Rosko Dog St. Denis

I received very sad news today that Rosko St. Denis, the dog of our very good friends Brian and Janice St. Denis passed away. I met Brian, Jan and Rosko almost seven years ago now after my husband and I first started dating. Rosko has always been amazing. He was incredibly smart, and very fast and strong. And he always wanted you to play with him and his red ball. Rosko was born June 19, 1999, and was now almost 10 years old. The St Denis' moved to Kansas City a few years ago, and we went out to visit them two weeks ago. Rosko had just had surgery to remove lumps from under his skin, which turned out to be cancer. I had brought my camera to take some portraits of their beautiful five month old daughter, Victoria, and I took some of Rosko as well.

Brian and Jan, I am so sorry for your loss. I hope these portraits help you remember him. Rosko was truly a magnificent dog and Joe and I will both miss him, too.

Estella, Nick and Tommy

Estella found me back in mid-November through one of the September weddings I photographed - it is always neat to have new people referred to you through previous clients. It feels like an extra special complement somehow.

Estella and Nick were looking for some fall color in their portraits so we headed to Cheesman park down in Denver. What a blast hanging out with these two - you could see the love they had for each other. And I am a total dog person,so Tommy was tons of fun!








Halfway through we took a break to let Tommy run around and play for a bit, so I thought I'd grab some cute action shots.




And then, back to business. I love this shot of Tommy.

The New Kittens

We used to insist that when Bear, our previous cat, passed away that we would never get another one. Bear was far more destructive to the house over her life than the dogs have ever been, and I was happy to not have to deal with a litter box. However, once she was gone we realized we really missed having a cat around. No one will ever replace Bear in our hearts - she was just that awesome of a cat - but the house seemed empty with no cat to sit on our laps and cuddle with us when we slept. After mulling it over, we finally decided to head to the Boulder Humane Society at least to check out the kitten they had. We sat with about 6 or 7 cats that we thought we were interested in, but none of them were "the one." We had no particular breed we were looking for, and no gender. Our pretty much sole prerequisite was that they had to love people, as we wanted a cat that wanted to be around us. We had pretty much given up and had one more room to stop in - the room with a couple cats that were getting over upper respiratory infections. A brown tabby ran right up to Joe and starting purring. Joe picked him up and you could see that was it, that was the one he wanted. But, there was also a small black one was buzzing around the room, running from place to place and playing with toys and the other cats. I picked him up as he went past and he immediately snuggled up to me and didn't want me to put him down. Now we each wanted a different cat.....we decided to think about it overnight.

We really didn't need two cats, heck, we didn't really need one cat.

Yet the next evening I found myself picking up both cats to take home. We are such suckers for animals!!

We brought them home on November 6th, and these are pictures of them from soon after. Barrett is the brown one - he is already about 9 or 10 months old. We almost named him Sniper because he loves to sneak around and find the high ground to watch us from.







Anderson is the small black one, named after one of my favorite UFC fighters, Anderson Silva. He is only about 3-4 months old and I think he will grow up to be a long and lanky, like Silva. He is still getting over his respitory infection in this pictures, but he is much healthier now!







I finally got one picture of the two of them together.




When we first brought them home they both really wanted their own space so putting them next to each other just caused trouble, but now they will snuggle with each other, and with the dogs. They also like to chase Edison's tail around, which Edison doesn't seem to mind. The house is finally a bit more complete again!

this blog goes to the dogs

After doing a post for Bear, I just could leave the dogs out. I don't know why we come up with odd nicknames for our pets, but we seem to accumulate them. Edison, our collie, has become Edi-san or Big Man. We also call him Turkey Butt because when you look at him from the rear in the winter with all his fur, it kind of looks like big fluffy turkey legs.




Brandy, our lab-mix has become the Bran-dito or Hog Dog. She lets out the funniest snorts sometimes when she gets excited and is rolling around!




Even though both dogs were originally Joe's, Edison has really become my dog. He will follow me around the house and come to me even when Joe is the one is calling him. He really is a mamma's boy!





