Just Be There….
with Penny J. Wills
In this edition of “Just Be There” Pet Photographer Penny Wills shares with us an emotional story of how she captured this gorgeous portrait of Abby.
CR. Tell us about this location.
Penny: This was taken in my home office, on a dark brown leather chair.
CR. How difficult was this to capture?
Penny: It’s interesting that you should ask me to talk about this particular photo. This is one of those emotional photos that I love taking. Unfortunately, this time, it’s my emotional photo.
Abby was sick. Intermittently she was throwing up foamy yellow bile. Not any food in it, just the foamy yellow stuff. Not all the time, and not just after eating, or playing and not every day. Sometimes she would go days without throwing up, and then she would throw up every couple of hours a day. After 2 weeks of this, I took her to the vet. He was thinking she got into something she should not have, and it irritated her stomach. She was admitted to the hospital and put on an IV and no food, just fluids, and a special medicine that coats the stomach, like for an ulcer. After 3 days of her behaving, he was about to call and say, she’s better, when she promptly threw up. We decided to do an X-Ray just to be sure and about an hour later, the vet called back. He said, “You have to come in and take a look at her X-Rays.” That is never a good sign, but I have been going to this vet for years, and with all my pets, you never know what they can pick up and eat. We have had a good laugh over another dog’s X-Rays, so I did not put too much gloom into his words.
My first hint that things were not good was the front office staff. They were quite somber instead of the joking that I am normally greeted with. I meet the Dr., and he pulls out her X-Ray. There is a large mass showing in her stomach. It’s not metal or wood (like some others I won’t mention!) because it does not have a distinct outline, it’s fuzzy. He gives me the bad news, “there’s not much I can do, I believe it’s a tumor, and that large, it can’t be good.” We discuss options, such as an ultrasound, and an exploratory. I settle on exploratory surgery, and we schedule it for the next morning first thing.
He looks at me, and says, “There’s no reason that she can’t go home tonight, so why don’t you take her?” What he didn’t say, but was understood, that if he found a tumor that large, her prognosis was not good. Dan & I had decided that if the vet did find something, and he didn’t think it was treatable, we would have her euthanized then. So, I brought her home for her last night, or so I thought. I took her out in the back yard to play with the other dogs and darned if I could not get a good photo of her. I had to give up when I lost the light.
CR. How did you expose for this shot?
Penny: The next morning, as I was setting one of our cats up for my photography class in front of the window, I noticed just how lovely the light was. Bells went off in my head, “Put Abby on the brown leather chair and take her photo there!” Eureka! So I popped her on the chair, swiveled the chair until I got the lighting just right, and took the shot. Fortunately, the neighbor was walking their dog down the road, so Abby’s attention was fixed on that dog.
Hand-held, I metered off her face, allowing the rest of the photo to be naturally dark. The camera settings were: 52mm, ISO 200, f/8, 1/20s,
There was absolutely no processing done on this photo, with the exception of adding my logo.
CR. What camera and lens did you use for this shot?
Penny: Nikon D700, Nikon 24-70mm f2.8
CR. What lighting equipment do you use?
Penny: Natural light out of a north window, 6:18 a.m. just as the sun was rising.
I loved the soft light and the color of the light as the sun was rising. The color was just perfect, you cannot tell by the photo that her face is almost completely gray; the sun hid the gray behind the almost too saturated color.
On a happy note, after the surgery, the vet called. He found out what the problem was. Was it a tumor the size of his fist? Well it ended up being a stuffed mouse cat toy. How she managed to swallow it whole is beyond us. It was too large to pass into her stomach, so it just floated around in her stomach. Her throwing up was from the occasions that the toy blocked food and water from passing the stomach and into her intestines. So, after surgery, I brought her home and for about 12 hours she was fine. Then she started throwing up again. NOW WHAT? She was confined to her crate except for the trip from work to the car. Once again I call the vet and ask him to do a quick X-Ray, she is throwing up again. I wait in the waiting room and a couple of minutes later he comes out with the X-Ray. We look at it, look at each other and say, “What in the world?” There, big as life, is a piece of razor blade! UGH! This dog is going to give me a heart attack. So, for the 2nd time in less than 24 hours she heads to surgery. Thankfully, he removed it without any complications.
I think I got at least 1/2 a head of gray hair from her that week. Silly girl! She is now almost 12 and still going strong.
To see more of Penny’s work go here:
Circadianreflections Blog 