portrait of the hairdog

I'm never sure how much of our family to reveal here on the blog. I vacillate between wanting to show off both my beautiful children and my budding picture taking skills on the one hand, and worrying about exposing their images to the world on the other. What I've ended up with is a hotch potch policy, depending upon the specific photo and my mood on the day of posting


I was struggling with which photo to post for Tara's gallery this week, the theme of which is "portraits". Should I indulge myself, and post some of the lovely pictures I've taken of the children? I know this wonderful audience would give kind comments and I could bask in your praise and admiration. But would that be a selfish use of very personal images? Then again, I love to look at pictures of other peoples beautiful kids on their blogs, so wouldn't it be fair to show some of mine?

Then this weekend I captured this perfect portrait of our first "child", the hairdog of the blog, our Geekyhound, and my dilemma was solved, at least for this week.

In the years before kids she was the focus of much of my photographic efforts, we joked that she was the most photographed dog in California, but I was never able to truly capture her beauty with previous tools. Black dogs are hard to photograph. Incidentally this probably plays a part in why animal shelters, who rely on pictorial adverts, find black dogs hard to place.

One of the things I love the most about my new camera is how well I can capture the texture and beauty of my big black shelter dog.

I took this one while she was sitting, sphinx like on a snow bank watching us sled. There was such an intelligence and nobility to her gaze. What was she thinking about?

If you have a dog (or seen the talking dogs in the Pixar movie "Up") you may have guessed what was on her mind. "Squirrel". Ten seconds after I took the shot she sprang away to chase the varmint that had prompted that rapt expression.

I copped out and posted a portrait of a dog, but I'm hoping you blogger friends all posted pictures of your gorgeous children!