Some cutie patooties...

Wow, it seems like f.o.r.e.v.e.r. since I've posted anything so I thought I'd put together a quickie post.  Life has been quite busy lately.  I helped out my friend Robin at her shop by providing some pet photography over the weekend and it proved to be both fun yet challenging. 

First off, let me say, I. AM. NOT. CESAR. MILLAN.  Ok, I got that off my chest. 

Robin only had about 4 people show up for what was to be a mini session.  For the most part, it went quite well with one exception...

The last lady brought two dogs, Shih-tzu's.  One that would not look at the camera no matter what we did and the other that was down right uncooperative!  I end up snapping about 50 photos that were useless all in an attempt to snap what I hoped was ONE or TWO good photos...I did this on purpose. 

(Did I mention that I. AM. NOT. CESAR. MILLAN??)

When a dog (or child or adult, or bird, or bumble bee, you get the idea) is constantly moving and won't stay still, it makes it impossible to obtain GREAT results...which I'm sure you can appreciate.  So after what felt like an hour of snapping photos, I offered to show the owner a preview on the computer (MISTAKE #1).

She immediately HATED every single one of the pictures.  No joke, she hated them all.  In fact, she proceeded to berate me about my photography skills and asked why I would take such terrible photos!  No joke again, this continued on for a couple of minutes, all the while I'm getting more and more annoyed! 

 (Did I mention that I. AM. NOT. CESAR. MILLAN??)

FINALLY, in as nice of a voice that I could muster up, I calmly but firmly explained the facts of the situation to her.

• That SHE couldn't even control her dogs how in the world did she expect me to do it?
• In photography when you're working with challenging subjects, you take photos in bursts...one shot right after the other as fast as the camera will fire IN HOPES that you capture a few good shots.
• And that if she wasn't happy with any of the photos, I wasn't going to waste my time editing any of them for her, she'd have to go somewhere else.

Whew! My blood pressure is starting to rise just typing this story...

In the end, she said to send her 3 or 4 photos.  Eeek!  

I haven't even begun to look at those photos but I do have a couple photos from the other pupper dogs that did cooperate...

 

 

I took away a few very valuable lessons from this experience and will definitely change up a couple of things next year as I do photography on the side as a little side business.  I am very thankful for all the people who have helped me hone my skills along the way.  I am looking forward to 2013 to see what photography projects come my way.

There are always lessons in life...it's a matter of being able to see them for what they are OR have them slam you over the head like a sledge hammer. 

I prefer to see them the easy way and hope to avoid the sledge hammers out there!  :-)