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COVER
STORY
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• TEXT BY MARISA E. CAMPBELL
• IMAGES © BY DOGPHOTO.COM
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Stare into the
intelligent, curious eyes of a dog and you’ll see what keeps animal
photographers Dale Churchill and Kerrin Winter entranced. Large or small,
champions or beloved pets, canines are what make this renowned
husband-and-wife team travel around the country to capture images that
speak for themselves.
With over 10 years’ experience
capturing quality show animals and personal dog portraits on film,
Churchill and Winter are not only the top choice for dog lovers
nationally, they are also well-established equine photographers. Their
websites, http://www.dogphoto.com/ and http://www.equinephoto.com/, both
created by Churchill, feature hundreds of images, as well as samples of
their published works, which have graced the pages of many national
magazines, including Dog Fancy, Dog World, The Equine Chronicle,
and a series of canine guidebooks.
They’ve recently
published the book How to Photograph Dogs, which is enjoying
considerable success. In addition, they have photographed numerous major
events, including the Westminster Dog Show and the American Quarter Horse
Congress.
 DOG
YEARS
Churchill’s vast photographic experience
and Winter’s in-depth knowledge of dogs is a winning combination.
Together, their skills create an ease with the camera and animals, which
fills their images with perfect lighting and accurate portrayals of each
breed.
Each dog, they explain, has specific poses
that are appropriate for its breed. For instance, a German Shepherd needs
to have his ears forward, his mouth open, and his tongue about one-third
of the way straight out, while a Cocker Spaniel needs to have his ears
relaxed and his mouth closed. Who works the camera and who handles the
subject is generally determined by the animals, since they typically take
to one person more than another.
 Before a shoot, the
handler will spend about 15 minutes with each dog, preparing it with
commands and a lot of TLC. Although the session may call for hours of
preparation, the actual image takes only a fraction of a second. At the
right moment—when the perfect expression appears—the shutter is snapped
and the image frozen in time. After a few rewards, the animal quickly
realizes that a photo shoot is harmless, and the session becomes much
easier.
Not every animal, however, is a willing
model. Several years ago, a 220-pound Mastiff grew impatient with
Churchill’s pushing and posing. Without warning, the dog simply took
Churchill’s entire face in his mouth. He didn’t bite down, but just held
him as a threatening reminder of who was really in charge. His knees
shaking, Churchill continued shooting—sitting down!
 LIGHTS AND SHADOWS
Although capturing the right expression is key,
controlling the lighting is equally essential. Whether it’s a natural
vignette created by shooting through leaves or dappled light filtered
through the branches of a tree, all are created by Churchill’s
quick-thinking abilities. Often he’ll clip cut branches and leaves to
lighting fixtures and the front of lenses, which adds carefully placed
shadows and a touch of nature to the immediate environs.
To handle the unexpected, he’s always armed with
three extra lights and a dozen spring clamps. “There’s never a shadow out
of place,” he says. “You don’t see [one] except by intention.” Proper
lighting also creates catchlights in the eyes of the subject, which add
vitality and depth to the image.
When Churchill and
Winter shoot a portfolio of a dog, which will include various backgrounds,
it’s not uncommon for the couple to shoot all of them outdoors—some amidst
trees and rocks, others against seamless paper or a heavy canvas, to
effect a studio look. In fact, the ordinary park bench can be the perfect
spot for setting up a softbox. “When we’re on location,” says Churchill
“we use the same number of lights and everything else we would if we were
inside.”
 A MAVERICK APPROACH
Together with their clients—whether animal
publications or owners of show dogs—Churchill and Winter explore in great
detail what look must be achieved. Then they decide on composition,
framing, and background.
Choice of aperture, shutter
speed, and lens is directly dependent on the depth-of-field they want. For
an out-of-focus backdrop, he uses the Canon 400mm lens, which places him a
calculated distance from the subject and the subject an exact distance
from the background. After those decisions have been made, Churchill
chooses the film.
“Every visual element in the image
is something that you can control,” he explains. “Rather than react to the
location or to the lighting that’s already being thrown on my film, I
choose the film that gives me what I want with that location.” Most times
the choice is Fuji’s Velvia, since its exceptional tonal range captures
every subtle gradation in an animal’s coat.
Even
Churchill’s lighting methods are distinct. He uses the inverse square rule
method he learned 20 years ago to figure out at exactly what distance to
place the light. After deciding on his aperture and film, he looks at how
far away the lights have to be, how much space he’s working with, and then
he figures out what wattage lights to use. This way of handling lighting
so impressed industry pros that it earned him a steady freelance income as
a gaffer/lighting technician on three TV series: Walker, Texas Ranger;
Wishbone; and Barney and His Backyard Gang.
 GOING
DIGITAL
Though Churchill and Winter work only
with slide film, they have not made an analog print in over three years.
Every roll of film is sent to the lab, where it’s scanned onto a Kodak
Photo Master CD, while the actual slides are filed away with over 100,000
images that are sorted alphabetically by breed.
Using Photoshop they perform minimal digital
manipulation, which may involve cropping, dust spotting, erasing a leash,
or sometimes changing the background in a shot. Nothing, however, is done
that would compromise the integrity and structure of the animal,
especially when the image is of a show dog.
