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Picture Info: ISO 100, 34mm, f/2.8, 1/640 sec

Week 40 (5/5/2014 -5/11/2014): Home

Picture taken on 5/11/2014 at 5:52 PM

Picture description:

The story of “Molly & Me” started a few years ago. One day my parents surprised me and my family by coming home with a beautiful, lovable and a little skittish puppy. My parents rescued the puppy from a shelter and her uneasy disposition was attributed to abuse from her mom. We decided on the name Molly and for her and my family it was love at first sight. In fact upon arriving at my house she immediately curled up in a ball on my brothers lap. It’s safe to say from that day forward she stole all of our hearts.

In the weeks following our adoption of Molly she spent most nights restlessly moving around and unable to relax. She only seemed to relax when someone was close to her or she was on someone’s lap. Eventually it was decided that she would sleep downstairs (My room was in the basement at the time) in my room. For the first couple of nights I tried to have her sleep in a crate but she just cried and shivered. Eventually I folded and had her sleep next to my bed on the floor. She would toss and turn until I would rest my hand on her head, allowing her to finally relax and go to sleep. This became the new norm for weeks until I let her try out my futon. After letting her take a nap with me on the futon she realized the advantages of not sleeping on the floor. From that day forward she slept on the futon but still needed me to give her a little pat on the head before going to sleep. As the weeks turned to months me and my new roommate grew very close. When I took a nap, Molly took a nap, when I watched TV, Molly watched TV, when I ate, Molly ate. We were two peas in a pod.

Fast forward to the present day, I’ve been moved out for over a year and we’re still close. Whenever I visit my parents she gives me the warmest greeting and immediately tries to get me to go outside to play. Our outdoor time is probably what Molly misses the most about me. I’m one of the few that can handle how rough she gets outside, and yet can tame her with one stern finger point. No matter the weather everytime I go home I make it a point to get outside and play rough with her for at least a few minutes. While visiting home this past weekend for Mother’s day I so happen to have my camera to capture some nice moments while we were outside playing.

Photography concepts:

This week wasn’t my first time photographing an animal, but even with having previous experience it still wasn’t easy. Molly was a tricky subject to photograph because she is camera shy. Most of the times that I tried to take a picture, Molly turned her head (as seen in this picture). Another difficulty was Molly (like most animals) couldn’t sit still, so getting her to pause long enough to compose a good shot was hard. The key advantage I had with Molly versus other animals I’ve photographed, was that I had a trick up my sleeve…treats! Yes I bribed Molly with a couple of well timed treats to get her lined up and to stay where I wanted. For this picture I threw a treat in the grass then as I tried to take the picture, her head turning habit did the rest. I used her habit to my advantage by staging her in a way so that she was looking back at the door and almost back towards the sunlight. For the most part things worked out exactly as planned, and the one thing that didn’t actually turned out to be a benefit.

Molly rushing towards the camera

The thing that didn’t go as planned was where my focus point landed. Since molly was moving around so much I was using my 39 point autofocus point feature. By using autofocus point my camera analyzed the photo and selected what it thought I was aiming at. I would say it selected the majority of the time, but in this picture it picked up on the grass. Since I was using a wide aperture (f/2.8), Molly ended up being blurred while a small area of the grass was in sharp focus. When I was sorting through my pictures, I noticed that I had two very similar pictures, one with the grass in focus, and one with Molly. I felt like the picture which focused on the grass was a much more unique and interesting picture, and so I chose it for this week’s photograph.