Good dogs.

For every one of these, there are 20 looking away, barking, licking lips, dodging me and my camera...some dogs have so much pent up energy, have done so much sitting and waiting in a smallish kennel, surrounded by walls and barking, not sure of what comes next.  For some my 10 minutes is all the outside they'll get for awhile, precious and fleeting.  Sometimes I put my camera down and just let them be.  The big ones usually want to sniff and run, the littler ones tend to want to sit in my lap, licking and being pet. Some are scared but most are happy.

  All of them are good dogs.

The difference a crop makes.

I have learned in the last short while the difference a crop makes.  One picture that might get discarded for the wrong composition, the wrong lighting,  the wrong feeling, can be entirely changed by a simple crop.  No photoshop, nothing fancy, just cutting out the niggley bits.

A picture can go from this:

To this:

...with a lickity split click .

I think that's pretty cool.

2 kitties

Tonight is our last night with our foster kitties.  We've had them a month.  There will be tears tomorrow, and perhaps some begging.  It will be hard for me too.

My Buddy.

He's just great.

Being Me.

I decided to change the title of this blog from 'The Year to 40' to 'Kirsten Young' (in Photographs and Words).  This year has become less about turning 40 and more about being me. I look at those words, 'being me', wrapping my head around what I mean, what that means.  To be me.

Browsing through Pinterest late June 5th, looking for the exact right Happy 40th Birthday quote for my bestie, I ran across this...

Right now, on the eve of 40, it's falling into place.  What once was a wide, multi-laned freeway of endless possibilities has now turned into a lovely and narrow dirt path of me.  The chaos and distraction has subsided into a pleasant and personal journey to betterment.  I've narrowed it down and am happy with my choices.

Gardening has always, and will always be huge for me, but this new thing (that isn't new at all and, in retrospect, has been with me all along waiting for me to take hold) has gotten me all fired up.  I think back to highschool, to smoking pot between classes and hiding in the darkroom.  I think about hating everything but those hours of creativity, the weight of my clunky old K1000 in my hand, my eye pressed to the viewfinder, focusing my 50mm.  Had I been encouraged to pursue that with the intensity that I didn't realize I wanted to, would things be different now?  How would my path have changed?  But, like I said in my last post "Everything in it's own time."  And here I am.

I saw a bumper sticker yesterday that read "These ARE the good old days." My two Grandmas sitting in their 93 year old bodies thinking back.  I feel so grateful that I made it, to here, to the good old days.   

To being me.

Rescue shots at the Humane Society.

This was this week.  

I worked straight to get these 6 shots, so many barking, eager dogs hoping for their own turn.  Counting the numbers on the kennels-135, 147, 170-walking past so many more.  I know not to poke my fingers in, to scratch a nose or console.  There are just too many and time is of the essence.  I remind them and me that this picture will get them out. That this is their shot at freedom.  I take them out, for ten or fifteen, they get some air, then I take them back in.  Some go willingly, like these first two, and some drop their butts to the ground and resist.  I pull and push, I tell them it's OK.  Then I get smart and give them a moment to think.  That worked pretty good.  To go in in their own time.  Everything in its own time.