Happy Friday!  It's great to be back here on the Beautiful Beasties' Network's blogroll, and I'm realizing that we are already half-way through this 52-Week Project.  What an enriching experience! I have learned so much by coming to this space to be inspired each week even when I am not able to participate. The creative and passionate photographers I have met here challenge and encourage, and they have helped me tremendously in my own creative process.This week's challenge is all about seeing the world in black + white, and I am feeling the excitement that I used to feel when I was first drawn to create images through a lens and watch them come to life in the darkroom.  Black ...

Yay! Spring has finally arrived in the Midwest.  The evenings are long and warm and the light is Heavenly.  I love to photograph with natural light whenever I can, and a reflector is a versatile piece of material that helps to add fill light where needed.  Photographing Oreo has always presented a special challenge for me.  My lovely little Mixed Breed/Pure Heart would hardly win a beauty contest.  But in my eyes he is one of the most beautiful dogs I've ever had by my side. Tonight we headed out with camera in hand and a very large reflector.  Thinking that we'll want to have this new piece of equipment accompany us on many more sessions through the Summer and ...

Here we are already at Week #17 and thrilled to be participating once again in Beautiful Beasties' Project 52 Weeks.  This week's challenge was to play with the theme "INDOORS". I cheated and went into my archives because this is one of my all-time favorite photos for very sentimental reasons and expresses the theme well.  I wanted to share it with you. The big guy is Dufus and his sidekick is Keeper.  They were two of the first new friends to welcome us to the neighborhood shortly after our exodus from Mexico.  I had recently taken the decision to step on to the path of pet photography and had just unpacked a new favorite lens when we were invited to have brunch at the ...

Hi again.  It's Friday and time for our Project 52 Weeks' blog post. Repetition. That's this week's challenge as set forth by the Beautiful Beasties Network. We've really been trying to play by the rules here but this week we may have taken more than a little creative liberty.  Last weekend we saw our first tulips poke their happy green sprouts above the soil and temperatures rose to 75.  Winter coats, boots and sweaters all went back into storage. I even started applying suntan lotion on my hikes around the lake with the critters.Monday came. And with it a dramatic REPETITION of Winter.  Mimi was not amused by my interpretation. I'm so inspired each week by the ...