Over the past few days many of you visited the Best Friends Photo Contest website and voted on a brand new photo of 14 year old GREYHOUNDS cover boy Slim for People’s Choice. It was a VERY close race and those of your who were following know that Slim was in 1st place for a good portion of the day yesterday! Late in the evening we ended up in 2nd place, but we are so thankful to everyone who took the time to participate!

Slim also would like to thank everyone who voted for him and his little IG friends. He congratulates Lisha Platta and her photo of the happy brown dog for a great competition. In the end he is really the winner no matter what… He had a good racing career, he has wonderful sister greyhound companions and a nurturing home where he has been happy for almost 10 years. All he wanted was for lots of people to see his picture in order to raise awareness for all the greyhounds who are currently about to be in need of homes when the Dairyland Park Racetrack closes 12/31/09. Slim wishes them the best and hopes that some of the people who have looked at his beautiful 14 year old continence surrounded by the vibrant IG pups will consider adopting a greyhound as a lifelong companion. If not now, then in the future.

Happy Slimmaversary, 10 years…
How lucky are Barbara, Turtle, Fancy, Easton (somewhere with a knowing smile) and Slim on 12/27/09.

Check out this great new raffle at northcoastgreyhounds.net!!

The raffle features four 11×14″ mounted and UV laminated fine art photographs from Barbara’s Eyes Series, as well as a lovely sterling silver greyhounds charm bracelet and a signed copy of Greyhounds!

This raffle’s proceeds will benefit Greyhounds Only, Inc.

Be sure to check it out HERE as the raffle ends Monday, April 27th at 5:00 pm!!

We are now offering our greyhounds vintage valentines as 5 x 7 prints at our Etsy shop…

Check it out!

While it’s likely that most everyone has heard about Paste Magazine’s Obamicon.Me site now, we’re still pretty entertained! For those not in the know, the site allows users to create their own “Obamicon” image, inspired by the now legendary Shepard Fairey poster. We did Slim:

Also, in honor of the inauguration yesterday, we are offering an 11 x 14 Fine Art Print of our Born to Run poster, available at our etsy site for $25. Each poster is printed 300 weight archival Moab Entrada Fine Art paper with Epson archival inks and is signed and dated by Barbara Karant on the back.

A reminder for the photographers out there: The Review Santa Fe Call For Entries Deadline is right around the corner, on January 23rd.

According to the official website,

“Review Santa Fe is a juried portfolio review event scheduled for June 4-6, 2009. It is a two-day conference for photographers who have created a significant project or series and are seeking wider recognition. Up to 100 photographers meet with esteemed curators, editors, art directors, publishers, gallery and agency reps, and alternative market professionals.”

As someone who has attended for the past two years and enjoyed the programs sponsored by Review Santa Fe, Barbara would encourage anyone with a mature photographic project to enter. While there, Barbara received valuable input on GREYHOUNDS and made many good acquaintances that she hopes to continue involvement with in the future.

Barbara Karant with reviewer Kevin Miller of the Southeast Muesum in Florida ©Matt Suhre 2008

Portfolio Viewing at Zane Bennett © Sara Stathas 2008

Check it out at www.visitcenter.org

Continuing on with the theme of January being a good month, we have a couple more reasons to add to our list:

January is the month that PDN features a 1 ½ page article about Greyhounds! Look for the latest copy of PDN on stands now.

(Click images for larger, more readable versions)

Also, we’re excited about January because it’s the month of President Elect Obama’s anxiously anticipated inauguration! We recently submitted our “Get the Girls a Greyhound” poster to the ManifestHope:DC Art Contest, “Green Economy” category. Regarding this choice, Barbara wrote that:

“The populace of a nation that supports a green economy should also support the extended family unit to include a recycled pet. While there are many wonderful dogs in shelters there are also a class of “working dog” that provide an extraordinary opportunity as a companion animal. Like the millions of people the “clean and green” economy can lift out of poverty, these remarkable creatures should be rescued from a questionable fate and given a second chance at life after their tenure on the racetrack is over.”

While we sadly did not win (this time) it’s interesting to take a look at some of the work that did. It’s truly amazing how much creativity Obama and his forth-coming presidency have inspired. We are glad to have taken part in this movement and even more so to watch history unfold in front of us!

We are also starting to think we might write a note to George Stephanopoulos asking him to recommend a greyhound for the next presidential dog since the girls did such a good job cornering their dad through him…

Or maybe we’ll start working on VP elect Biden since he’s already talking about dog number two and this time, one from a shelter!

We’ll do whatever we can do to bring more visibility (and homes) to the Greyhounds!

Each of these photos represents one of the NINE years Barbara has had with our coverboy (and high-profile model) Slim. Barbara is so greatful to have the pleasure of sharing her life with Slim for all of these years. He has been a constant muse and companion.

Happy Slimiversary!!

Last week for her presentation at the Apple Store, Barbara shared some of her newest work, which juxtaposes Greyhound imagery with her commercial architectural photographs. The resulting pairings are unexpected, clever and thought provoking. The pairings received great reception at the talk and Barbara thus decided to debut this work on her PDN Photoserve Portfolio.

This new portfolio has just been named one of PDN’s Portfolios of the Month.

More here.

Anthony Tortoriello has done it again!

I received two more great photos from Barbara’s talk at the Apple Store from Anthony this morning:

These images © Anthony Tortoriello.

Check out our flickr site for more greyhounds photos and if you have any photos you’d like to share from other Greyhounds the Book events, send them our way! We’ll happily post them to the blog.