Award-Winning

Wistful
Originally uploaded by Rich Renomeron.

Two years ago, a picture I took of Marmalade won first prize at the Greenbelt Labor Day Festival Photo Show in the “Pets” category. This year, this picture of Simon won. I’ve entered a total of six photos over the years, and both award-winning entries were pets. I guess that ought to be my photographic specialty.

It was the day before New Year’s Eve, a lazy winter Saturday afternoon. Simon was lying around with his usual “sad face” when nothing interesting is happening (like food or the possibility of a walk). Fortunately, he’s a very good model; I’ve pointed the camera at him many times, so he usually doesn’t come trotting over if he sees me crouching down (his stepbrother Bennie is another story). And so I was able to fire off 10 or so frames, experimenting with framing. Once I downloaded the RAW file to the computer, I did some post-processing with Bibble (using its excellent noise reduction feature), and up it went to Flickr.