Personal Pet Project: DC Dog Film Photography
If you have seen any of my work over the past few years, you already know I love dogs. While I was in Washington, D.C. for The FIND workshop, I started a side project photographing dogs being walked on the streets of the city. The challenge is real. You get one, maybe two minutes with each animal. They are moving, distracted, pulling toward pigeons. You have to get down to their level, earn their trust fast, and be ready to shoot before the window closes.
These five frames came from a two-day stretch during the workshop. All shot on film. There is something about grain and the way film compresses tonal range that feels right for this kind of work. The randomness of the street, the personality that comes through in a single frame, the way a dog will look directly into the lens for exactly one second and then it is gone.
I was just back in Boston for a GTKY session and photographed more personal work, including more frames for this project. I am building something here, a growing body of street dog photographs that sits completely outside the wedding and family work. No posing, no direction, no light kit. Just me, a roll of film, and whatever the city offers up.
More from this project coming soon.
There is something specific to how film handles the street that digital does not quite replicate. The fixed ISO, the commitment to every frame, the knowledge that you have thirty-six exposures on the roll and the light is already changing. It slows you down in the right way. You stop machine-gunning and start reading. You wait for the ears to go up, the weight to shift, the nose to point somewhere and the body to go still for a half-second before it moves again.
Film street work is a study in trust. You cannot chimp the back of the camera to see if you got it. You make your read, you make the exposure, and then you walk to the next block. The dog has already forgotten you exist. That uncertainty keeps you honest.
What drew me to dogs specifically is the way they are completely present. They are not performing for the frame the way people sometimes are. A dog will look directly into your lens for one second and mean it, and then it is gone. That directness is rare. It is the same thing I look for in the unscripted moments during a wedding day, the fifteen seconds between ceremony and portraits when nobody is managing their expression anymore, when you see who people actually are. Years of documenting Philadelphia weddings and Jersey Shore weddings sharpened that instinct. The street work puts it back in its raw form.
The project is ongoing. Boston added more frames. Cities add different light, different rhythms, different dogs with different owners who are in different amounts of a hurry. The body of work is growing. No client brief, no shot list, no timeline. Just the city and whatever it puts in front of the lens.
