A New Camera

Earlier this month, I purchased a new camera. After Annie's passing, and looking over all the photos that I had taken of her, I realized just how precious those photo memories can be. Before my two back surgeries, I was quite active in photography. I was carrying my camera and lenses with me all of the time and taking pictures. But after my back surgeries, it was harder for me to carry my camera equipment around. It just weighed too much and my back would begin to ache after a while. Most of my lenses were telephoto lenses which are big, bulky and weigh quite a bit. I realized if I am going to continue with my photography I would have to look at it differently.

My first thought was what type of photographs would be important to me and to Nancy. Next, I tried to differentiate how this could be accomplished. I finally concluded, that photographs of our dogs and the many places that we visit would be the most important. One of the limitations that I had with my older camera was using the auto focus when shooting photos of Gail as she moving around. My older camera relied more on contrast to help focus, and with Gail being a black lab, it struggled to always keep her in focus. My new camera uses eye detection to help focus. I have been experimenting with this the last couple of weeks. I can say that eye detection works quite well in keeping the focus point on Gail's face and I am happy with the results. I will be posting some photos of both Gail and Sally in one of my upcoming blogs.

This has been a very busy time for the Frank family. We have had a number of projects to complete around the house before Spring, and We have been doing some traveling, mostly dog inspired travel. The dogs have competed in two nose Scent Work trials. Sally has done very well at both trials and is a bundle of energy. Gail has been missing Annie and at the first trial she competed in, she just wasn't in to it. She was still depressed and missing her sister, Annie. This last weekend, Gail was starting to get over it and she did well. She passed her Detective scent work trial, and now has three Detective ribbons. It has been a little over four months since Gail's ACL surgery and she is almost back to her old self. This weekend we will traveling up north so both Sally and Gail will have more Scent Work training classes.

The last item I need to mention is that Nancy decided she wanted to change the color of her Toyota 4Runner. The 4Runner was eight years old and she was tired of that gray/silver color. She wanted something more striking! I am suppose to tell you she had it painted red. You will need to ask her how much the paint job cost.

Next week, I am planning to start doing our taxes. For some reason, that always puts me in a 'foul' mood. So, I am looking forward to next week, NOT really! Here, is hoping that your next week is better than mine.