Day 313—Challenging

Today’s Flickr theme is “your daily challenge” and I must say, without a doubt, my daily challenge is Bobo. Next month, I will have been challenged by this creature for ten years and I have struggled with aggression issues since the day we brought her into our home. Sometimes I feel as if I have made no progress with her at all. And, at other times, I can’t believe how far I’ve come. Since I’ve taken up photography, she has become one of my favorite subjects—colorful and interesting. She alternates between being camera shy and returning to her cage as soon as I pick up the camera or, as she did today, posing and approaching the lens out of curiosity.

Since my other daily challenge is getting my shots in focus, Bobo, a constantly moving target, contributes to that daily challenge, as well. I love to get shots of her approaching the lens with her face looming into focus but today, I couldn’t manage to get one of those shot focused properly. The in focus area when this lens is wide open (my 24-70mm zoom) is only an inch or two so it is an extreme challenge when she moves toward the lens. These two shots were the only two out of more than 30 shots that her eyes were in acceptable focus. They aren’t as perfect as I’d like because the reflections in her eyes from the lights in the kitchen indicate slight movement. I couldn’t use the tripod because she was moving around the kitchen counter and when she finally did stop moving for a second, I had the shutter speed set to a slow 1/30 so I guess I should be happy that they’re in focus at all.