Category: dave

Barclay’s Birthday!

On By stefrobrtsIn barclay, dave, navi2 Comments

Beautiful Barclay is 4 years old this year (his Birthday was on Christmas Eve, when I took these pictures). To celebrate we went out and played stickball and played with the hose to cool off when we were done. Not that it was hot, it was like 50 degrees out, but the dogs love to play hard, and cool off in the trough!
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Stickball is Barclay’s favorite game in the world – basically a ball on a rope on the end of a stick. He’s nuts for it!
The crazy aerobatics are the best part – watch out for flying eskimos!
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Navi isn’t quite as insane for the stickball, but she’s getting better at it. She even gets it away from Barclay once in a while, but he’s the champ!
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Barclay always gets the ball back in the end.
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Barclay never wants to give the ball back, though he knows chasing it is the best part.

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Navi took a dip in the pond and then got back in the game

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Then it was time to cool off. I love Barclay’s look – that totally says he thinks she should get out of the way and let him have HIS hose!
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Bark bark bark – give me MY HOSE!

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Finally!

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Then Navi gets good and wet…
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And gives everyone a shower!

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Happy Birthday Barclay!

The Silk Tree

On By stefrobrtsIn dave4 Comments
The front of our house is dominated by a Silk Tree (Mimosa) planted in the front courtyard

When we planted it many years ago, it was a sad little twiggy thing that needed to be protected in the winter.

Over the years it grew big and strong, and entertained us with it’s beautiful pink and white flowers, and it’s funny little leaves that close up at night. We’re pretty fond of the tree.

Over the years it has also insisted on leaning TOWARDS the house, which is odd, because that means it’s leaning AWAY from the sun, and I would expect it to do just the opposite. But it has been growing up over our sunporch walkway, shading it and causing moss to grow there, dropping leaves on the roof, and leaning on the gutters. We hate to intervene, but it was time.

So Dave bravely climbed up on the roof
He cut back the branches with a sawzall, until nothing was hanging over the roof, and then he cleaned up all the moss, scrubbing and brushing until the roof as as clean as he could get it by hand.
Then he cleverly used a ladder to scale the steep garage roof so he could reach over the top and fix a vent that had blown off earlier this summer. 
When he was done, the front deck was covered in a HUGE pile of silk tree branches,
And our pretty silk tree really looks none the worse for it’s ‘trim’. 
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TFM Promo Pics

On By stefrobrtsIn dave, theaterLeave a comment

Dave is directing the next play at Magenta Theater, Talent for Murder, and I am his assistant director. I also am the photographer for promotional pictures. Last night we had our photo shoot with the cast. On the way to the theater Dave and I were brainstorming ideas of what sort of shots to take. They need to be interesting and have some action in them, and hopefully if someone sees the picture in the paper it will catch their eye and capture their interest.

The play is about a rich old woman and her scheming children who are trying to split up the estate and get their inheritance before she’s gone.

Dave wrangles the whole cast together and gives them the plan.

And, many shots later…

Then we had a little fun with the ‘kids’ fighting over the treasures

And with the ‘scheming’ angle…

So this was a pretty fun shoot, and I think we got some good shots. Hopefully they’ll end up in the paper and get us a little publicity!

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Portrait Studio – Sitka & Sake

On By stefrobrtsIn barclay, dave, navi, pets1 Comment
Today I wanted to get a good photo of our houseguests before they go home. Trying to take pictures with five dogs milling around was complete chaos!
Sitka in the chair, everyone else wondering how to get in on the treat action…
Navi in the chair, Sake peeking in…
My assistant bravely risked his fingertips to try and help get them in position.
Hmm, not bad, if they weren’t both so white. Can’t tell where one dog ends and the other begins…
Looking everywhere except the camera…
Blurry! Sit still!
Perfect!
And then Barclay snuck up for a shot.
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Dave’s Leverage episode

On By stefrobrtsIn dave2 Comments

Dave has been doing some work as an extra on Leverage, which is filmed over in Portland. He put together a bunch of screenshots of the episode he was in,  ‘”The Boiler Room” Job’. He’s in a blue jacket, in the backgrounds. It’s fun to play ‘spot the Dave’ when the episode first airs! He’s got a good extra part in another episode coming up later this year.

