A Scotty Named Fergus

Today was a long day of travel around the Orlando area that saw my wife and I travel around downtown and up to Mt. Dora and Renninger's Antique Dealership to visit a Scotty named Fergus. We were invited to come and visit Fergus by Fergus' male person. When we got there Fergus was beside himself with joy over getting to know yet another person.

I've never dealt with a Scotty quite like Fergus. He's still a young playful juvenile, a bundle of almost infinite energy romping about in a mass of wild hair. I have never cared for the smaller breeds because they always seem to be too noisy, unlike the larger breads such as Retrievers and Dalmations. Fergus went against type, being a quiet little guy except for one instance when I sat on the floor to take these photographs. That's when he realized he was restrained by his red lead and couldn't come bounding over to me to give me a face full of Scotty tongue kisses. His protest was short and subdued, and he quickly settled down on the floor to try and entice me to get close enough to for me to touch him and him to touch me. In the end, after taking a long sequence of photos, of which I selected these two, I gave in and got close enough to satisfy his need to interact with a human.

Fergus is cared for by these two loving persons. They are as smitten by Fergus as we are by are Labs, and they act accordingly, heaping all sorts of little affections on Fergus. Fergus of course reciprocates in kind. Fergus, being a Dog, doesn't wait for humans to start the interactions, preferring as all normal Dogs do to give affection unconditionally. If Fergus wasn't pint-sized and overly shaggy he'd be a Lab.

Technical

All photographs taken with the Pens. Fergus' photos were taken with the E-P2 and the M.Zuiko 45mm. The last photo was taken with the E-PL1 and the Lumix 20mm. I used both cameras extensively at Renninger's which has a considerable amount of mixed lighting. The E-PL1 was practically perfect in its automatic white balance, while the E-P2 was off (too orange) on every indoor photograph. I wound up using the color temperature and tint of the E-PL1 photographs to correct the E-P2 photos in post, or at least get them close enough to looking like they all (hopefully) came out of the same camera.

The top photo is my favorite of all the photos I took of Fergus. It may be cut off, and have both motion blur and be out of focus across part of the face, but it shows Fergus' playful energy. You can't really put a playful dog in a box when he or she is playing, whether it's a physical box or a photograph's borders.

Update 13 July

I forgot to note this earlier, but the reason the E-P2 turned out orange was because I'd forgotten white balance was taken off auto and place on sun (outdoors). It was operator error that led to orange indoor photos, not the camera. As usual.