New set of wheels!

Cricket is now traveling in style. We've retired the leash (she wouldn't be able to run away anyway) and joined the baby jogger crowd. I bought this stroller today at Toys 'R' Us. I lined it with a foam pad and put one of Cricket's beds in it, covered with an underpad in case of any leaks. And off we went to Pacific Spirit Park for a stroll. It's the first time we've been there in months, if not over a year. She hasn't been able to walk very far and I haven't had the desire to go for walks by myself there. But I need the exercise, and she is getting bored being cooped up inside all day. The front lawn is a lovely place to hang out and watch people go by, but I thought it would be nice, for whatever days she has left, to let her see a bit of the wider world once again. Even if this is her last day in this life, I feel we've already gotten our money's worth on the stroller. What a joy it was! We got all kinds of interesting looks and a few comments from people we passed. And Cricket LOVED it! She perked right up and was so engaged with everything she saw.

Not dead yet

Cricket is still with me. She seems to be in some sort of remission. This photo of us was taken by my friend John when we went to visit on Thursday (three days ago). She doesn't look like a dog with one foot in the grave, does she? Compare that to how she looked in her "hospice" bed (in my living room) on July 1, the day she stopped eating and went four days without food. After telling all my friends that my dog was in the process of dying, now I'm wondering whether they'll believe me next time when it's really happening.

I came across a quote in Richard John Neuhaus's As I Lay Dying of a poem called "Adjusting to the Light" in which Miller Williams "reflect[s] on the embarrassment of friends and neighbors when Lazarus returns from the dead. He was gone only four days, but already it is not easy to fit him back into things."

Lazarus, listen, we have things to tell you.
We killed the sheep you meant to take to market.
We couldn't keep the old dog, either.
He minded you. The rest of us he barked at.
Rebecca, who cried two days, has given her hand
to the sandalmaker's son. Please understnad
we didn't know that Jesus could do this.

We're glad you're back. But give us time to think.
Imagine our surprise... We want to say
we're sorry for all that. And one thing more.
We threw away the lyre. But listen, we'll pay
whatever the sheep was worth. The dog, too.
And put your room the way it was before.

Chicken Hearts

Cricket and I had the most divine time on Wednesday at Heavenly Spa, with Cindy Horsfall, our canine water therapist. We spent time in the water just holding her, crying together, talking about this special time. Cricket was very relaxed and enjoyed the warm water and the loving attention. Afterwards we took her outside to lie on the grass and dry in the sun. It was a gorgeous day, the birds were chirping, and Cricket was in bliss. I told Teri, who runs the spa, my story about Cricket and the organic chicken heart. She replied that she always feeds chicken hearts to her older dogs, and in fact had a couple of tubs of them in her kitchen right then, which she brought out and gave to me. And you'll never believe the brand name -- Rosie Chicken Hearts! Cricket loves them and is eating well for the first time in weeks, putting weight back on. I'm also feeding her sardines which Teri recommended. Ah, poor Cricket, that she had to wait until this late in her life to eat like the amazing being she is. But she's enjoying it now!

Waiter, what's this fly doing in my soup?

A fly died on my windowsill a few days ago and was perfectly preserved. I thought it would make a great prop for a photo. (For the past two weekends, I've been hanging around guys who spend enormous amounts of time setting up perfect lighting for a shot for a film, so the idea of doing studio set-up didn't seem as odious to me as it once did.)

If you're a regular reader of this blog, you know by now that I enjoy humorous juxtapositions in my photos. So I thought of the classic joke: "Waiter, what's this fly doing in my soup?" "I think he's doing the breast stroke." I made some homemade cream of chicken soup out of the bones from that Hunterston Farm chicken. My intent was to eat it myself, but I decided I could "waste" one bowl for this staged shot and give it to Cricket (minus the fly) afterwards.

I carefully picked up the fly on a piece of paper so as not to damage its pristine wings and brittle rigor mortis legs. I set up the camera on a tripod with the right lighting for the soup bowl, and then slid the fly into place. Didn't want to put him there too soon, or he might have gotten a bit soggy. As it was, he flipped over on his back when I first dropped him in the soup, but I was able to right him without getting any goop on his wings. Then I shot away, messing around with framing and depth of field until I got it just the way I wanted it. Be sure to click on the photo to zoom in so you can see the fly in all its beautiful green glory.

Cricket liked the soup, by the way. She seems to be having a bit of an Indian summer of her life now. Ever since that chicken heart (and the phosphoric acid that the homeopathic vet had me start her on a couple of days ago), she's really been perking up. She took herself for a little walk down the sidewalk today and I had to go follow her to keep her from going in the street. That's the most spunk she's had in quite a while. I think she's up for her canine water therapy session tomorrow, so we're going to go for it. Here's my favorite picture of her and me in the dog pool where we're meeting Cindy tomorrow.

