Nico
Nico conducting an olfactory survey of the neighborhood. It was a beautiful day in the Adirondacks. I went nordic skating on Lower Saranac Lake today with two friends. Covering long distance on the ice is tough on a dog so Nico stayed home. The ice ranged in thickness from 2.5 to 6 inches. Be careful if you decide to head out on the ice.
I am grateful to work at Paul Smith's College Adirondack Watershed Institute for many reasons. One of them is having access to beautiful lakes and miles of trails right out my office door. Today Nico and I went for a quick skijoring run on my lunch break, it's a great way to drain some of that puppy energy.
Denise Erenstone gifted Nico a skijoring harness yesterday, her and her husband are the ones that first cued me into skijoring many years ago when I worked for the Adirondack Mountain Club. I gave Khyber's setup to our friends Kendra and Seth to use with Chester. That harness was too big for Nico so he needed a new one. Today was his first real outing. Nico did excellently and is an enthusiastic puller. He is still a growing pup so we likely need to take it easy this winter, which will be hard because I love skiing and Nico loves pulling.
As Nico's front legs plant during a full-speed run and he pushes off with his front legs to start the transition to the powerful launch from his hind legs, the skin on his face continues its downward velocity as his skeletal system begins accelerating upwards. As a result, his entire face looks droops significantly. It is a split second in time that only a camera could catch. A funny one none the less.
I think it is safe to say that Nico had a thoroughly enjoyable Christmas. It started last night when he got to open a gift early. This morning he played with all of his new toys for about five to six hours straight, moving from one to the next. By 1pm he was passed out on the couch for several hours, only to get up and start all over again. There are still some gifts from family members on their way, marooned in some postal service distribution center somewhere. I'm sure he will be just as excited for second Christmas. g
Nico appears to be synchronizing his ears and front legs. He came to work with me today so we could get a lunchtime walk in to put the new camera to the test. I'm thankful that we are moving toward longer days. The biggest challenge lately has been finding the time to capture photos when it is bright outside.
This evening I received my new Sony camera, which will likely result in me selling all of my Nikon gear. I'm sure to Nico it looks the same as the camera and lens that has been pointing at his face for the past 224 days. I am hopeful that it will allow me to capture even more action photos and sharper images of this fast-moving little dude.
Action shots are the most challenging to capture when photographing dogs. Nico's color and markings are particularly challenging for cameras. Typically, the autofocus systems want to grab onto the black-white contrast of his chest, when I want the focus to be on his eyes. There are ways of getting around this but they are challenging when working with a dog the doesn't stop moving. I recently parted ways with my Nikon Z7 because the autofocus was horrendous at tracking fast-moving subjects. For landscape work that camera is amazing, but for wildlife or dogs, it was nothing but frustration. After more than a decade of working with Nikon cameras, I've decided to sell all of my gear and make the switch to Sony. Hopefully, you'll see more and better action shots in the coming weeks. You can support my work and this page by joining Patreon >> Patreon.com/BrendanWiltse