2009 Portuguese Water Dog National Specialty

OK – it’s been a little while (!!!) since we’ve posted here. Been a bit busy, and more exciting things happening than we’ve had time to even talk about.

But to ease back into things for just a brief moment… Just got back from last week’s National. What a great time, and what fantastic dogs. A friend once told me that I was a reincarnated PWD.  I’ll take that as a very high compliment indeed (thank you Dixie!).

This was our 3rd time to have been invited to shoot for the National organization, and we don’t take those lightly!

So, for those of you who’ve wandered over to our rather forsaken page here, have some fun with the photos we’ve now posted (with lots more to come)…

We’ll add in some pix in a while, but like I said – just easing back into this blogging stuff…

Bo

All the news wires are abuzz with the arrival of the First Dog, Bo – the Portuguese Water Dog.

And what a cutie he is!

We are very well aware of what our PWD friends are concerned about:  uncontrolled popularity of a beloved breed into the hands of people who simply want the dog of the moment (and all that entails).

We are also very concerned about this issue (the PWD is one of our breeds of choice), and are watching out for the “101 Dalmatian” fad.

Hopefully, people will heed the “this breed isn’t for everyone” warning and will research as carefully as Malia Obama has before considering this or any other breed.

We are very proud to be associated with the Portuguese Water Dog Club of America as their 2009 National Specialty photographers!  This will be our third PWD specialty and we look forward to seeing familiar faces and meeting new ones in Illinois this year.

On another note:

A big thanks to Terry and Susan for putting our image on the cover of The Courier magazine (for those of you who are unfamiliar with this publication, it’s the highly awarded PWD national breed magazine).  Wow!  Especially with it being one of the most popular issues of the year – “Water”.

http://www.pwdca.org/resources/courier/

Thanks to Susan for selecting and sending in one of our images, and Terry for choosing it.  As always, a beautiful magazine!

We also want to thank Browntrout Publishing for choosing us as their exclusive photographers for the 2009 Portuguese Water Dog photo calendar.

SKC update #2

UPDATE (2009-03-25)

The first 31 by-request galleries are in place, with one more in the works to bring us current. After that, a smattering of shots (agility and otherwise) from Sunday…
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The by-request galleries are starting to get posted, in the order that requests have come in.

These can be located here.

Also – we will be purging older galleries in the next 2 weeks (by end of March).  If you’re still thinking of ordering from some of the older performance trials, now is the time…

SKC agility update

Hi all.

We wanted take a moment to discuss photos from the March Seattle Kennel Club agility trials.

Posting galleries on a per-request basis was OK’d by the chair for the entire SKC show before we ever announced this approach.

As we stated in our earlier blog as well as on the “landing page”, those folks that are interested in photos only need to let us know, and to give us a rough description of themselves, along with info on their dog(s).

For all of you who have already contacted us, we’ve located you and your dogs 100%.  We will have all your galleries up this week.

The reason this is working?  We took photos of every handler for every run… Makes life easier for all involved.

Because of the very challenging lighting that an indoor event involves, we shot a LOT.  This means that we can’t reasonably post every shot that’s viable; the sheer volume of work required would be vast.

Offering galleries only to those people that express interest serves the community’s needs as well as balancing our own time for production.  And really, there’s no point in processing and posting images that people don’t want to purchase (especially true since we weren’t offering next-day sales).

A comment on another forum questioned our abilities to meet your needs; expressing doubt on whether we could find your dog.  As mentioned, we took shots of every handler…

Thanks to those of you who separately forwarded that on to us (with your own very positive comments to offset that).

Our response to anyone that has something negative to say:  Take the time to check your sources first; you might be surprised at what you discover…

You may still disagree (and that’s great), but please get the facts first.  We can’t please everyone out there, but we do make a very deliberate effort to raise the bar when it comes to being and acting positive – it’s way too small a community.

Best wishes,

Jerry and Lois

Seattle Kennel Club, Geoffrey Castle Concert and a bit more…

Hello all! We have been amiss in our blogging ways for several weeks, but that’s not to say that we haven’t been busy! Our “Simply Black” photo shoots surprised us with great positive feedback and as always, being the official agility and event photographers for the annual Seattle Kennel Club dog show was great.