Something to drool over

Cricket is still around. Not much has changed in the last couple of days except that she had quite a treat on Friday - a fresh raw chicken heart, from a chicken raised on Hunterston Farm. And since then she's been eating a bit of that chicken every day. There must have been some elixir of life in the chicken heart, as she has decided that this chicken is too good to pass up and she's sticking around for a few more days. She has always been a big drooler whenever she drinks water, as this photo (taken a couple of weeks ago) illustrates. (Just realized you have to click to enlarge it to see it.)

Raindrops that fall on my nose and eyelashes...

Cricket has always had the most beautiful eyelashes, and still does. This photo was taken just a few days ago.

These days I've been doing a lot of crying, and sometimes when I cry, when I'm close to Cricket, my tears fall on her nose and eyelashes.

Another day

Cricket is still here. I am so grateful for this run of beautiful days we've had the past couple of weeks. We've been able to sit outside every day for long stretches of time. There's no rain in sight for the forseeable future.

This poem has been on my mind:

Death - by Emily Dickinson

Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.

We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
And I had put away
My labor, and my leisure too,
For his civility.

We passed the school, where children strove
At recess, in the ring;
We passed the fields of gazing grain,
We passed the setting sun.

Or rather, be passed us;
The dews grew quivering and chill,
For only gossamer my gown,
My tippet only tulle.

We paused before house that seemed
A swelling of the ground;
The roof was scarcely visible,
The cornice but a mound.

Since then 'tis centuries, and yet each
Feels shorter than the day
I first surmised the horses' heads
Were toward eternity.

Death by inches

My beloved dog Cricket is slowly slipping away. I keep thinking each day might be her last, and yet she keeps on surprising me, as she has all along with her longevity (she's 17).

Waiting for death to come is a profound and holy experience. It has its moments of extreme sadness, but it is also a unique opportunity to observe up close what the approach of death looks like, something which I will one day have to go through myself. There is also a peacefulness about it. She is not in pain, just losing her appetite, slowly losing weight, and spending most of her time asleep. When she needs to pee, she is still walking out the door on her own. She still likes to spend time lying out on the front lawn enjoying the summer breeze, taking in the scents, watching people walk by, barking at the occasional dog.

A friend of mine who is a composer likened this phase, the winding down of Cricket's life, to the coda at the end of a piece of music, which often builds up anticipation for the end so that when it comes there is a sense of resolution. My friend understood why I'd decided against euthanasia. As she put it, "Euthanasia takes away the coda, and jumps you straight to the end without preparing you for it."

I've been reading Henri Nouwen's Our Greatest Gift: A Meditation on Dying and Caring. He writes of how being in solidarity with those who are dying can heal us of our fear of death. "Only when we are willing to let their dying help us to die well will we be able to help them to live well. When we can face death with hope, we can live life with generosity."

As humans approach death, we become more and more dependent on others and have to let go of our own abilities and receive the gift of others' caring. (I'm guessing it's somewhat the same with dogs.) Nouwen writes, "Through our caring presence, we keep announcing that sacred truth: dying is not a sweet, sentimental event; it is a great struggle to surrender our lives completely. This surrender is not an obvious human response. To the contrary: we want to cling to whatever is left." But when we surrender to this most common human experience, instead of fighting against it, we can have a good death. "If we grow in awareness that our mortality, more than anything else, will lead us into solidarity with others, then death can become a celebration of our unity with the human race."

Cricket seems not to be quite ready to let go. She has been trying valiantly to rally, perhaps because she doesn't want to leave me and knows I'll miss her terribly. But as her body gradually shuts down, she seems to be becoming more resigned to the fact that she won't be living forever, at least not in this body. I don't know if she knows what she'll be transitioning to, but I believe our canine friends will be with us in eternity. I can't imagine the God of love not letting that be so for these blessed creatures who give us such unconditional love.

Precious moment

This is Gibbie, the resident border collie at Hunterston Farm, nosing up to Precious, an orphan lamb that was hand-raised. Gibbie also likes to sit near the chicken coop and watch and protect the five chicks, as if he were their father. They run about all over the place, right in front of his nose, and he never harms them. The hen doesn't mind him being near by, but she squawks if humans come too close. Gibbie stays out there all day until the chicks are all safely nestled under their mother for the night, and then he goes home to his house. Gibbie is named after Sir Gibbie in George MacDonald's novel of that name.

