Animal Planet Exhibit

I usually don't use my blog as a form of unashamed promotion, but... this was/is pretty cool.
The photo shoot I did for Animal Planet a few months ago has been a huge hit within The Discovery Channel offices. So much so that they produced a small fold-out calendar (which sold out). Now they would like to print a larger calendar for sale and have printed 16x20" prints of about a dozen images which are hanging in the lobby of their corporate office in Silver Spring. I had a chance to stop by this week to see it and say Thank You to the art buyers. They are great to work with - very professional and love to have a good time on the set. Can't beat the experience!

The images of the exhibit aren't great, but you get the idea.

AKC Dog Photo Shoot

I recently had the honor of shooting for The Discovery Channel again - this time for Animal Planet. Their annual AKC Championship Dog Show is coming up in February and they needed shots of dogs with attitude for their advertising campaign - one of the ads they are using is above. The shoot was in two parts: morning session was a NYC crew filming some on-air pieces with the Phantom (an amazing high speed video camera that shoots at 1000 frames/second - see specs here). The stills portion (my assignment) was in the afternoon. Some of the shots are below. Six dogs were on set - one bulldog, two poodles (one black, one white), two afghans and one pomeranian. My assignment was to capture their personality either through a look, gesture, movement, etc...
I've photographed animals before and have found that it is a mixture of timing and a lot of luck. It's similar to photographing people but a lot less animated and most definitely harder to capture that decisive moment. You can't really tell a dog to "hold that pose". It's there one minute and then gone forever. So the camera is stuck to your eye for quite a while, waiting for the right expression.
All the dogs were great, but the bulldog had the most personality (both in body and expression) and gave us exactly what we were looking for - that "I don't care, just get the shot so I can get out of here" look. The poodles were very calm and all their personality shown through their eyes. Very loving animals. Photographing their "overdone hairdos" was a first for me. The Afghans were, to be honest, not that bright. Talk about dogs with ADD. They couldn't keep still, but loved the wind machine which calmed them down, somewhat... But boy could they give you that "sad eyes" look. The photo below reminds me of a painting of The Madonna from the 1500's.
If you would like to see more, there are images on my web site under "New Work".

Vision and Creativity

After posting an image per day for the last week I thought I would be more energized in taking photos. What I’ve discovered is that photography can’t be forced. It has to be something that just happens – at least for me. I like seeing things in a different light; in a fresh way, but it has to come naturally. Many of the photos from the past week have been from my archive. That’s not a bad thing, just something I didn’t expect. I wanted to take some new images, but the opportunity never seemed to present itself. Yes I did take my camera with me, but there was no real goal, no vision. I was looking at everything without really seeing anything. I felt forced to “produce” something.

Now I could have said, “I suck! I’ve lost all feeling for photography”. But this experience has helped me realize how I take photos and how my vision impacts my creativity. Vision should not get in the way of creativity. The two can, and should, go hand in hand. This is not something new for me, but it took a week’s worth of looking but not seeing to have it penetrate my conscience.



So, this past Saturday, I incorporated this new found realism into a photo shoot of two black labs owned my Karen Smith, a photo editor with The Discovery Channel. I had a vision of what I wanted, but didn’t let it get in the way of my creativity. If something didn’t look exactly the way I wanted, I adjusted my vision to compliment my creativity. I just let it happen.

Included here are some images from the shoot.