flatcoated retriever catching a snowball

A GoPro, dogs snout and icy spring snowmelt

flatcoated retriever catching a snowball

Every now and then we’ve remembered to attach our GoPro to the dogs and get some footage from their point of view. One of the highlights of spring photographically is when enough of the snow has melted and snow melt has flooded the nearby fields that the dogs can go running in the water. Since it also happened to be a nice sunny day, it proved to be a great opportunity to photograph the dogs and get some footage.

But as always happens, finding the time to edit the video wasn’t quite as simple. Going through the process of editing was also an excellent reminder of how time consuming any editing and pruning, be it photo or video editing is. And if you are unclear on the difference of photo/video editing and editing photo/video, I recommend reading this excellent blog post on the topic by Rolando Gomez.

Enjoy the video, and then if you’re interested read on for some of my thoughts on things that need improving.

We use the S.U.G.A.R Coat Universal CamCollar to attach the GoPro to our dogs. While all of their pictures show the camera on top of the dogs neck (which should work when swimming), with flatcoats it just doesn’t work when moving on land. So we’ve flipped it around and film from under the dog’s chin. This works, but means that the camera gets knocked around a lot more. Thus, it despite the fairly strong attachments, it falls off every now and then. So, lessons learned:

  • attach the camera to collar with an additional lanyard,
  • cold water is a challenge for the velcro and tapes used (see above),
  • buying a floaty backdoor for the GoPro would also be a good investment,
  • and finally, the flat lens of the dive housing would also be a good investment.

Flatcoated retriever leaping after a snowball

As you can imagine from the lessons learned, we had to search for the camera a couple of times from the bottom of the flooded field. But they are honest lessons that have been learned. On a final note, enjoy a couple of extra behind the scenes photos:

flatcoated retriever catching a snowball

flatcoated retriever in icy water

flatcoated retriever jumping over a ditch

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