SoFoBoMo: Day 23

I started a couple of days early, so I've only got a week left of my "fuzzy month." But I am going to be away in Atlanta for most of that time, taking more pictures no doubt. So I'm going to have to make my fuzzy month longer than 31 calendar days. I claim the right to do that because I have had big chunks of time in the middle of this month when I've been busy with other things and have had to put the SoFoBoMo project on hold. I plan to enter full time into editing and compilation mode immediately upon return. I've already been doing some selecting and editing as I go.

Yesterday I went shooting at the A Rocha field study centre and got some nice shots. A Rocha is a worldwide organization of Christians doing environmental conservation work. I'm friends with the couple who head up the Canadian arm of it. They've invited me to do some photography for them, for their website and newsletters. This one shows the farm side of their property. I tend to prefer close-up work, but I think I've been looking at Paul Butzi's photos long enough that the beauty of a wide shot of a rural setting is starting to rub off on me. The small size of this blog format doesn't do it justice, so you need to click on it to see it enlarged.

A bit sheepish about SoFoBoMo

Got some logs you need the bark stripped from? Nobody's better at it than sheep! These guys were busy at their task at Hunterston Farm the last time I was out there. Even the new lambs were joining in, and climbing the heap of logs was no impediment for one of the older ones.

Others have been commenting on how quickly the start of SoFoBoMo is approaching (I'm starting April 1) and how daunting the task seems for one reason or another. My problem is that I'm scattered all over the map in the themes that I like to photograph. I thrive on variety. I get bored working on one project for any length of time. So I will find it hard to photograph for a straight month on one subject. Maybe I don't have to. But doesn't a book of photographs need to have some sort of unifying concept that ties it together? I was thinking of doing the funky colored houses in Vancouver, but even that could get tiresome after several days of shooting. Basically just driving up and down all the streets where I suspect these cool houses are (though I could do the site scoping ahead of time and write down addresses to save time during SoFoBoMo month).

And then there's the same issue Paul Butzi is worried about -- won't the resulting book be kind of boring? Just pictures of a bunch of houses, funky-colored though they might be.

And do I really have the right to publish photographs of people's private homes without their permission? Probably, because they are all viewable from public streets. But it still would feel kind of voyeurish driving around taking pictures of people's houses. I might be suspected of being a criminal preparing for a break-in or something, especially if I linger around each house long enough to get an interesting composition.

Argggh! I think maybe I need to go back to the drawing board for an idea for a theme.

My dog is a star!

This photo I took of my dog Cricket in the pool with canine water therapist Cindy Horsfall of La Paw Spa has become Cindy's brochure cover shot and will be on her new website. I'm thrilled! Cricket, a black lab, is now 16, significantly older than most labrador retrievers live (13-14 is considered a ripe old age). I attribute her longevity in part to our bimonthly aquatherapy sessions with Cindy, who is the founder of the Association of Canine Water Therapy and has trained practicioners all around the US. We are fortunate to have her right here in the Pacific Northwest. She's terrific. Cricket loves her and loves getting massaged and stretched and swimming in the warm water pool just for dogs (and their people).

Reflection on reflection

I was looking back through my New Zealand photos to see if there were any good ones I hadn't used yet. This older gentleman agreed to let me photograph him to get the photo of the stunning backdrop reflected in his sunglasses. I like the way you can see the crows' feet on his cheek blending into the hillside in the reflection, looking as if they were ripples in the ground. There happened to be a photographer in the middle of the gorgeous scenery, but I didn't Photoshop her out. An incidental self-portrait.

Here's that same scene as it appeared unreflected, from a slightly different angle. I'd say the image in the man's lens is a pretty good likeness. Doesn't this just make you want to go there?! This photo was taken on one of the islands in the Bay of Islands. Sorry, I can't remember which one. But if you take the "Best of the Bay" boat cruise (the original "Cream Trip") offered by Fullers Bay of Islands, departing from Paihia, you'll get to see this and other beautiful sights.

OK, so this didn't turn out to be much of a reflection, but more of a sales pitch. Honest, I have nothing to gain from it, other than the knowledge that you too might be able to get some cool photos of dolphins, etc.

Popular Photography

No, not the magazine by that name. I'm talking about Nikon's brilliant marketing campaign, Picturetown. They gave 200 D40 digital cameras to 200 random people of Georgetown, South Carolina, to prove that anyone can take great pictures if they have the right camera. It doesn't completely invalidate the time-worn photographers' adage that it's not the camera, it's the photographer (which Michael Reichmann of The Luminous Landscape rightly points out is not really true anyway -- there are many factors, including the photographer and the camera). But Kodak's advertising sure attempts to blur the line between professionals and amateurs. Is there a line anyway? Or is it more a continuum?

Some of the photos showcased on that site are indeed quite nice and aesthetically composed. Others are very sharp and have good colors but are still just snapshots. Nothing wrong with "just snapshots," mind you -- in fact I think it's wonderful that more people can now take photos of their family members, pets, vacations, etc., that they are pleased with. It might take some business away from professional portrait photographers, but there is still room for us artsy types. And perhaps as good photography becomes even more accessible to the general public, more people will find the aesthetic element in it draws them to learn more and increase their skill, which I think will increase the joy they derive from doing it. That would be a good thing.

Some photographers might grumble at the thought of more competition. But when one views the process of doing art and the pleasure derived from it as half or more of the benefit of doing it (beyond the money you can earn or the positive reactions you get from other people viewing your results), then it's easier to have an abundance mentality rather than a scarcity mentality. “People with a scarcity mentality tend to see everything in terms of win-lose. There is only so much; and if someone else has it, that means there will be less for me. The more principle-centered we become, the more we develop an abundance mentality, the more we are genuinely happy for the successes, well-being, achievements, recognition, and good fortune of other people. We believe their success adds to...rather than detracts from...our lives.” (Stephen Covey)

So how does my photo of the day (above left) compare to the dolphin shot (right) by "Picturetown" resident Mark Collins, who admits he's "pretty much a novice at this"? (The Picturetown site has a feature where you can download any of the photos there, so I'm sure I'm not doing anything illegal by reproducing it here; however, I'm giving credit to the photographer and a link to the original just to be sure. See the Picturetown site for a video containing Mark's comments on how he got the shot, which is where I got the quote about his self-assessment of his skills.) My photo is better, I think. I like that it's more saturated and shows the motion of the dolphins better. His is too bland and too static for my taste, however he does have a nice repetition of curves, and he caught the fin of the baby between the adults. And he was closer. Even though my photo is probably better, I'm not sure I really have enough of an edge over this novice with a free camera from Nikon to make much of a stink about "it's the photographer, not the camera." After all, I've got a better camera... ;-)

New material

I've been cheating on my blog for a few weeks, bringing out old material, dipping into another medium, taking longer and longer breaks. It's obvious I wasn't getting out there and taking any new photos. One of the reasons I started this blog in the first place was as an incentive to create some new photos. Well, I've been getting back to that goal recently, so today I begin a stretch of some fresh material.

This photo is a portrait of Boo, my sister's cat, whom I had the great pleasure to visit last weekend in Boston (along with my sister and her husband, of course). I promised my sister that Boo would make it into my blog, as Cricket (my dog) has. So I'm keeping my promise.

Peek-a-baa!

Back to the New Zealand series after a couple of important interrup­tions.

I was taking a walk around the grounds before a farm show started, and I stopped to see the sheep. The farm let visitors walk in amongst the sheep as long as we closed the gate behind us when we went into the enclosure. This eager fellow couldn't wait for me to come in. He was probably hoping for a little more than a scratch behind the ears, but that's all he got, as well as having his portrait taken. I don't know how he could stare at me with such anticipation -- it looks like he hasn't got any eyes!

Integration of photography and life

A quote from Bruce Barnbaum, The Art of Photography (emphasis mine):

I have long felt that most people segregate their lives, putting their work in one place, photography in another, music in a third, other outside interests in a fourth, etc....Art, music, religion, food gathering, birth, marriage and death, are all intertwined. Each represents an essential part of life, and none can exist without support from the others. Why we have evolved into a civilization that segregates these aspects of life into essential and nonessential aspects could be a lifelong study for teams of anthropologists. But I feel that each of us who are seriously interested in making photographs could benefit greatly by trying to integrate the many facets of our own lives.

I have mostly been reflecting thus far on how photo­graphy integrates with my faith. But there are all sorts of other areas of my life that it touches on. I knew this blog couldn't go very long without including my black lab, Cricket, who is a big part of my life. She's also a great subject for photos. We'd just arrived in the parking lot for Cricket's canine water therapy appointment (basically underwater massage and swimming in a heated dogs-only pool; ah, what luxury!). I had brought my camera along to do a photo shoot for Cindy Horsfall for her La Paw Spa website. I happened to have it ready in hand when I turned around and saw Cricket begin to yawn, and I managed to catch her right at the curled tongue stage. I've titled this one "Are We There Yet?"

In animal photography, the key is to focus on the eyes. It's not such a big deal if the snout is out of focus, as it adds depth to the photo, especially with a solid colored pet. In this case, Cricket's eyes weren't open anyway, and her tongue was the point of interest, so I focused on that. Incidentally, dogs aren't the only animals who curl their tongues when they yawn. See this award-winning photo by Don Johnson.