Coast to Coast AM Radio Show

If you are not familiar with this radio show, you should in my opinion. I have been listening to this for many years now pretty religiously and they posted some of the images I took of my time with Faith on their homepage of their website for people to see. It is a cool show like that which really lets you participate and take part in the show. You can see it on the Coasttocoastam website under Listener's Emails and can see more there.  

Faith Chicago Visit

The other week I was fortunate to meet and spend some quality time with an amazing dog named Faith. Many may already know of her or have seen her on television, but she is truly a beautiful spirit. If you do not know her story, you can read more about it and hear the full story on faiththedog.net. She was born with deformities and was the only pup with deformities to make it and learned to walk upright with some unconditional love and support from her family. She is now five and her guardian Jude has hired me as her photographer and spent time in the city taking photos and wanted to share one. This was my first time meeting Faith and the day was an amazing experience from beginning to end and am still riding the high. It was awesome to see what type of lasting impression she has on everyone and made her mark on me. She really is a celebrity for many reasons other than the obvious and has made appearances on Oprah, Montel, talked about on Letterman, in the last issue of People, etc. and people definitely notice in amazement young, old, black, white...it does not matter! She also is an an honorary Sergeant in the army and goes to Walter Reed and other military hospitals for moral boosts and plans on doing the same in Iraq in the near future and also works as a therapy dog so can go anywhere....and I mean anywhere! She was the ONLY dog I have ever seen walking in Millennium Park in Chicago and she was owning it! We can all learn something from this little girl named Faith!

Chicagoland Tails Style Shoot

It has been hard since Ruger has moved on and is still tough but have no choice but to continue on with him always in my heart. I was hired by Chicagoland Tails Magazine to shoot some product shots for their style issue coming up and it was a lot of fun and pretty hectic with all the doggies and kitties that were there waiting to model for us. Here is one of the shots from the day. I will be writing more frequently again and trying to get back in the swing of things.

Ruger

My best friend and pal of almost 13 years I had to say goodbye to the other night and he will be dearly missed. Rest In Peace Good Boy.

08-08-2008

Not much doing today other than a job later on in the evening. I tried something new and took my bird(Sun Conure) Sammy for a bike ride and about a block down realized that was not a great idea once he flew off my shoulder and into the air for his biggest flight yet! He made a huge swooping circle to come back for a landing in a near by shrub. I am sure it was cool for him to really spread his wings, but I was in panic mode for about 5 seconds. I luckily got him back on my shoulder and back to his safe home...phewww! :)

Gone Swimming!

Yesterday...Sunday...I went by a friends pool to let their dogs out and to also take a dip in the pool to cool off on another hot summer day. My friend has two smaller doggies names Buddy and Red and his girlfriend's dog Jack was there to join me in the pool. He is a yellow lab and a very good swimmer as I later found out! The minute I let the dogs out he streamlined right for the lake and jumped in and then rolled around a bit on the grass and hung out with me at the pool. I realized he liked this volleyball I was playing with and tossed it into the pool and he barely hesitated and jumped right in for it. He probably swam 40 laps in that pool fetching and playing with that yellow ball....no exaggeration. We had fun hanging out in the pool and here is a snapshot from the day. Check in soon.

Montrose Dog Beach Adventure

I decided last minute to take advantage of the beautiful summer day and drive into the city to head to the Montrose Dog Beach. For those in the area that have not been there before...you should! It is a ton of fun watching all these dogs play together and fly through the waves. This was a particularly crowded day and there were a ton of doggies there. I brought my camera case, my tripod, and a body and camped out in the sand near the shore. I got some great shots throughout the day and had my camera bag peed on, as it was the only fixed large object on the beach. I guess I am fortunate I did not buy the red Pelican case as I would have been a fire hydrant for all those dogs! Once the one dog went on the case, it was fair game for the rest of the day. I was literally fighting the dogs off and every time I turned my back someone was ready to go. I had my case peed on, both my socks, my shoe, and my tripod! I guess it is par for the course when photographing dogs at a dog beach;) Check back at my site in a few days and I will have posted some of the highlights from the day in my Dog Beach portfolio. @.

Pet Prints Getting Delivered

Not too much doing today on the pet front other than having some larger prints that I had printed and framed for a client and a pet store in the city getting delivered to me tonight which is cool. I also printed a really large 90" x 60" print of one of my shots for a large camera store in the city to display in their showroom downtown. It is the Duma Night Cruz shot of Duma the Waterskiing Dog driving her boat at night with the Chicago skyline in the background. It is Calumet Photographic and a great camera store for those of you who do not know them and also have a location in Oak Brook now too. If ever in the city stop by and check out the print...it is pretty neat seeing your work blown up and printed so big....cool stuff! That is it for now.

