Farm Fresh Blog

Snapshots are memories captured in time. That's why I love taking pictures. I want to remember this moment, that flower, this texture, that tree against the sunset. But often the very act of taking the picture becomes a memory of its own. I love looking at calendar pictures and award winning photographs. They're nice, but they usually lack one thing. I really want the "behind the story" of each picture. I wish calendars including THAT. Yeah, yeah, any camera can take a good picture. I don't care what f-stop and ISO you used. Tell me the STORY behind the picture.

For instance, let's take these two pictures:

Not earthshattering, but cute enough to satisfy me. Now let's examine the story behind the pictures. It was raining. We had loaded the dogs up and were headed into town. At the end of our gate, Other Half had planned to turn right, but something caught my eye toward the left, so he waited there while I got out in the rain and walked toward this beautiful patch of red with my camera.

Keep in mind that it is raining. This clearly shows in the photos. I'm not sure what Rocket Scientist thought she could take pictures in the rain like this. Nevertheless, I took bunches of photos of wet flowers. But guess what? You know what wet flowers need?  Wet dogs!  So I motion to Other Half to drive the truck over to me.

He doesn't move.

I step out into the road and wave.

He doesn't move.

Surely he sees me. I dance in the road to get his attention. Nope. Nada. Nothing.

By then I'm a bitchy bear. That man is IGNORING me in the rain! I stalk back to truck. Other Half is happily playing on his iPhone. (high tech redneck) I snarl something rude about him ignoring me to which he defends himself by explaining that he never saw me motioning to him. (I could have been dancing with Fred Astaire in the rain and he would have missed it.)

So we drove over to the red flowers and I selected my first subject (victim). Lily. Always Lily. She is always the chosen one. Lily has had a camera in her face since she was six weeks old. She has this runway model thing down. Pouty face and all.

I snap my shots and exchange her for Trace. While he isn't keen on a modeling career, the camera likes Trace. He's a nice color for most shots. Lily's stark black and white often creates problems. So I chose Trace.  He happily leaped out of the truck. All was well until he realized that we weren't on a bunny hunt, a snake hunt, a rat hunt, a cow hunt, or a sheep hunt.

We were having a photo shoot in the rain. I think these pictures pretty much sum up the way Trace felt about his photo shoot.

Gee whiz. Why do these dogs have to be such divas?

And Dillon? Where was Chocolate Thunder you ask? The D-Man absolutely sucks at modeling. He is a gooberhead with a less than stellar "stay" for posed shots. I am reminded of Alice the Bloodhound. When asked to model, Dillon stays for half a second, announces, "This is Stupid!" and walks off. Yes, we need to work on our stay command. Dillon is a perfect example of the Shoemaker's children. Two dog trainers have an ill-mannered, goofy puppy. Go figure.

So anyway, that's the STORY behind the picture!