Brandy is certainly a daddy's girl, though. She loves attention from anyone, but Joe's attention is special! My husband says that she is Honda of dogs, runs great for a really long time, low maintenance cost, and easy to take care of.





He also says that Edison is more like a Jaguar. A specialty dog where the people that have them love them, but everyone else wonders why you would ever own one. There is a lot of upkeep and maintenance, but they sure look pretty!

These last six portraits were taken with a Holga camera, which is a plastic toy camera from China that uses medium format film. There is two apertures (cloudy and sunny), one shutter speed, and no real focusing. I bought one from HolgaMods, a company that modifies them slightly to make them a bit more versatile. I like to get it out and play every once in a while because you can get some really fun pictures with it!

bear aka the bear-bear aka little bear-rito

One week ago our cat Bear passed away. She was 16 years old, so we knew it was coming, but it is still so painful to lose a pet. My husband, Joe, had Bear since she was a kitten, which has been about half of Joe's life. We have been together for 6 1/2 years so I knew her for that long. I wanted to do something to remember her and thought showing portraits of her would be fitting.


Bear had a tremendous amount of personality. She always came when you called her name. She walked around with attitude, knowing that she owned the house. She would stalk the dogs and pretend like we couldn't see her crawling along the floor. She and our collie Edison would chase each other back and forth around the living room.

She loved people in general, and always wanted to sit on laps, particularly the laps of those wearing denim.

But she loved Joe the most.




When Joe and I first started dating Bear would stare at me with a look of disdain while I was at the house. I swear she was saying "I have seen girls in your place before, but I have always outlasted them. Why don't you just leave now!" Joe was HERS and she was not about to give him up. She would even randomly bite me (gently) or scratch me, and I have a few scars to prove it. The closest portraits I have to Bear's look are these two:




Joe has always said Bear and I make the same faces when we are fussy...so I guess that is what I look like too when I'm not getting what I want.

After this rough introduction to Bear you would think perhaps I wouldn't care for her, but the darn thing grew on me, just as I grew on her. At first she started to cuddle with me when Joe wasn't around. The funny thing was as soon as he showed up she would jump off my lap, run away and pretend she was never there. Slowly, she realized I would be around for the long haul and sat with me even with Joe around, though she always preferred his lap. For my part, I started to want to have her on my lap while I sat at the computer and worked, and liked messing with her on the couch, rolling her around my lap and rubbing her belly.

Back in college, before I knew him, Joe used to have movie nights at his house. His group of friends would get together, turn down all the lights, have some popcorn and drinks and watch a good (or bad) movie. Bear loved the taste and texture of hair gel and hairspray, so she would creep along the very wide back of the couch and at the crux of a movie jump on some one's head to munch on their hair, scaring them half to death.



My favorite story about Bear is one that I think is fairly amazing. Bear was an indoor cat, but occasionally if we left the screen door open she would sneak out to play. Typically once we realized she was out there were only a couple places we had to look to find her around the outside of the house. Or, when she was done she would sit by the back door and wait to be let in. However one night Bear simply disappeared. She got out while we were making dinner, grilling something on the deck, and when bedtime rolled around we still couldn't find her. So, we went to bed...

"Ding dong ding dong" - the doorbell rang. Joe and I sat up straight in bed. It was after two in the morning. I looked at him and whispered "did you just hear the doorbell ring?" He quietly got up, went out to the front door and looked through the peephole trying to see who was out there. There was no one there. He opened the door, and Bear was sitting on the brick ridge right next to the doorbell! Somehow, the crazy cat had rubbed against the house in the exact right place and rang the doorbell to be let in. Whether this was coincidental or purposeful, it was still amazing!



I am lucky enough to have taken all of these images of her about a year and a half ago. I had just purchased a new Lensbaby lens and wanted to test it out. Since the animals were readily available, I took that opportunity to shoot portraits of them, and I'm glad I did.

Bear-Bear, you are missed.