Dog Wash Photos

It has been a minute since I posted and just getting back to my computer after having some trouble with it and my new camera and is not sorted for the most part. This all started when I was photographing the charity dog wash over at The Doghouse of Barrington the other weekend, which was a lot of fun and a great turn out. The weather was not the best, but it was at least warm and most were wet already from the "DOG WASH" so the misty weather did no harm. I have some of the images posted already to my portfolio section of the site for people to see and have a link over at the Doghouse site as well. That is it for now and until I start getting some traffic here I am going to be posting a few times a week. Until then....

PPP Business Cards

I am really excited to have received my new and improved Perfect Pet Photos business cards today from my printer out in California and they look PERFECT!!! I am really excited to start promoting this side of my photography business and these cards are going to work out perfectly to do so. I have many new prints going up at different businesses and also am in the process of printing my "Duma Night Cruz" image of Duma the Waterskiing Dog driving the boat with the Chicago skyline in the background for the Calumet Photographic store in Chicago. Right now they are displaying a 60" print of mine and am going to swap it out for the new larger new and improved 90" print I am printing this week. It should look amazing at that size and am anxious to see it up on their wall. Stop in if ever in the city and check it out for yourself...it should be a giant fun print!

Animal Rescues

Yesterday my friend called me from his home in Barrington Hills and told me to come by to photograph this baby raccoon that he found by his door of his house. I was not sure what was really going on and looked into this because it did not seem like normal behavior with the mother leaving it or something that may happen with a baby deer for example and found out that most likely something was up. I drove by and brought my camera and got out of the car without my equipment to first see what was going on. I noticed that this little guy was in really bad shape and upon closer inspection noticed he was covered in maggots. Sorry for the squeamish out there, but that was really the case and was really tough for me too. But this little guy was in desperate need of help and knew something needed to be done asap. I made a couple of calls to my friends over at the Flint Creek Wildlife rescue over by me and they confirmed this was not normal obviously and probably not a very positive sign for this guy recovering from this. I proceeded to get some gloves and cue tips and water to carefully remove as many of the maggots that were on him and clean him up as best as I could and then put him in a box and covered him up so no more flies or anything could prey on him. I made a ton of phone calls to various rescues, but being a Sunday hardly anyone was answering their phones. Most rescues do this out of their homes and on the side and this is something that is to be expected, but it still is frustrating when you really do not know what to do. I finally got a name and number from my friends over at Flint Creek and they told me to call a 24 hour vet in the area that would take the raccoon and fortunately there was a lady there that was very familiar with raccoon rehabilitation. I brought him to her and dropped him off. She looked at him and we both knew it did not look good, but she reassured me that she has seen these guys coming back from worse which was a nice positive thing to hear. I know she took her home and tried her best, but the little guy did not make it and passed away this morning. At least he is no longer suffering and we gave it our best.
On a good note, today I was driving back from a photo shoot and I noticed a car stopped on route 14 and blocking traffic and noticed there was a turtle in front of her car crossing the road. I made a u-turn at the next chance I could and pulled up behind her to help and noticed it was a pretty large snapping turtle and knew I had to be careful. I managed to grab him and get out of harms reach of him turning and trying to bite and carried him off to safety across the road. People seemed to be alright with the fact my car was in the middle of a highway stopped knowing I just did the right thing and went out of my way to help an animal. :) That was all in a 12 hour period....lots of excitement without even trying. A.

Hello and Welcome!!!

FIrst off, before I say anything let me tell you all welcome and thanks for taking time to stop by my blog for my new pet photography website that is going to be strictly focusing on my pet photography and my pet photography services. The site is going to be live and complete very shortly and as of now I have a temporary homepage up until the grand launch of the site. It should be a lot of fun not having any limits to how much I can talk about animals and my various encounters I have with them each and every day. I guess I should start off by saying I myself have a dog named Ruger who is a Rottweiler, a kitty named Desmo who is a Bangel cat, and Sammy who is a fluffy Sun Conure. They are all males and keep me busy to say the least and are the loves of my life! I am sure you will be seeing many pictures of them throughout the time here. I am going to keep this short and leave off with much more to come. Thanks and don't be shy and leave me talking to myself! ;)