This past week was my birthday, so my best friend decided to throw a party for me!

He’s not he biggest party animal though

This shoot was a lot of fun to concept up.  Originally I was going to be included in the shot along with Kosmo, some balloons, and some Miley Cyrus decorations.  After having some difficulties obtaining all the props (except for Kosmo), I decided to simplify things a bit.

Luckily Kosmo is a good sport during shoots; he basically just laid there the whole time.  And if you look closely at the cupcake, you can see that the candle is nearly all the way burnt out.  The only difficulties that he gave me were that he would flinch when I would toss the confetti.

Lighting Info:

This setup was quite similar what I use in Lynn’s Watch Lola Grow project.
A B800 in a PLM to illuminate the background at about 2 stops over the main.
A B400 in a strip box (orientated horizontally) as my main light.
A B800 placed far camera left and pointed a few feet in front of Kosmo to illuminate the confetti.  The light was placed so far away to provide consistent exposure across the frame (that whole inverse square law thingie).

Well, it shouldn’t be any secret, but I absolutely love this little guy.

He always manages to bring a smile to my face doing just the simplest of things.  It could be when he I come home to find his happy little self waiting anxiously for me to walk through the door; when he gives me slobbering wet chin kisses whenever I get near his face; when he insists on sitting in my lap when I’m trying to work on my laptop; when he insists on playing fetch while I’m trying to eat; when he passes audible gas and just looks at you like nothing happened; or even when I come home to find a pile of stuffed animal guts, monkey limbs, squeakers and dismembered hippos.  All of these things bring a smile to my face and remind me of how much I love him.

This post is for you Kosmo.  I less than three you.

With my recent purchases of a new camera and lenses and misc. shooting equipment I've been actively reading The Digital Photography Book Vol. 1 and reading articles on Digital Photography School.  Yesterday, while walking, Kosmo I noticed a great opportunity to try a technique that I recently read from both sources.  So, once I got back to the house I grabbed the camera and decided to try to capture the motion of Kosmo running.

The key to this technique is to shoot in shutter priority mode and use a shutter speed that's slightly slower than normal and to pan your camera with your subject.  If you're lucky and pan with your subject well enough, you'll get your subject in focus and the background will be blurred.  Shooting in burst mode will help increase your chances of getting a good shot with your subject in focus.  I was using a shutter speed of 1/60 to 1/100 with decent results for these tests.

If I would have had some more daylight and could have spent some more time, I probably could have gotten some much better shots.  Overall though I'm pretty satisfied with how they turned out.  I've created a Kosmo Motion Blur page to host more of the shots from this test.

Before I end this post, I'll include one of the photos that didn't turn out too well, but that Lynn and I get a big kick out of because of the look on Kosmo's face.

Stay tuned for another post coming soon where I show a completely opposite technique that I've been experimenting with where I use a fast shutter speed to 'stop' motion.

After a long and doubtful 10 weeks, Kosmo graduated his intermediate class, again with flying colors.  In fact, he graduated valedictorian again (no other graduates this night).

We had to put in a lot of effort in the past few weeks, but it was worth it.  I'm so proud of how far he's come and what we've accomplished despite all the obstacles we've encountered over the past several weeks.
I'm still uncertain whether or not we'll go for the advanced training class.  More than likely we will and try for the CGC certification, but not anytime soon.  I feel that we have more relationship building to accomplish first, and I'm sure we could both use a little break from all the hard work.

That's all this time.  If you see Kosmo, be sure and congratulate him.

For those of you who've been following the Kosmo Mudbutt Epidemic, you should be glad to know that he was finally diagnosed with having hook worms.  The vet has given me some medication that initially took care of the problem.  I don't know how long it's supposed to take to fully work, but so far things are improving.

Kosmo has now gone digital!  While we were at the vet, I had them put an identification chip in him.  It only took a minute and you can't even feel it.  It's supposed to be the size of a grain of rice.  More information can be found on the avidid.com website.

And only 1 more week until he graduates his intermediate obedience training class.  We have a lot of work to do in the next week, but I'm sure we'll get it done.  For those of you who work with me, look for the newest graduation sticker on the cabinet above my desk.