Trying to keep up

It's often hard to know what to say in these posts when the even tenor of our days is proceeding undisturbed, but that's not the case today. I need to start with a rather disappointing session yesterday afternoon at Venture Photography. At Crick Show Elanor had bought one of those introductory vouchers for a family session, explicitly because she wanted some nice photos of Sally.

We all turned up there a bit before three after an exciting exploration of Derby's ring road and one way system. The photographer assigned to us seemed very young and the whole atmosphere was very trendy; indeed Graham the clog iron engineer, one of the most skilled amateur snappers I know, would probably have called it arty-farty ;)

No matter, upstairs we went to the studio and had a conversation about what we wanted from the session. We started out with the three of us grouped behind Sal and threw her toy towards the photographer so that she moved forward and pulled on the lead. The first couple of shots were fine, but then the combination of the whine of the focussing motor and the flash of the floods upset her and she started barking.

After that, things went rapidly downhill. Various ploys were attempted, working with just Elanor and Sally, but the photographer insisted that she had to use the flash even though Sal clearly found it distressing. We quickly got the impression that the photographer had limited experience with working with animals; she certainly wasn't prepared to try without the flash, even though she was using high quality digital kit and good overall illumination.

In the end, Elanor took Sal out and some shots were taken of Sheila and I, then we looked after Sal whilst Elanor had some individual shots. We didn't use the full session.

The £15 Elanor paid covers the session and one photo (value £245 altogether) but as usual any additional photos have to be paid for. We go back tomorrow to discuss what we want, but I fear it's going to be a short meeting. The cheapest item on the price list is an album of 12 photos for...

£650

Or a single 10" x 10" photo for

£350.

Hah di hah di hah as Sally would say.

Back at the marina we gave Sally a god run in the field to relax her and she seemed fine very quickly. Elanor tells me that when they got home, her one idea was to take her squeaky toy onto the bed to snuggle up with her Mummy.

I've always been very careful with flash near dogs, and to be fair this was a diffused bounce flash, not direct, but still very intense in a smallish white painted room. I think that it was just too painful for Sally to tolerate. I was surprised that an expensive professional photography studio didn't have more resources to deploy to get round what they admitted was a common problem.

Heigh oh, it was only £15 and an afternoon of time spent on it.

Today, we've been buzzing about, doing stuff in the lodge and walking to the village (twice in my case). We recovered with the aid of ice creams from the shop.

Tomorrow, back into Derby, then on Friday I get a day off whilst Sheila goes for a hair do.