Dog Photography at Radford Park | MJC Photography Plymouth
It is a scene that has become distressingly familiar to the locals: a middle-aged man, increasingly red of face, prostrate in the mud with a camera clutched in his hand, emitting a series of desperate barks and whistles. All of this in the vain hope of arresting the subject’s attention for the fraction of a second required for a "formal" pose.
It is a specialized form of madness, I grant you. But oh, the elation when that frantic, muddy chaos aligns for one fleeting moment and becomes, quite simply, "The Shot."
One of the more pressing reasons I have recently taken up a residency at Trident Studios is the simple, blissful reliability of a roof. It turns out that having a sturdy layer of industrial grade material between oneself and the heavens is a marvellous invention.
Mother Nature, it seems, took our collective grumbling about last summer’s hosepipe bans quite personally. In a fit of celestial overcompensation, she has spent the last few months ensuring we have enough precipitation to see us through to the next decade, and perhaps a small portion of the one after that.
Having been the grateful recipient of a gift voucher, available, I should shamelessly add, from our stall in the Tavistock Pannier Market (a chap has to eat, after all) I finally found a window of meteorological cooperation. It was a rare and fleeting opportunity to capture some photographs that didn’t involve me looking like a saturated North Sea fisherman in heavy duty Gore-Tex.
I decamped to Radford Park, a place of terrific, if slightly damp, variety. It boasts everything a photographer could desire: charmingly tumbledown stone buildings, an abundance of flora and fauna, and even a miniature castle that looks as though it were misplaced by a passing medieval giant.
In my mind’s eye, that dangerous place where logic rarely ventures,I envisioned elegant portraits of Luna set against vast, sweeping panoramic vistas. The reality, however, was somewhat more kinetic. Luna, evidently impressed by the terrain, decided the best way to appreciate the park was to traverse every square inch of it at breakneck speed.
It is a scene that has become distressingly familiar to the locals: a middle-aged man, increasingly red of face, prostrate in the mud with a camera clutched in his hand, emitting a series of desperate barks and whistles. All of this in the vain hope of arresting the subject’s attention for the fraction of a second required for a "formal" pose.
It is a specialized form of madness, I grant you. But oh, the elation when that frantic, muddy chaos aligns for one fleeting moment and becomes, quite simply, "The Shot."
If you have a four-legged friend who similarly treats the laws of physics as mere suggestions, I would love to meet them. Whether they prefer a dignified stroll or, like Luna, a series of frantic, mid-air acrobatics, we can capture a moment that actually lasts longer than a whistle.
Luna attempting to achieve low earth orbit in pursuit of a tennis ball at Radford Park
Capturing the Uncapturable: Photographing a Hyperactive Dog (and My Chocolate-Fueled Efforts)
The truth, as it often is, was rather humbling. No matter how many chocolate eggs I might ingest in the name of energy, I could no more keep up with Cooper than I could suddenly understand the offside rule. He was a force of nature, a four-legged testament to the sheer, unadulterated joy of simply being and moving. And I, well, I was mostly just muddy. And slightly sticky. But you know, in a rather satisfying sort of way.
Ah, Sunday. A day of rest, reflection, and in my case, the rather ambitious notion of powering my weary frame with a frankly heroic quantity of chocolate. One might reasonably assume that such a sugary onslaught would leave me buzzing with the boundless enthusiasm of a small child at a party fuelled by E-numbers and fizzy pop. You'd think, wouldn't you? That I'd be ready to leap tall buildings, or at the very least, keep pace with… well, anything that moved with even a modicum of purpose.
But then there was Cooper.
Cooper, you see, had recently celebrated his second birthday, a milestone apparently marked by a solemn vow to personally investigate the aerodynamic properties of every available patch of ground in the vicinity. His greeting was a mere nanosecond of polite nasal investigation before he was off again, a small, furry comet on a trajectory of pure, unadulterated zoom. The idea of him pausing for a dignified portrait? About as likely as finding a polite badger at a tea party.
Thankfully, the unflappable Chloe and Dan were old hands at this particular brand of high-octane fluffball. They executed a truly impressive feat of canine choreography, somehow "encouraging" Cooper to hurtle towards the lens while they themselves perched precariously on either side of a riverbank that looked suspiciously like it had been liberally buttered.
My trusty camera, a veteran of countless windswept vistas and stoic sheep, was called into action. It was a small comfort to discover that my fingers still remembered how to dial in a shutter speed usually reserved for capturing bullets in mid-flight. And so there I was, prone in the damp earth, sounding rather like a demented woodpecker as I unleashed a rapid-fire barrage of clicks, desperately trying to freeze this furry blur in time.
The truth, as it often is, was rather humbling. No matter how many chocolate eggs I might ingest in the name of energy, I could no more keep up with Cooper than I could suddenly understand the offside rule. He was a force of nature, a four-legged testament to the sheer, unadulterated joy of simply being and moving. And I, well, I was mostly just muddy. And slightly sticky. But you know, in a rather satisfying sort of way.