Gift cards are like shopping with someone else’s money so I become more free with my $$$.

Next to the frozen turkeys was an electric Turkey roaster. If I hadn’t had the gift card I wouldn’t have even considered it but now I thought..could this solve my old oven problem?

Into the cart it went.

At home I unpacked it, wiped it down as instructed and marveled at how big this thing was.

Mr. Turkey was in the bottom of the refrigerator defrosting. 3 1/2 days later the turkey was thawed and it was time to try out this new gadget.

The turkey was a small one. 13.5 lbs. and the chart said to allow 15 minutes per pound. That works out to 3.87 hours so in goes the turkey and I settled down to wait. Smells good!

Too bad you can’t scratch and sniff.

Times up. I lifted the lid and there was a beautiful golden brown bird except it’s drumsticks were sagging away from the body and when I lifted the bird the wings fell off!

Boy this turkey is definitely cooked! As I transferred the main body to the serving platter the whole thing collapsed. If anything this turkey is overcooked. It certainly isn’t ready to be a centerpiece of a holiday table picture. But is it edible?

I whipped out a knife and sliced a tiny piece just to see…ohhhh soooo good. It was moist inspite of being over cooked…and tender. The bottom of the roaster was filled with drippings. Lots of gravy to be made there.

So looks like I will have to try again to get that centerpiece Turkey for the picture . I might not get to it in time for this year’s Thanksgiving. After all, how much turkey can one person and 2 cats eat? At least there’s always next year.

For now I’m enjoying my early Thanksgiving feast with a squashed but tasty turkey centerpiece.

You can order greeting cards at www.dustyroadsphotos.etsy.com and www.dustyroadsphotos.zenfolio.com.

The Daily Blog

Posted on November 5, 2012November 5, 2012 by Dusty Roads

I got an email from WordPress the other day. November is blogging month. I forget the actual acronym but the point of the excercise is to post something on your blog every day. Yikes!

Maybe if I didn’t work full-time I could pull that off but somehow I think my entries would become a bit mundane…8:am alarm went off 9am coffee and toast…etc.

They say if you don’t have anything to say post pictures. Ok so here’s a picture. It has nothing to do with anything…I just like the Peanuts Family. 🙂

They suggest you post your stories of going “over the river and through the woods ” for the holidays. That won’t work for me because I work most holidays. Let people with young children have the day off. Those kids won’t be little forever.

So the bottom line is this time of year is hard to find good stuff to post, especially when my theme is “travel related” for the everyday person. So like most everyday people I don’t travel 365 days a year. I get my 2 vacations and some little mini vacations but by this time of year I’m ready for a rest.

This year in addition to working between 40 & 50 hours / week I’m trying, in my spare time, to get the holiday card line together. I’m trying to be sure my local supporters get their photo shoot for their family portraits to go on their 2012 Christmas cards.

It’s not leaving much time for writing so I don’t think I’ll be able to meet the “post -a-day” challenge from WordPress. I’m sure you’d rather have quality over quantity.

Are any of you bloggers that follow me trying to meet that challenge? Let me know. I’d love to know what you think of that goal and if you are able to meet it. Maybe it will help me on those days when I just don’t have anything of substance to share.

One more food post

Posted on October 17, 2012October 17, 2012 by Dusty Roads

Ok, I get it. You like the travel posts better than the food reviews, Ahh if only I could afford to travel enough to keep you, my loyal followers, satisfied. Every now and then I have to unpack my suitcase and spend some quality time with my cats, work some overtime to replenish the travel fund, and recharge my own batteries.

I love traveling but I subscribe to the Go, Go , Go philosophy of travel..so much to see, so little time. I would never be able to hang out on a beach, I’d feel like I was missing too much. That’s not to say a beach vacation isn’t a perfect one for a lot of people…just not me. Since my vacations are so high energy sometimes I need to get home and back to my normal routine to recharge my batteries. That’s when finding interesting topics to share becomes a real challenge.

So the bottom line here is that I have one more food tale for you then I’ll leave that subject for a while.

The Sailing Cow Cafe has closed up for the winter season now. The last weekend was Columbus Day which seemed early this year. As part of the last weekend festivities they had a band and the invited me to come down to take pictures of their customers. They called it Photos on the Beach by Dusty Roads Photos.

My friend Nancy and I went down for 10 am and stayed until 3pm. It turned out to be a beautiful day, if a bit cool by the water. The Cafe had us put a sign in the window and gave us a table outside to set up a display. Nancy is a power house when it comes to talking to people. She was busy handing out my business cards and brochures while I talked to the people who stopped to look at the cards and pictures I’d brought for display.

Everyone was enthusiastic and we gave out a lot of information but that was as far as it went. No one was up for a picture of themselves. Oh well, as far as publicity it was a great success. We met 2 women trying to get a dog park off the ground. They were very interested in the pet photography side of my business. I got ideas of things to make another such event more successful.

Being at The Sailing Cow from 10:00- 3:00 meant we had a chance to sample the food. We had muffins for a quick breakfast and all I can say is WOW. They were great. The breakfast menu had all the usual breakfast items and they looked good too but we wanted to keep it light. Others must have felt the breakfast was good too because they had a full house.

After we finished our agreed time frame (10am-2pm) we stayed a little longer to listen to the band and have a quick lunch.

One of the owners had told us they made the best onion rings so I had to try them. They were great. Very thinly sliced and fried crisp… they were excellent. The side order was easily large enough for both of us.