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 03.16.10
Today was the day the winner of the Iditarod crossed the finish line in Nome. It was Lance Mackey’s forth win in a row. His finish time was at 2:59 p.m. on Tuesday, March 16 giving him a total elapsed time of 8 days 23 hours and 59 minutes. This is the second fastest race on record.
My 9 year grand daugher, Savanah watched the finish on television and then came over to spend time with me after school. There were a lot of dropped dogs being returned to Anchorage today so I gave Savanah some quick orientation on using my D40 and we headed outside to take dog pictures. She did great – I think she has some good potential as a photographer. I’ll load her photos up on her Dad’s computer before I head home.
I took so many photos with my D90 that it was hard to choose just one to share with you today. So I used Shape Collage to combine a bunch of my dog photos. I did choose one as my photo of the day and you can see it here.
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03.04.10
Thursday started off with the Musher Meeting here at the Millennium. This is a mandatory meeting for all mushers where they get final instructions for the race, sign all the Trail Mail that they will be carrying to Nome and get their photos taken individually and as a group. They also meet up with their Iditariders for lunch.
This evening was the Musher Banquet where the mushers actually get their bib assignments. Once the list was brought back to the hotel I and Joanne Potts went to work adding the numbers to the web site so everyone can see who will be wearing what number come Saturday morning when the race gets underway.
In between all the official activities I spotted a couple very cool dogs in the lobby of the hotel. One was a huge wolf mix named Geezer and the second belonged to a friend of mine, Peg Moore of St Louis, MO. Her’s is a Wooly Siberian named Fuzz-Butt. I took a bunch of great photos of him, but ended up liking this one the best. I think he looks like he’s smiling!
I’m happy to finally get to post a dog photo since I’m in Alaska for a dog sled race, but you should know that this dog looks nothing like the dogs that will be running the race. There are only a couple people who run pure bred Siberian Huskies. The rest run Alaskan Huskies which are a mixed breed that is bred for speed and endurance. Most weight about 45 pounds. The wolf mix dog I saw today weighed 95 pounds and although Fuzz-Butt looked large, he was mostly fur and probably only weighted about 40 pounds. I’ll be posting sled dog photos soon, so stay tuned!
Nikon D90
with Nikon 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6G AF-S ED VR II Zoom Lens
at 65mm, 1/60s, f/5.0, ISO 200, SB-800 Speedlight, cropped
 Wooly Siberian Husky ![]()
02.17.10
Good news – it looks like we’re in for a few days of sunshine. I’m seeing similar weather on television up in Vancouver for the Olympics as well. It’s a welcome change for them and for us living just to the south in Washington. I took advantage of the nice weather and headed out for a long drive in the country today. It turned out to be a longer drive than I expected – about 4 hours, and I ended up in some territory where I’d never been before. I never knew we had a town in Washington called Brooklyn, but I found it. Before getting there I came to the end of paved road and traveled a gravel road ten miles over some very high hills where there has been a lot of logging done over the years. Eventually the gravel gave way to pavement again and I found myself in the tiny town of Brooklyn which seems to consist of a school, a tavern and a few houses and farms.
I captured several nice images this afternoon, but I choose this little pony primarily because he was just so cute.
Nikon D90
with Nikon 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6G AF-S ED VR II Zoom Lens
at 95mm, 1/200s, f/5.3 ISO 200
 Click to Enlarge ![]()
01.05.10
Every morning we open the blinds behind the cat tree and one of our two cats heads to the 2nd highest perch to watch the birds at our front yard feeder. For some reason neither is fond of the top shelf, but today Foxy was on the second shelf and PD jumped all the way to the top from my desk top. That in itself was a surprise, but what followed next revealed just how much like children our cats can be.
Both sat on their platforms looking out just fine for a couple minutes, but then I think Foxy decided she wanted that top shelf – even though she has never used it before. Pretty soon she was aggravating PD to the point that I starting hearing hissing and growling and then PD jumped down to get out of the brat’s way. But once that top shelf was empty, Foxy had no interest in it. I think she just didn’t like it that PD had it and she didn’t.
Before all the commotion started my husband said, “there’s your picture of the day”. I agreed and grabbed the camera and got a couple shots off before they started bickering. And it’s a good thing too, because today was another wet day in Olympia and I had tons of post-processing work to do on the slides I’ve been scanning that kept me from getting out of the house.
Nikon D90, AF-S Nikkor 18-200mm 1:3.5-5.6G II VR at 65mm, 1/100, f/5.0, ISO 220, on-camera flash
 PD and Foxy Share the Cat Tree ![]()
01.04.10
Well, it’s only day 4 of the photo challenge and I’m already getting frustrated. Today was another rainy day in western Washington, so again I was unable to get outside. I decided to take a short drive up to the local pet store to see if maybe I could photograph a beautiful parrot or other exotic bird. But do they have parrots – NO! They had some tiny birds in wire cages – not a good choice. I shot pictures of mice, rats, fish, lizards and snakes all behind plexiglas and they came out terrible. I finally settled on this one of a parakeet – which was also in a pexiglas enclosure, but at least it was cleaner and not as scratched as some of the others.
It’s not my best shot, but it’s certainly my best shot for today! Maybe tomorrow. . . .
Nikon D90 with Tamron 90mm Macro 1/60, f/3.0, ISO 800
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Colleen Easley lives in Olympia, WA with her husband Dale and 2 cats. Photography has been her hobby for 40 years. Currently she is working on a 365 project which requires that she take at least one photo every day and publish it to her blog. You may follow her on Twitter and/or Facebook by clicking the links below. To see all the photos of her 2010 project, click the link below under LINKS.
