Mary Beth Arnold Photography Blog

testing again….

Mary Beth — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 17:45:42 +0000

hopefully this has cleared it all up now.

Test

Mary Beth — Fri, 07 Jun 2013 01:29:05 +0000

I am making sure this is working correctly!!!!!@@@@

Doggy Easter Egg Hunt- Davenport Iowa

Mary Beth — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 01:02:28 +0000

Saturday was the Doggy Easter Egg Hunt at Fejervery Pack in Davenport, Iowa to benefit the Scott County Humane Society. We didn’t take the dogs because we didn’t know how they were going to react but next year we definitely are! It was so much fun and I have never seen so many dogs in one place at a time. And the love from the pet parents was awesome! Everyone was so great and were more than happy to have pictures taken of their pets. It totally made my day. If any of the pet parents see their pets on here- shoot me an email and I will be more than happy to send them the files! So many gorgeous dogs. Hope everyone had a great Easter!

Oh- I could photograph them all day long!

Beautiful Beasties Project 52- Run

Mary Beth — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 08:00:09 +0000

The Beautiful Beasties Network is a international network of awesome pet photographers and I am so honored to be a part of it. In this network there is a group of members who created Project 52. How does it work? Well, each week the theme is announced and we head out and photograph our take on the theme and post it to our blogs at the same time and link to the next member in the group so if you guys wanted to see everyones photos you can click through until you end up back here with me. SO STINKIN’ FUN!

It was my turn to pick the theme this week and I chose RUN. The hardest thing for me to go is nail focus on a dog in a full-on run. So I thought what better way to force myself out to practice. It wasn’t all rainbows and sunshine with this shoot to be honest. It was way colder than I expected and well- there are lots of blurry ones. And these aren’t as tack sharp as I would like them nor do they have the shallow depth of field I love (these are at f/4), but I’m posting them anyways. LOL It’s a good start.

Ok, now go check out professional pet photographer, Blue Amrich and see their take on this weeks theme and all the others in the group and you’ll end up back here with me. Have fun and have a great weekend! I get to pick next weeks them so stay tuned!

Beautiful Beasties Project 52- Texture

Mary Beth — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 08:00:04 +0000

This weeks theme was texture, and there isn’t anything cuter then pug wrinkles! Oscar lets me squeeze his little doggy cheeks and rub the wrinkles around his eyes before bed. Seeing as how Oscar isn’t a fan of the “up-close-and-personal” with the camera there was some negotiating with yummy treats at his request. LOL (this is also his treat “death-stare”)

Ok, now go check out Connecticut Dog Photography, Kathryn Schauer Photography and see their take on this weeks theme and all the others in the group and you’ll end up back here with me. Have fun and have a great weekend! I get to pick next weeks them so stay tuned!

Beautiful Beasties Project 52- Shoes

Mary Beth — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 09:00:52 +0000

This weeks theme was shoes. Anything that had to do with shoes and our pets. So what better than Oscar and my roller skates! He seemed deathly afraid about them rolling around so we had to tape them to the floor. LOL He’s such a trooper.

Ok, now go check out Windsor Ontario Pet Photographer, NCS Pet Photography and see their take on this weeks theme and all the others in the group and you’ll end up back here with me. Have fun and have a great weekend!

Project Life Mondays!

Mary Beth — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 11:00:24 +0000

Three weeks in one post to finally catch up on everything. LOL I am loving how this is coming together. I have decided to change the silly font with one that feels a little bit more me. Which is also the font for the blog. And everything feels to fit a little nicer. I still haven’t really decided if the journaling font is the one I am going to stick with but since it’s fairly easy to read I’m just going to leave it unless I find one that looks more like mine. I have decided that I am very fond of resizing the photo spaces so I don’t feel “stuck” in the same ol’ grid. I just drag them around to the size I want. (Command+T, then I just shut off the layer under there I don’t need anymore.) I find this very helpful when I don’t have very many photos or not enough of one orientation. (Horizontal or vertical) I also enjoy having larger photos so I resized some of the templates and save them under a new name so it would save time later if I wanted to use them again. (Command+Shift+S) Another thing I have found is that I needed to let go of dating every photo. I realized that say ten years from now I won’t need to know exactly what day a particular photo was taken because with the paged titled with the dates I’ll have a general idea and that’s going to be good enough. So you could say that this is becoming more of a week-at-a-glance then an everyday project, and that’s totally ok by me because if I am going to keep this up long term then it’s got be fast in Photoshop. It’s a little time consuming clicking and dragging and resizing all of the cards anyhow and adding dates to everything just sent me down a rabbit hole that added way to much time to the whole project every week.

Ok, here is the Instagram for the whole month of February so far. First two days of the month:

#YOU_TODAY- Love hoodies!

#REPETITION- The mountain of gatorade at the grocery store. I have never seen so much Gatorade in my life. It almost reached the ceiling!

WEEK 1:

#BEDSIDE- ipad and alarm clock

#DAILY_LIFE- Vacuuming up all the damn dog hair.

#ARRANGEMENT- our quirky random assortment of things on the bookcase

#SAVED_UP- The whole series of House! WooHoo!

#MY_VIEW- Driving in traffic trying to find Lenny a new tray for his new giant kennel. He has already outgrown the one we got him for Christmas.

