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| The Hutchings Family |
Never work with children and animals they say. I have no intention. No chance whatsoever. None. I haven't really met many children. I don't know how they work. I've seen people around animals who are nervous and don't know what to do. This is me with kids. They give me the impression that they can see into my very soul, and what they see they don't like. Recently I photographed this guy (below), Johnson the Hungarian Viszla. He's a very handsome chap. He's handsome but he's also very nervous and it was incredibly tricky to get him to sit still. Even smoked ham didn't work. If a dog has no interest in meat it's pretty much time to give in. Despite this we did manage to get a couple of shots in the bag. We'd only been shooting for maybe ten minutes and it was time to wrap up. Johnson was starting to tremble and although this wouldn't show on camera it wouldn't have been fair to carry on. The dogs owner spotted an opportunity. The lights were set up and his kids were all in the other room, painting each others faces and having a screaming competition. He shouted, " get yourselves in here quick" and in they bowled. Now like I said, I don't really know what to do with kids so I figured i'd let them do what they want. What they wanted to do was jump up and down, scream at me and run round the kitchen with my photo umbrellas. Grabbing bits of my kit in turn and shouting,"what's this? what does this do? WHAT"S THIS FOR?" and then dropping it on the floor and moving on to the next. Oh, so that's how it's going to be is it? Calming them down was impossible so I joined in with the shouting and just tried to get them to do it roughly in front of the camera. This was no mean feat as they were like wild animals but with the aid off the flash we managed to freeze them pretty good. Most of the pictures were awful but in amongst them was this gem (above). One of my favourites photographs in a while. A moment of genuine domestic bliss.
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| Johnson - Hungarian Viszla |
