Many of you may be aware that my passion for photography was rekindled in the digital camera age by an activity that one of our dogs was participating in under the guidance of my wife: dog agility. Going along with Kris and Darwin to the various competitions, I started looking for something to do; so I bought a camera and started taking shots of Darwin competing.
Those early ones weren’t great for several reasons including my inexperience with sports photography and digital camera technology still was developing in the early parts of the 21st century. As I improved and Canon released first the EOS 10D and then the EOS 1D, people started noticing my photos and asked if I could capture their dogs’ action as well. This grew into quite a little business and enabled me to invest in great equipment, as well as learning on my part.
Here’s one of my shots from 2005, which still makes me smile…
Buford, the wonderful Basset Hound, really appears to be flying through the course, as he clears the final jump. Reality is that Buford was not the quickest to do this run by a long shot and he sort of sauntered to this last obstacle; he then threw his entire body over it with one might jump, which I was ready to catch with my camera.
For the camera nerds and historians, I took this shot with a Canon EOS 1D MkII and my trusty Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L lens; I still have the lens and it’s been an amazingly reliable workhorse over the years.