Here is Bosco in his Halloween costume. He did not appreciate having it on and pretty much just stood anywhere you placed him and would barely move an inch. On his behalf, I must make another request to all dog owners to stop the dressing up of all dogs. They just don’t like it and will one day plot against us and take over the world. Ok, maybe not exactly, they are getting mighty pissed off!

Bosco the Turtle Will Take Over the World!, originally uploaded by jasolutions.

Halloween 2009 has come and gone. It’s kind of sad to say that we had our lowest turn out of TT’s (Trick or Treaters) this year. I couldn’t tell if Bosco was sad because of the lack of TT’s or if it was just because he had his costume on. He really hates it when we put anything except a leash on him. This year, Joan got him a turtle costume. Even though I despise idea of putting clothes on Bosco, I do have to admit that he looks pretty cute in this outfit.

The two jack-o-lanterns behind him are the works of art that Joan and Harveen made earlier in the day. Joan made the cat and Harveen made the owl. They are so good; I believe they are going to turn it into a yearly tradition. Next year, I am going to carve Bosco’s likeness into the pumpkin! I will call it a “Bosc-o-lantern!!!”

And if you just can’t get enough of Bosco’s costume this year, tune in tomorrow for a better shot of just him in all his glory…

A Turtle and Two Jacks, originally uploaded by jasolutions.

Last weekend, we knew we wanted to bathe Bosco because he was already smelling pretty funky. So we decided to let him go all out and took him to the Huntington Beach Dog Beach. It is one of the very few beaches that will allow your dog to roam around without a leash. All the dogs and owners are pretty nice, and it is just a really nice place to go; that is if you can find parking…

In any case, we let Bosco run around, chasing other dogs, getting chased himself, and watching him avoid the water the water at all costs. Bosco really hates the water. Can’t blame him really. If I were that delicate, I would probably try to avoid the water as well. I think Bosco really thinks that people are going to drown if the water touches them. If you get too close, he will bark and bark and bark. Its kind of annoying after a while. But I guess you can’t blame him for worrying.

I am trying to bring my camera to more places so that I can have more opportunities to take pictures. I always hope that I can get at least one good picture when we go out. So on this day, we got out to the beach a little late and the sun was just about to set, so we sat down to take a few pictures. This is one of my favorites… My two loves in this world… How could you not love these two beautiful faces???

Bosco’s Day At The Beach, originally uploaded by jasolutions.

I have really been trying to dive deep into HDR. I have understood the necessity of shooting in RAW for some time, but just found the convenience of JPG too strong.

Well, the times are a changing. But for now, I am trying to figure out the best combination of tweaks and processing to get that HDR feel on single exposure shots.

I used this shot of Bosco as a test. This is right around his first birthday and he is sporting a nice and bright polo shirt. If you look closely enough, you can even see his injured right foot. We took him running one day and his paw got cut on something. This is post surgery… In any case, I thought it would be perfect for this application. It is just a nice composition and has good texture and lighting.

For this shot though, I really wanted to try and mimic Trey Ratcliff’s shot of Nathaniel.

In Photoshop, I started with a general level, tone, contrast, and color adjustment. I then duplicated the layer and applied a Highlight/Shadow adjustment on the first layer and then ran a Highpass filter on the layer above the original. Changed the blending mode to linear light and decreased the opacity to taste.

The final result is one that does give the deep saturated colors and tones that I was looking for. It also has the nicely enhanced detail, but I do admit that the “fakeness” of it is a bit too much. I plan to refine the process a bit more in the next few days.

In the meantime, we will just continue to love this little guy.

Bosco in Fake HDR, originally uploaded by jasolutions.