Ain't Love Grand?

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Naturally, I love all the fun suggestions for a name. Keep them coming, please. Day 3 and we continue to discuss and negotiate. He is still Puppy.

Whew. I am relieved to get pre-approval for more self-indulgent pictures of our canine version of the Energizer Bunny. The one above is no more than a poorly done snapshot. But, I ask you, "Would you rather play with this adorable creature, or be stuck behind a camera, or perhaps be staring at a computer monitor?" My answer is that I am typing with one finger because the creature is using my right arm as a pillow and taking a brief nap in my lap. Sigh. Ain't love grand?

McGraw’s Kid

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It’s always something with me, isn’t it?

This time, the distraction is eight weeks old and weighs maybe four pounds. So far, his only name is Puppy, although he is occasionally referred to as “Mcgraw’s Kid”. His sire, Brangay Quick Draw, is known to most as McGraw. Does this mean Puppy needs to have a name such as Wild Bill Hickock, or Wyatt Earp. I hope not.

One thing is certain. Not only is Puppy the center of attention, but hunting him down and preparing for his arrival totally consumed every waking moment for more than a week. I could say now that he is here, life will be more normal. But, that wouldn’t be smart, now would it? It is a fact that life will be different.

By the way, brace yourself for occasional puppy pictures. If you are one of those who can’t handle syrupy sweet puppy photos now and again, step away from the blog.

Dortel, El Caballo Negro

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There are horses everywhere you turn at Silent Knights Farms. And, to top it off, Spring was in full swing when we arrived there April 16—balmy temperatures, sunshine, flowers, horses, seven dogs. For me, it was a little bit of Heaven. Since we drove down on Friday and returned Monday, I had two full days there to soak up all the goodness.

Don’t get me wrong, life here in Bear Valley Springs is mighty sweet; but I had grown quite weary repeating, “Goodbye, Winter. It was nice knowing you. See you next year. Don’t hurry back,” only to have Mr. Winter come roaring back for an unwelcome encore. (It snowed here last night—two days before May.) A weekend of uninterrupted Spring was a lovely gift. And, of course, there is no such thing as too many horses about.

Naturally, I fell in love with a couple of horses that were new to me. That's typical of me, I'm afraid. I’m a sucker for great looks and spirit. But, two of my sweetest treats came in the form of reunions of sorts with old crushes of mine.

One of the sweetest reunions was with the black gelding, Dortel. Dortel, the wild man. Dortel, who puts on the tough guy, I-will-eat-you-alive act one minute, but in another stands peacefully while I croon to him in my nonsensical and butchered Spanish. I whisper “Beunos dias,mi Querida. Usted es muy dulce . Mi caballo negro es muy hermoso. El Caballo es muy grande, muy elegante.” (Good day, my love. You are very sweet .) Okay, laying it on a bit thick, but I’m kinda crazy about the beast; and, as for the next part, he certainly is black, black as coal, and very beautiful. Then, the horse is very large (That’s a lie. He’s an Arabian and far from huge.) Very smart. (Yes, maybe too smart for his own good.) Dortel doesn’t know what I’m babbling on about and certainly doesn’t care that I am close to exhausting my miniscule Spanish vocabulary. I would feel even sillier talking to him about el gato (the cat) or telling him that el rio es rojo (the river is red). Therefore, the next stage usually ends up being “El caballo es muy loco y El Diablo, Si, uno caballo malo . Muy, muy loco en la cabeza.” Dortel isn’t fazed by being informed that he is crazy, a devil, bad, and even very crazy in the head. He just seems to like the sound of the Spanish language. Well, I think it sounds nice, as well, so we visit that way for a while.
Years ago, I met my friend at Silent Knight Farms, because of Dortel. She was walking him out after an endurance ride in Malibu and the moment I spotted them, I was smitten. She looked friendly and I asked the stranger if I might take some photos of her horse. She smiled, said sure, and that’s how it began. She became a client first, then a dear friend. And all because of this muy loco caballo. It was grand seeing him, this weekend, at liberty in one of the larger turnouts. What a joy he is to watch. Like the wind.

In Spring a Girl’s Fancy...

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turns to camera gear and accessories. What? Camera gear and accessories?!! That doesn't sound right. Oh, well. Maybe that’s the difference between young girls and older girls. Yes. I suspect that’s it in a nutshell.

Last weekend, while photographing horses and the welcome signs of full blown Spring just a couple hundred miles south of us, I thought quite a bit about camera gear. Mostly my thoughts lingered on horses, flowers, and trees—like the pepper trees pictured here (one of my favorite trees). Occasionally, however, I was distracted by thoughts about camera accessories.

It’s time for a confession. I have never owned an extreme memory card. Yes, I know. Way behind the times. I’m still using SanDisk Ultra IIs. Why? Simple. They are cheaper. Now, I won’t drop below that quality; but, I have yet to splurge on an extreme card. I am curious as to whether or not anyone can vouch for the advantages. This issue comes up for me only when I am photographing horses at liberty, the hooves and dust are flying, and I want to take advantage of a little burst of “spray and pray” technique. Waiting for the buffer on my 50D to clear, I can’t help but wonder if the extreme card might help that along just a tad.

Now, I could switch to Jpeg format to ease the strain, but that isn’t going to happen. I am hopelessly addicted to RAW. I have a great number of old photographs taken in Jpeg format that I would dearly love to be magically transformed to RAW. What I can accomplish in ACR with a Jpeg file doesn’t come close to what I can mine from a RAW file. Of course, the better solution to the problem is a Canon 1D and extreme cards. Dream on, Anita. Not in the cards. The other kind of cards.