At SKC, it was wonderful seeing so many of our friends, both human and canine, after our usual winter break from the agility trials.  On Saturday, we shot agility exclusively, but on Sunday – we did the event shooting for the club.  They use these images for their advertising and publicity for the year, and it certainly helps that we are well versed in canine performance and breed!

What we LOVE about our work is that we can shoot dogs on the weekend and three days later, we are photographing high school seniors.  We had a pair of lovely ladies (both cheerleaders, no less!) who smiled non-stop for THREE HOURS!  Awesome!

This weekend (Mar 14/15), we are photographing the incredible Geoffrey Castle Celtic Concert at the Kirkland Performing Arts Center.  This is one of the BEST concerts performed by local favorite, electric violinist – Geoffrey Castle.  The lineup of musicians includes:  Heart drummer Ben Smith, Grammy award winning bassist Garey Shelton and special guest Alan White, drummer for Yes and John Lennon!

For more info on Geoffrey Castle:

Tickets are still available:  http://www.kpcenter.org with shows at 8:00 Saturday evening, and 2:00 Sunday afternoon.

Finally, for all you agility people… the SKC trial will be posted in about a week or so. This is a hard one to estimate given the enormous amount of images we have to plow through! With the inquiries we’re receiving, we know you’re excited about seeing them.

A few more for you…

Simply Black has proven to be a bit popular!  Here are a few more from another session we just shot with our friends at Civilized Nature:

Winterfest 2009 – Seattle Dog Magazine

UPDATE

2009-01-13:  The image gallery for this event is now posted on our website and can be found here:

Winterfest 2009

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A fund-raiser event sponsored by Seattle Dog Magazine…

Held at the Bell Harbor Conference Center on January 10th and 11th, the first annual Winterfest 2009 welcomed extra special guest Cesar Millan (The Dog Whisperer).  Cesar was on site to meet attendees and sign autographs for everyone waiting in line.

© Jerry and Lois Levin

Some lucky dogs even got a smooch!

© Jerry and Lois Levin

Simply Black, part two…

We thought we’d share one more set of photos from this “test session”.

In addition to the first session at Civilized Nature, we’ve now added a 2nd session at Paws-Abilities a week earlier. This is also open to the public (but already just about sold out).

Feb. 8, Paws-Abilities (from 11:30 a.m. through 6:00 p.m.).  On their site, follow the links for the “Simply Black” session.

Feb 13/14, Civilized Nature Pet Supplies.  Call us for appointments (which also are going fast): 425.868.9978

With that – enjoy this next set!!!

Holiday smiles…

Hello to all and Happy Holidays!

We wanted to give you a special “holiday smile” from some of our 2008 photo shoots!  We had so much fun!  We would like to thank our returning customers, we love being a part of your tradition.  To all of our new customers, thank you for putting faith in us to take your holiday portraits!

It’s been a busy and intense season for us:  SEVERAL all-nighters (simply to keep up!), and many additional orders after each photo shoot.

We did a loose tally of statistics that are interesting:

• 700+ holiday portraits:  Processed and printed.
• 175+ customers!

These numbers don’t include the Redmond Lights event that we shot for the City of Redmond and the business portraits and publication cover shot we did for the Redmond Chamber of Commerce Annual Membership Directory.

We can’t even begin to say how much we appreciate all of our customers and the enormous way you all came and supported us throughout the year and this season…

Thank you, Thank you, Thank you!

We look forward to 2009 with great anticipation and especially having the opportunity to create more exciting and beautiful images for everyone! Watch here for announcements of new sessions taking place at the end of January…

it’s that time… again!

Hard to believe that the holidays are here.  I’m not even yet ready for summer, and missed Halloween completely.  Didn’t even get much candy this time.

But to help get bootstrapped into the mood, here are some samples from sessions past.  If you are planning on taking advantage of our public sessions, be sure to make an appointment via our calendar here ASAP – these are filling up quickly.