Posted December 11th, 2009

This was one of the best feeling jobs I have done in years. Time Magazine was great about giving me all the support I could ask for. Feel great about the results, feel great about the dogs, feel great about the people I was working with. Here is the story of how these pictures came to be.
I received a call from Kira Pollack, photo editor at Time, whom I had often worked with when she was at The New York Times Magazine. She is one of the great ones, as anyone who comes out of the great Kathy Ryan photo dept. is. Kira says she has an interesting job and could I come in to talk about it. Rescued Fighting Dogs in St Louis, and the kicker, they need 75 portraits. Wow, a lot of pictures. My assistant and I immediately start doing light tests and background color tests on my Chihuahua, Nina. There were several issues to consider: What sort of background/lighting is going to look good on a grid of 75 dogs? The dogs being all different colors, what sort of lighting should we use? Having a potentially very dynamic subject, how should we light this so that motion is frozen and the light can be easily moved about to follow the dog? Most importantly, how can I show them with dignity? How can I bring their character into the photo?
The solution we came up with was a middle grey paper background. I had considered painting a wall and floor, fabric, or wood, but I figured we could get middle grey paper in St Louis, and if the dogs wreck it, we can pull down another section, and we wouldn’t be spending 1 entire day set building or set painting. A recent consideration to all travel jobs is the budget for the baggage. If it costs 50$ each way for a bag, and $100 each way for a heavy bag, times 5 bags, we are better off renting the gear on location. In St Louis, there is no way to get a Pro 7 pack. But we could get Dynalight 1000x packs, which I had last used 15 years ago. The issue for me was the flash duration, slow 1/600 sec and I knew we would be dealing with some active animals. Our solution was to use the Dynalights for some of the light, but the main light would come from a handheld overhead Canon 580EX attached to a Quantum and a Pocket Wizard that my assistant would hold in his hand and be able to harmonize with the dogs movement. The whole family of these Canon/ NIkon flashes emit their flash at super fast durations, and at a slightly cooler color temp than the studio flashes. I often use the pocket wizard/canon recipe outside with some gel when I need a portable backlit sun. Works great. As I read in Rob’s blog last week, ” A photographers job is problem solving” Exactly!
The first morning a problem came up. We only had one Quantum-580 EX setup. Dumb, but that is what super tight production budgets do. Something malfunctioned in the cord to EX connection and we had to have someone make a run to a local shop where thank god they had another exact setup. I have no excuse for why we didn’t dupe that set up, but we didn’t want to spend the extra $50/day. Everything else in my kit I have covered in duplicate as a minimum. Oh, well. Lost 2 very tense hours, but once we got the hand held synching properly we were on a roll. Dog moves right, Robert my assistant leans right. White dog, raise the light, black dog bring the light closer. Worked great.
I like using the 1DSIII for stills in studio. Very fast auto focus, solid dependable camera. I had it at 1/200 sec, f8-f16. For most of the shots we used a 70-200f4. I love that lens, excellent auto focus, and super sharp. When you have a revved up pit bull as a subject, it is all about speed of focus acquisition. Let me know if you have any questions, I would be happy to answer.

“f8-f16, depending on the *COLOR*? Would you mind elaborating on this a bit, I’ve never heard of such a thing. Thanks!
Hi Javier,
Thanks for your question. I can see how my description would cause some curiosity. By color, I mean tone of the dogs fur. The dogs fur ranged from full white to matt black. We found that in order to hold detail on either end of the scale, we would open up for the black dogs and close down for the white dogs. The mixed ones were sort of in the middle. Once we put a dog on the platform, then we would focus and check the exposure in the Marshall. We didn’t use false color on this on, we found it misleading with the extremes of white/black fur difference, but rather went by eye.
I hope that helps to clarify.
Best wishes,
David