If you have any experience with extreme cards and can encourage me that they will make an appreciable difference when shooting fast action, I will go for it. What little I know about extreme cards leads me to believe that their main advantage shows up when you download files to your storage device. But, I may be dead wrong about that. I haven’t bought any yet, because I suspect the only thing that would make any appreciable difference would be that other camera that will have to remain in the “wouldn’t it be nice?” category. That or stop using high-speed continuous shooting mode.

Sigh. Choices. I think I’ll concentrate on pepper trees for a while. It’s easier and much less expensive.

Voodoo computing

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I am not a big conspiracy fan; I’m not really too keen on the notion of dark spells being cast; and, I am not superstitious. Still.

Last week I was going along reviewing the hundreds of photos I took at Silent Knight Farms, when I took a break to read some blogs. I was a being a lurker and not taking time to leave comments—all taking on my part, no giving. (Hey, I may have stumbled on the key to this whole thing with that last phrase.)

At any rate, I read Chris Klug’s post about the failing hard drives and tried to brush off the sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. (Fortunately, that sick feeling these days means a psychological reaction rather than, “Drats. I’m going to be up all night and will need three days to recover from the night’s ordeal. Let’s hear it for gall bladder removal!)

Sure enough over the next day or two my computer began to behave erratically. That sick feeling came back and I got to work checking hard drives. I checked three older drives that have been in service for years and everything appeared to be A-OK. The newest drive, the 1 terabyte, also checked out. Then I got to the second newest Western Digital, a 500 gig drive that has been in service about two years, and oops, bad news. Windows couldn’t analyze to see if I needed to run the defragmenter because the drive “is scheduled for checkdisk”. Since I didn’t schedule the check, I got the message that Microsoft is trying to tell me something.

Some of you who have run Windows may be saying, “What’s the big deal? Run the checkdisk and move on.” I would except for one thing. About three years ago I ran checkdisk on a 500 gig Seagate and everything seemed to go just dandy with a clean bill of health at the conclusion. Just one small problem. The disk was clean. No, I mean pristine clean. Not a single shred of data left. I swore. I cried. I pouted. All to no avail, of course, and I ultimately went about resurrecting the files from other sources. Now, you know why I am making another backup of the disk that “is scheduled for checkdisk”, before I turn Windows loose on my data. It’s tedious work, but all that swearing, crying, and pouting wore me out last time. I’m opting for tedious this time, rather than living dangerously.

Now, I don’t actually blame Chris for this, since I don’t really believe that just because I used this computer to view and read that post my computer got the notion to follow the example of Chris’s hard drive. I’m just saying….

Up For a Quick Breath of Air

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(The photo was taken weeks ago, when snow was totally appropriate. This post was written on Tuesday, or was it Wednesday? But, it has been a wild ride of a week, and I’m going to post this as is.

Having spent last weekend at Silent Knight Farms, I came home with hundreds of photos. From early Saturday morning until late Sunday evening, I didn’t do much else other than take pictures of horses. I collected bulging folders with photos of thirteen of the horses at Silent Knight. I returned with one 2 gig and one old one gig card untouched, while everything else I own had been in a camera and gotten considerable use during the weekend. Because I was photographing mostly fast action, I accumulated a sizeable stack of discards, but I got some things that I like. I have more than enough images to keep me busy editing and processing for several days, if I were to work straight through. The entire job will take much longer than that.

Originally, I was scheduled to come home and set up another session with a friend here in Bear Valley Springs the week of April 19. Unfortunately, Spring ended here while we were relishing the balmy weather down south. Yesterday, we had rain and last night, snow. Snow is falling as I write this, and our predicted low for tonight is 28 degrees.

It seems like a good time to process photos. Inside. Where it’s dry. And warm.

At Silent Knight Farms

At Silent Knight Farms

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I'm still all caught up in Animoto videos. Who said I'm compulsive? Little old me? Nah!

Note, in case you watch this one: Before hitting the play button, check in the lower left hand corner for the buttons that will allow you to switch to high resolution and full screen.

I upgraded for longer videos, bought a high resolution credit, and put this one together, yesterday, for a dear friend who began as a client many years ago. This video thing could develop into a nasty habit.

Outside My Window

Outside My Window

Just can't stay out of trouble. Click the link to see why I didn't have time to write anything today. Playing. Now I'll have to upgrade the account and who knows how much trouble I will get into.

Lancer and Night

Lancer and Night

This is what started it all.

I Flunked Blogger Migration 101

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(For what seemed like two weeks at least—a weekend is a long time when you are wandering in the wilderness, whimpering in desperation—my blog was floating somewhere out there in cyberspace, and I had no idea what was going on. Finally, today, I backtracked, restored the original settings and, at least for now, it seems all is normal.

However, the deadline appoacheth. Rest assured, I will seek guidance before tackling migration a second time. This round I plan to hire someone who speaks web design—specifically someone who is familiar with the Blogger dialect. I am not about to dive into that nightmare task again. This is a job that definitely calls for more web savvy than I have. Evidently, I had the settings all cockeyed and heaven only knows where I had routed my poor little blog. It doesn’t appear bruised by the buffeting it must have taken ricocheting about out there in space, but it makes me shudder to think.

Talk about being upset. Whoa. Major league stuff. I managed to keep my sanity by using my camera; but it was a close call, I don’t mind admitting. Lest you think I was anxious about my precious posts, I wasn’t that devastated about losing what I have written. Heavens, no. For one thing, if I did care that much, I have the rough drafts in MS Word. The photos are on my hard drive. What upset me was losing the comments. That is the heart of the blog, after all. All those warm, funny, thoughtful, informative, and thought-provoking comments posting by readers. Why wouldn’t I be tearing my hair out at the thought of those being lost. Whew. Gives me the chills to think about it.