#CENTER- Lenny trying his hardest to look sad for food.

#ADVENTURE- Delivering dog swag bags to the vets offices in town to say Happy Valentines Day!

Week 2:

#LUCKY- The jeans I wear to almost every session.

#TASTY- Red velvet cupcakes

#GOOD_TIMES- Painting the hallway bathroom a sunny yellow

#STEPS- Skateboard tape cute in paw prints and bone shapes so the dogs don’t slip off the stairs.

#ROMANCE- The cards Josh and I got each other for Valentines Day! Neither very romantic but cute and funny is more out style.

#REWARD- Oscar loves his Busy Bone so much I can pretty much do whatever and he is oblivious to anything but the treat at hand. LOL

#HEAVENLY- Those are Lexis exact words when she describes these cookies.

Week 3:

#SHARED_SPACE- Now we are painting the bedroom. I’m sure Josh wishes I would stop painting everything. LOL

#BEST_DRESSED- Pete the puffer fish is our newest fish and he is mighty handsome.

#MORE- Dog notepad holder from Artori Designs. Oh how I wish he would make for pet stuff. It’s all gorgeous.

#IN_MY_BAG

#FREESTYLE- Homemade double doozie cookies. I hear they were awesome. They sure did smell awesome.

#TGIF- Lenny gets the all clear from the vet to go cone free as long as he doesn’t start licking his stitches. So far so good!!!!

OK- so this was a crazy long post but now we are all up to speed I feel better. Have a great Monday!

Beautiful Beasties Project 52- Love

Mary Beth — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 09:00:44 +0000

This weeks theme is Love. With Lenny still in an E-collar and Oscar is too busy enjoying the couch thats now in our kitchen neither are up for photos so this is the next best thing. Their well-loved toys.

Ok, now go check out Iowa Pet Photographer-Speckled Paw Photography and see their take on this weeks theme and all the others in the group and you’ll end up back here with me. So excited to be linking to another Iowa pet photographer. Have fun and have a great weekend!

Lennys Surgery Story

Mary Beth — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 11:00:47 +0000

Last Tuesday Lenny went in to get neutered and we chose to have elective Gastroplexy done on him as well. In case you aren’t aware of what Gastroplexy is here is a quick rundown of the what and why: Our last great dane Walter passed away from bloat. So when we took Lenny in for his first puppy wellness checkup our vet told us that a lot of dane owners are having Gastroplexy done on their danes to prevent the torsion part of bloat. (The part where their stomachs flip over.) During an emergency bloat surgery to correct the flipped stomach they “tack” it to the side of the dogs ribcage to hold it there so it doesn’t flip back over. Well now, you can have them “tacked” before such an emergency occurs. And since about half of all great danes get bloat in their lifetime we opted to have the procedure. I know it seems drastic- but we decided that the benefits outweighed the risks. All deep-chested dogs are at risk for bloat. Some of the breeds most at risk are: German Shepherds,Great Danes, Standard Poodles, Rottweilers, Akitas, Bloodhounds, Great Pyrenees, Irish Setters, Old English Sheepdogs, Boxers, Golden Retrievers, Irish Wolfhounds, St. Bernards, Labrador Retrievers, Newfoundlands, and Dobermans.

It has been, for lack of a better word, exhausting. Surgery went great, he stayed the night there and was released on Wednesday. He went back into the vet Wednesday night around 10 cause his stomach incision started bleeding. They said it was from him being too excited when he got home. So they bandaged him up further and we went back home. But let me tell you- Lenny thinks he’s fine. He is wound up and playing like nothing ever happened. What a trooper! But seeing as how the vet said he had to be quiet with no running jumping or playing it’s been tough keeping him calm. (And by tough- I mean downright impossible!) SO- what do you do with a 90 pound puppy after surgery that will not quit jumping on the furniture? I’ll show you:

You remove all the furniture from your living room! LOL This has helped considerably. It’s kind of crazy but hey- you do crazy things for your pet. And keeping Lenny from hurting himself is the top priority for the next two weeks! So no furniture it is until this whole ordeal is over. And when he isn’t totally being supervised by us to make sure he behaves he is stuck in his kennel. He isn’t a fan but his recovery is our top priority. So this is the very sad sight from his kennel.

It breaks my heart.

Have a great day! Hug your pets and I’ll see you back here on Friday for Beautiful Beasties!

Project Life Monday

Mary Beth — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 11:00:46 +0000

Hi all. I have gotten a little behind on the project life. Taking lots of photos but not finding the time to plug them into the digital templates. But thats ok- because I am just going to keep working on it and hopefully next monday you’ll get the past three weeks in one post. LOL

Life has been pretty wild around here. My dads birthday party, valentines day, our wedding anniversary, Lenny having surgery, lots of marketing and updating of business things, and my ever growing addition to Pinterest. (I can’t believe I just admitted that…) Anyhoo….

I have also slacked on posting the Photo of the day on Instagram but photos are ready to go so there just might be a flood of new photos on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram later tonight or tomorrow. So I apologize in advance if you follow me on all three of them. And if you don’t follow me on Instagram or Twitter and want to click the links! And if Facebook is more your style you can find me here!

So well see you back here on Wednesday!

Have a great day!