Monday Photo Shoot-Action!

This week, John Scalzi over at By the Way has the following task for us:

There's something magical about catching objects (and people) in motion, so that's the theme of this Monday's Photo Shoot:

Your Monday Photo Shoot: Action! Catch something or someone in the middle of movement. If needed, explain what we're seeing. It can be anything: People, pets, animals, machines -- just catch them on the move.

Hmmmm... Well, my first thought was that I have just taught Morgan (Now known as the AMAZING Corgi) how to jump thru a hula hoop, and wouldn't that make a neat picture. Well, and so it would, except for Two things:

Problem #1: When I first teach Morgan a new behavior, she will only do it for me. Eventually, she will do it for anyone, but in the beginning you have to do the hand signal EXACTLY, or she just looks at you confused. Therefore, I would have to be the one holding the hoop and sending her thru it.

Problem #2: G. and my digital camera do not always get along. Sidenote: This is also why there are very few pictures of me doing anything <LOL>. He does pretty good with something posed, but trying to take a moving picture with my digital camera can be a little tricky as it is an older one and has the delay problem (i.e. you click the button, but the picture is NOT taken instantaneously)

Sooooo, because of the above, (and after several failed attempts and a frustrated G. <g>) I decided to change my mind and show you all one of my favorite pictures from when I used to be involved with a show where I performed with a variety of horses. This picture is about 7 years old. Problem solved. I already had the picture, it was just not a digital picture and I had never gotten aroundto scanning it. No Problem!

Well, no problem, except that I am lazy. And, have you ever noticed that when you are lazy, you actually often end up doing MORE work??

Rather than just carrying my laptop into the other room, pulling out the scanner, plugging it in, turning it on, and connecting it to the laptop, I decide that the aforementioned process was too much trouble. I'll just lay the picture on the arm of the couch and take a picture of the picture, put it into my photo editing software and crop out the background leaving the picture.... See the example of why this doesn't work. I left the arm of the couch in so you could tell what I was trying to do. <g> If you leave the flash on you get that reflection you see... and if you don't use the flash you get... Nada! It's just too dark to see...

So, after 'saving time and effort', I drag my laptop into the other room, pull out the scanner, plug it in, turn it on, connect it to the laptop and scan the picture.... This takes all of about 3 minutes! And, you get the picture below that I'm using for this week's assignment.

This is a time lapse pic a friend took of us riding in a drill pattern. To give you an idea of what's going on, we are riding the horses at a gallop, while carrying flaming torches, and doing figure 8's and cross throughs with each other. I LOVED doing this drill... what a Rush!

The last picture here is one that I already had on my laptop and just lets you see a picture of all of us not in motion.

Sooooo, the moral of the story is: If you want to save time, just go and get the scanner out and do the job correctly the first time <g>