More Shasta Cuteness

I wanted to try capturing some action shots of dogs and Shasta was the perfect subject....however I need to fine-tune my technique.  I used my D700 with a 70 - 200 VR lens and thought that at shutterspeeds of 1/1250th and up I would get sharp images but usually I did not.  Since it was very hard to predict where my sister would get the Frisbee to go, I was zooming in from a distance and did not use flash. I tried various apertures too, to blur the background but we could not find an area where we could get Shasta far enough away from the background to blur it as much as I would like, except when I was panning.  Also we tried several locations and shot on a cloudy day, a sunny day in the shade and in the direct late afternoon sun.  While I like the soft light of the cloudy day, my sister loves the shapes Shasta's shadows make from the sunlit shots (try saying that phrase quickly 3 times!).  Still, even though not many shots are sharp, it is funny to see Shasta's fierce expressions and her body contortions as she tries so valiantly to catch that Frisbee.

It was in the 70s this day and Shasta got so hot she went to the shade and sat inside a large Pampass grass plant to cool off:

 And finally, my sister with her wonderful Shasta: