I pride myself on never taking snapshots. My photos are all spot metered and re-cropped in the viewfinder with the shutter release half-pressed to lock in focus, exposure, and color balance before finally taking the shot.

But sometimes you just can't take the time to do all that. This picture was taken "on the run" so to speak, at the dog park in Anchorage, Alaska. I had a small gap in the bushes, and perhaps five or six seconds to grab my camera, turn it on, zoom, crop and compose, then click the shutter before the duck was behind the trees. This is a full-frame photo, unedited, but re-sized to display on the bbs.

Sometimes a guy gets lucky.

Also attached is the reason we were at the dog park. Please give a welcome to Amber, our new standard poodle. She is 7 months old, and obviously not in any normal poodle cut. That is her "baby" hair which will gradually be replaced by the typical curly poodle fur.

tanstaafl.

Pretty cool.

I take nothing but snapshots. It's a point of pride.

That's not really looking much like a poodle, I think. Our king poodle is 1 year end of this month, but he had curly fur pretty much the whole time, at least from when we received him at 3 months age.

Edit: Looking at some pictures from around that age and before we trimmed the fur, it looks like it was not that curly-looking. I guess it gets more curly when it is shorter and recently showered...

Purebred standard poodle with papers.

tanstaafl.