Update: Her new name is Pepper. Much better

Well, my mom got a new dog, but we all get to play with her. We got her from the local animal shelter. We had been looking online for a few months now, and this one caught our eye. We took our other dog Rosie over to visit her to make sure they get along, and they seem to be OK together, so my mom filled out an application. The next day we got a call saying the dog was ours. Yesterday my mom and I went to pick up the dog, and brought her home. My Mom named her Grace. I don’t think it is a very good name for a dog, but I don’t have much of a choice. Grace and Rosie seemed to be OK right off the bat. They are not best friends yet, but I’m sure they will be eventually. Grace is a very active dog, and loves to run around after anything. The crazy thing is when she goes for a drink of water from the pond. She puts the whole front half of her body in the water just to get a drink. Its kind if funny to see. Plus she likes to pull things out of the pond that she thinks don’t belong; like plants.

Grace is a 7 month old Australian Cattle dog. They are supposed to be great frisbee dogs, so that is something I am working at. She will chase after the frisbee, but cant catch it yet. It might be because our backyard isn’t big enough for her to get up to full speed, but I don’t trust her enough to let her run free in the front yard.

You heard me correctly. I passed up a free trip to Hawaii with hotel room and food all paid for. Why, because I would have had to work 12-14 hours a day everyday for a week. The Ritz Carlton in Kapalua, Hawaii is going through a $130,000,000 remodel that is set to open January 2008. The contractor must be a bit behind, if he is going to fly people out a week before Christmas to get things finished. But why take a trip to Hawaii, if all you had time for was work? Plus I would have to leave this weekend, and be home just in time for Christmas. What would you do? Is it worth it?

Maybe if they still need help after Christmas.

One of my photos has made it into a calender. The members at BroadbandReports.com came together to form a website ShootingForACause.com. We took user submitted photos from the Digital Imaging Forum, and made calenders to raise money for the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. You can buy the calenders here, and you can find my photo in the Sunrise Sunset Wall Calendar.

Enjoy.

The more I used the Pentax K10D, the more impressed I am with it. Not only is it cheaper then the Canon XTI, but it is in my opinion a much better camera. In fact it is better then every other camera in its class. No other camera in its class has built in image stabilization, a weather sealed body, 14bit RAW images, and so much more. Today I will be talking about the cameras Multi-exposure feature. This feature does exactly what you would think; it allows you to take multiple photos(up to 9) and combine them into one image.

You might be wondering how this is useful. Well, you could do fun stuff like make ghosts appear in you photos, or you can really put it to use, and use it as a ND filter. Say you want to take a photo of a running river, and you want to water to look like it really moves. Lets say that the proper exposure for this scene is 1/2s @ f/10. That will give you some of the flowing look you want, but not enough. With Multi-exposure you could do 9 shots at 1/2s @ f/10, and that would give you a photo of 4.5s @ f/10. Now your scene will really flow. Plus 9 x 1/2s will have a lot less noise then 4.5s at any ISO. This same feature can be used with night or astro photograhy to cut down on the noise.

I haven’t been able to test this out besides for the fun stuff, but I look forward to my first test at a river or creek.

Some more info, plus some example photos can be found at dpreview.com

Happy shooting