Life on the Leash

I decided that it was time to update my web photo. The one I’ve been using for the past few years, seen here, is outdated now. The hair is longer, the wrinkles are more prevalent, and that dog in the photo? Yeah, she’s not even mine! (Thanks for letting me borrow her, Mark and Nicolle!)

Rather than spend tons of dough on a professional photo like I did last time, I decided to try the DIY approach. I enlisted my husband, Tom, to be the photographer, and set up a backdrop in our work room. We did a test run a few days before the actual shoot, just to make sure that it would look semi-decent:

(Tom says that I look like Travis Tritt or Kid Rock when I wear my hair like that with a hat. Thanks, Honey, that’s sweet.)

We did the shoot after a family party a few months ago … I rarely wear make-up these days, so we took advantage of the fact that I was already gussied up. As you can see, the boys were thrilled to participate:

We had a bunch of technical difficulties before we hit our stride. Camera-shy dogs, a too-small backdrop, the heat from the lights, and Tom’s learning curve with my camera made it rough going for the first few frames:

I tried a variety of poses. The guys were feeling rather silly when I sat on the floor next to them:

I stood up and gave them a little pep talk, then turned to Tom and asked him to make some noise to get the guys to look at the camera.

He obliged with a realistic-sounding bark. Too realistic. Sumner barked back at him …

Which made Zeke get sassy …

And it continued like that for a while. The guys either looked miserable, or ridiculous. Oh, and then there were the ridiculous shots of me … Ms. November called. She wants her pose back:

140 photos later, we managed to snap a decent shot for the “about” section of this web site (though the guys look less than thrilled).