A New Look At Life

For those of you who don't know me, I am an animal lover. My wife and I volunteer down at the Seal Beach Animal Care Center in Seal Beach, CA and it's kind of our second home around here. Kymberli heads down there more than I because of our schedules, but I enjoy seeing the animals and experiencing their different personalities. The OC Register newspaper is doing an article on hard to adopt dogs and we were asked to photograph some of the dogs for the article. There wasn't even a question of if we would do it, but with the sun setting so early our shooting light was limited. We tried on another occasion to photograph the dogs with no luck. I didn't want to use a flash for all of the images because I know it frightens them so I wanted to make sure we found a day to shoot with plenty of sunlight. This is where it can get tricky because we are at that time of year when the sunsets earlier, the clouds seem to want to hang around more and I have to work, so getting down to the shelter was a challenge.

Fortunately, Kymberli and I decided to take off of work a bit early on Wednesday to make sure that we had enough light to get some good photographs. I was able to get down there and start shooting with my new 18-200mm Nikon VR lens before it got too busy, or so I thought. With 36 dogs at the shelter the volunteers had their hands full when it came to walking the animals before dinner. Here are some of the photos I took yesterday. Every one of these animals has touched me in some way. Whether it be a playful nip, not so playful nip or just a look of "Please love me." I love these guys. Hopefully we'll see some of these published in the paper.

Grover being Grover


Pearl showing off her good side


Sweet, sweet Emma soaking up the love


Simba the Great


Faith and Reba being ever so patient