Julie Orloske was at her White Bear Lake home when she took the photo Hi Neighbor, which took first place in the Pets category of our annual photo contest. Orloske was standing on her driveway in the late spring when she saw her neighbor’s dog, Crixus, peering out through the crack in her fence. Placing her Canon 70D camera on the ground, she captured the dog in action. “This is Crixus,” Orloske says. “This is how he is.”
Crixus, a 1½-year-old male Catahoula leopard hound and boxer mix, is a curious puppy and often uses the hole in the fence as a vantage point to see out beyond his yard.
Like Crixus, Orloske also enjoys the view from a certain vantage point: the lens of her camera. “Looking through the lens, it’s a whole other world—the stress of the world is not there when I am with my camera.”
Orloske, a technology teacher at Frassati Catholic Academy, enjoys taking animal and nature photography in her free time.