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Pictures around town

On By stefrobrtsIn dave, theater1 Comment

Yesterday was a lovely sunny afternoon, and we were downtown so Dave could do a skit at the theater for an Art-Walk type event that was going on. I hung around the theater a bit, and then went over to the park in downtown Vancouver,WA (Esther Short Park) and took pictures around there.

My main goal was experimenting with my camera,  taking all my pictures in manual mode and playing with aperture and exposure times.

First we had to get into town, since we live way out in the boonies…

I’m not sure what this sign was for, but I liked the color!

This is the clocktower in the park. I was trying to get a picture of it with flowers in the foreground, and have good focus across the whole picture. I felt a little weird squatting behind a big flowerpot trying to make that happen, and I felt a little nervous because people kept looking at me funny.

The moon was up, but this was the best shot I could get. If I had been willing to climb into the bushes for a minute, I could have lined it up so it looked like the fish was eating it, but I decided I was attracting enough attention as it was.

Different angle on the tower…

I liked the texture of the pavement under this leaf

This is one of the tallest buildings in downtown Vancouver. It’s a home for low-income seniors. My uncle lives there. It was built specifically for that purpose, and those guys have the best view in town because it overlooks the river and the I5 bridge!

Back at the theater, I got this shot of one of the actors waiting to go onstage. High ISO, and a long exposure because it was so dim. I like the shot, even with a little motion blur.

The skit they were doing was a silly little thing full of puns and sight gags. It was about a 15 minute show, and they did it every half hour for 3 hours! It was like a little marathon! That’s my handsome hubby holding the paper up 🙂

Then came the curtain call. This was another tricky shot to get because of the low light. I have to say though, I’m much happier with the quality of picture this camera can do with high ISO settings. That’s a big difference between it and my old Powershot, which had terrible picture quality if you bumped up the ISO.

On the way home I played with long (3 second) exposures (I wasn’t driving), and discovered that if I took them as we passed under the intersection signals I got really cool rays of light. This was my favorite of that bunch.

So that was my fun afternoon with my camera. Every picture taken in Manual mode after carefully considering what settings I wanted to use based on the light, and what I was going for. It was a great learning experience! Of course I took about a hundred pictures, and these were my favorites. I’m so grateful for digital!
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Dave

On By stefrobrtsIn dave1 Comment

Just a couple pics I snapped of Dave while we were at the theater yesterday

Dang, he looks good in a suit 🙂 For this picture I had to use a high ISO setting, and still had to wait until he was relatively still to avoid motion blurr. It was good practice taking pictures with manual settings and unusual lighting conditions.

He was wearing sunglasses for the skit he was in, so we were playing around with the down-lighting from the tracklights overhead in the waiting area. I liked this shot especially – how’d I get so lucky as to have a good lookin’ guy like that!?

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Portrait Studio – blue backdrop

On By stefrobrtsIn barclay, dave, jack, navi, pets1 Comment

Today I sewed together my blue backdrop and tried it out. I think I like it even better than the neutral/grey one.

(And Yes, Barclay is just as huggable as he looks!)

Only problem today was getting them up on the stand one at a time, because they were all clued into the fact that whoever is up there gets the most cookies!

So the other two got to practice down-stays while I worked with them one at a time. I need a wider bench for them to sit on, and try to get all three up there at once for a group photo!

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What to do with those giant brush piles I made

On By stefrobrtsIn dave, lawnmowerLeave a comment

The backyard was full of giant prickly brush piles after all my work last week clearing blackberry vines. Now we need to get rid of them. We don’t like burn piles, so we prefer to haul them away, but to do that, we have to move them around front. First, get a tarp, and tie it to the tractor. Oh, and a husband is handy to have around too!

After letting the piles dry a few days, they are fairly easy to move. Kind of like velcro – they all stick together. If you’re lucky you can just about roll the whole mess onto the tarp.

Away we go! I follow behind and grab the back corner to steer it a bit if necessary, or use my pitchfork to push stray branches back onto the tarp.

All the way around the house and shop…

Line it up with the pile on the driveway, and lift up the tarp to throw the new load on. 

And off he goes for the next pile. I think we moved 5 or 6 piles of brush this way, and now there is a very big pile on the driveway. A friend offered to let us use their farm truck to haul it away, so that’s the next step.

It’s sure nice to have the back yard all cleaned up and mow-able again!

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