The Christmas Photo Shoot

This year's set

Black Friday, for us, is a day of sleeping in, eating Thanksgiving leftovers, wrangling guinea pigs and taking lots of photos.

This year was easier than past years for a number of reasons.  There were only two pigs to herd and bribe.  What a different dynamic that is!  As an added bonus, using the grids to hold up the backdrop allowed me to work with the pigs and keep my hands out of many of the shots.  There was one drawback with that: Pinniped kept facing me for treats and we got a number of her bodacious butt.  Bertie wasn't feeling terrific, so she was fairly tractable.  It was mostly Pinni that I had to chase around when she wasn't in the tin.

The new lights helped a lot, too, because we weren't dependent on strong sun and an unreliable flash.  We finished the shoot in record time - only 256 photos in a single sitting.  Amazing!  I had several good photos to choose from for our Christmas cards. 

These are actually the outtakes, which are sillier (and not as clear) than the final 2-3 photos.

I was floored that I got everything I wanted in a single shoot.  The photos needed very little adjustments and no serious Photoshopping (well, in my case, Gimping).  I decided to do a quick little second shoot, just to get a few solo shots of Pinni.  

The many sides of Pinniped

What a schnoz.  Rob says that top-left photo is the last thing a piece of parsley ever sees.  And behold!  The double-wide is back.  I love that Pinni is so squeezable.  She works hard on that beautiful eggplant-shaped figure.  I nearly  lost my fingers on that last shot.  Chomp!

The final three photos are off to be printed; the cards are ready to be stuffed and signed.  The holiday season has officially begun!