“Our
reputation is what we are, and if people get to thinking that the
dogphoto.com logo means you can’t trust that picture as being an accurate
representation of what that dog is, then we’re out of business. We’re very
careful about that.”
Customers can also view their
animal’s images on their own private gallery on the Internet, courtesy of
Churchill. The company’s move to the Internet has had many advantages for
them as well as for their customers. It has created a new form of
communicating with their existing clientele, although most of their
commerce still occurs the old-fashioned way—by word of mouth, by
advertising, and by reputation. Putting their images online has also
provided a portfolio where people can view many of their animal portraits,
stock photos, and promotional photography for show dogs.
The dogphoto.com site currently averages about 1,000
hits a day and has links to Amazon.com and many animal organizations.
Churchill and Winter also have associations with Next Card Visa, which
allows people to design their credit cards with one of the couple’s canine
images; and one with Webshots.com, which uses about 160 of their pictures
and offers links back to dogphoto.com. Future add-ons to the site include
patrons being able to purchase prints directly from Churchill and Winter
and new copyright protections.
Despite their
extensive business acumen and Churchill’s web-designing skills, these
photographers remain dog people at heart. Photographing dogs, sharing
their lives and learning from them, and enjoying photography is what keeps
them doing this year after year. Churchill and Winter have big plans for
the future: traveling abroad, finishing a black & white study of
homeless dogs from each state in the United States, and making the leap to
total digital.
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APPLYING
EYELINER
Dale
Churchill and Kerrin Winter first tried the EyeLiner Focusing Device
in 1997, when EyeLiner inventor Steve McWilliams brought a prototype
to their studio for testing. After enjoying immediate success with
the product, they’ve been applying EyeLiner to their pet photography
ever since.
Essentially a two-way mirror
mounted in front of the camera’s lens, EyeLiner works to disguise
the fact that a photo shoot is taking place, while at the same time
tricking the subject into focusing its attention on the camera’s
lens. When the subject is a petrified poodle or a distracted
dachshund, EyeLiner can work miracles.
“It’s
easy enough to tell a person ‘look into the lens,’ but when the
subject’s an animal, EyeLiner does the trick for you,” Churchill
says. “Your subject doesn’t see the camera, even though he’s looking
straight down the barrel. He sees whatever treat you place in the
viewing area, right where the lens is.” For dogs, that treat may be
a bone, a favorite toy, or their owner’s face. “The effect is
perfect eye contact,” Churchill notes. “You can look at the
resulting print from anywhere in the room and the dog’s eyes will
follow you.”
EyeLiner consists of a 50/50 beam
splitter, which is placed in front of the lens to allow undistorted
images to be recorded by the camera. A second mirror is positioned
to provide an image of interest to the subject. In the case of
photographing children, a parent, a special toy or even the
photographer’s face can be positioned in the viewer.
For Churchill, getting pets to make eye
contact with the camera has never been easier. “I once shot 22 rolls
of film and there wasn’t one frame when the dog didn’t look into the
lens. At one point I had three dogs in the shot and they were all
looking into the lens.” For more information about EyeLiner, visit
http://www.mceyeliner.com/
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DOGPHOTO.COM'S
GEAR BOX
35 MM
CAMERAS
Canon EOS-IN RS
Canon 650
LIGHTING
Vivitar 285 Flash
Lumiquest Pro Max
softboxes
Bogen stand adaptors
Quanum Radio Slave
4i
Minolta 4 light meter
Speedotron Brownline 1600 WS pack
with 400WS and 800WS heads
5-,12-and 16-inch dish
reflectors
PhotoFlex softboxes
ACCESSORIES
McWilliams EyeLiner Focusing
Device
Bogen tripod with #3040 head
Leatherman
Multi-tool
6-inch snoot
ESSENTIALS
"Doggie bag" containing dog
treats, whistle, harmonica, tennis ball, soda can w/gravel taped
inside, hair spray, brush, collapsible canvas water bowl, and half
gallon of water. Coleman 1850 watt gas-powered generator, 250 feet
of outdoor extension cable, assorted paper, cloth, and canvas
backgrounds, compressed air, lens tissue, red and black Sharpies,
white tape to mark animals position, black gaffer's tape "for
anything that needs to stay where ya put it," rubber bands, roll of
kite string for bulling branches in to or out of the shot, 28 extra
AA batteries, 1 each special batteries for meter, Canon 650, and the
radio, 5- to 15-foot sync cords with Y connectors and adapters in
case radio breaks
down. | |
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See our
February issue
for these articles:
Panda-Mania!
By Dan Havlik
Images by Windland Rice and Tom
Curley
Serious Business
By
Alysha Sideman
Behind the scenes with GREG KINCH and the world's
biggest deal-makers.
The Pearson Puzzle
By
Jennifer Gidman
Demystifying the images of TREAVOR
PEARSON
Finding Inspiration
in
India
By Rick Sammon
Images from a life-altering
journey.
Cool Scanners
By Dan
Havlik
NIKON's hot high-speed scanners.
Conceptual Art
By Jen
Bidner
PAUL EEKHOFF's digital artistry.
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