Making another perfect Rottweiler family Christmas card.

Well, its that time of year again. After Thanksgiving everyone knows that Christmas is only a month away, especially when the newspapers get filled with sales ads. If you read last year's post on my first attempt to make a perfect Rottweiler family Christmas card you recall that I was forced to use a photo of a Santa Claus hat on the two boys, Axl and Ruff, because the hats I bought them were too small for their large heads. This year I was determined to do it right so I bought three large size hats for them to wear and once again I sewed elastic chin straps to hold them on. Well, it sort of worked but not the way I had expected. Along the way I also purchased a new Nikon D3200 DSLR camera and one new feature with the timer was it shot three consecutive photos each time I used it and the timer gave me a 20-second delay. Since I had to walk across the room, sit down and get one of the Rottweilers to sit in front of me, the 20-second delay was very helpful. Then I found I also had to get the Santa hat on two of the Rotts because they didn't care to have it on their heads for too long. Then we had to put leashes on them to keep them by the couch and not wander off. Anyway, I got it all right after several attempts and here is the final result. The only digital retouching was to remove the white chin straps and the leather leashes from the picture.

Click the pictures for a larger view.

And here are the out takes showing the trials and tribulations of making the perfect Rottweiler family Christmas card. These pictures are posted in chronological order beginning with the first effort. One unexpected problem I had was to keep the three Rotts from turning their heads and looking at us instead of facing the camera. And Sassy, the one in the middle kept laying down.

It doesn't help when you accidentally bump the camera and tilt it while pushing the shutter button.

Hope everyone has a very Merry Christmas.