Thursday, March 17, 2011

Day 457 - St. Patrick's Day

Today's photo shoot was quite a bit different than yesterday's. Instead of taking pictures of search and rescue dogs, my job was to recreate the classic movie poster for Gone with the Wind using a dog as Rhett Butler and a cat as Scarlett O'Hara. My dog model was supposed to be very friendly with cats. And the cat was supposed to like dogs. As you might expect, that's not the way it turned out. I took some shots of the pair together, but it certainly didn't look like a love scene. After about five minutes miss kitty let us know that she wasn't going to tolerate a dog sniffing her much longer. We all decided that the prudent course of action would be to photograph each animal separately and then put the shot together in Photoshop. I really wish nobody even knew about Photoshop. Every time a shot gets difficult, I hear a chorus of "you can fix it in Photoshop" from whoever is on the set with me. You can definitely do a lot with Photoshop, but as far as I know, the software can't make animals like each other. It remains to be seen whether I can create any chemistry between this unlikely couple with my computer. Personally, I'd scrap the dog and just use the pictures of the cat. Apple, the cat, is hot. She's kind of the Heidi Klum of the cat world.

Today was a very busy day. When I wasn't trying to recreate Gone with the Wind with animals, I was working on my bid for the big week long oil and gas trade show in Houston this May. I think I'm already late in submitting this bid, but it's been complicated. I've finally got prices in from all the crew members I've assembled for the project, so all I need to do now is put everything together in Excel and turn it in. If the folks who are waiting for my bid happen to be reading this, I promise I'll have everything ready for you tomorrow. Really guys, your project is just as important to me as putting lipstick on a cat.

It was surprisingly warm today. If I didn't know better, I could have sworn it was early June. I resisted the temptation to turn on the air conditioner however. I know that as soon as I turn on the air conditioner, my electric bill is going to triple.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day