My wife is a dog lover. Actually, that is an understatement; she is obsessed with dogs—especially ours. She knows every dog’s name in the neighborhood (even if she doesn’t know their owners’ names), their ages, their temperaments, their quirks….pretty much everything about them.
So as the Holidays approach, her standard request comes: “Please photograph our dogs so we can send out a beautiful Christmas card!” Usually, I get out my Canon and do a quick snap and I’m done. But this year was different—I decided to make a production of it, set up a background, model lights, the whole deal.
We have two dogs. One is Jamie, a one-year-old, female chocolate Lab, and the other is Buffett, an eight-year-old, male Bichon Frise. They are an odd pair. I haven’t spotted this combination in other households. Buffett is like an old French curmudgeon—reserved, proud and downright persnickety. Jamie is unbridled enthusiasm and affection. She is still straddling the line between exuberant adolescence and proper adulthood.
They sat for the photo session obediently. Elizabeth, was directing the affair, holding their gaze while I snapped the shutter, rewarding them with treats and kisses. Of course, I took a number of pictures, curious as to how the dogs would photograph with the soft benefit of the portrait lights.
I downloaded the shots and was delighted with the images. Of course Elizabeth, who has never seen a dog she didn’t love, was thrilled. We had compelling shots of both dogs and memorable images for this year’s Christmas card.
We have shown the pictures around and now, one by one, the neighbors are bringing by their dogs. Soon I’ll have a gallery. I guess I am going, literally, to the dogs.
One of my career’s favorite assignments was for National Geographic/Adventure, documenting the ever-ongoing migration of Komi reindeer herders who live north of the Arctic Circle in Russia. These people had never before been visited by foreigners (although the men had served in the Russian army) and they lived a unique lifestyle blending old and new. In truth, writer Gretel Ehrlich and I only stumbled upon them by accident. We had expected to be traveling with the better-known Nenet herders.
As this photo suggests, the setting was awe inspiring. Here the clan is moving across the tundra, en route to their next camp in the distant taiga forest, where they can find firewood to burn for cooking and heat. The long poles on the sleds are for their reindeer-skin tipis, which they erect and take down with every move. Everything they own is on those sleds, and in order to keep finding new lichens for their herd of 2500 reindeer (not pictured) to eat, they can never stay in one place for too long. For all of their hardships, however, they are proud of their culture and are deeply in love with the tundra.
Sadly, though, scenes like this may soon happen no more, if they have not already disappeared. For over a decade, younger women have refused to put up with this rigorous life and prefer to raise their children in Arctic villages with stores and television. When we visited, this clan — which was the last nomadic Komi one — it consisted of only three elderly women (who still drive and pack sleds), one of their daughters, and about a dozen of their middle-aged sons, who stay on the land primarily to care for their mothers, who never want to leave the land. When these women die or become too aged to travel (which may already have occurred) this lifestyle will be gone forever. Ironically, it will be virtually impossible to discover how and when this happens because the Russian government barely knows about the Komi and the setting is too remote and difficult for almost any outsider to reach.
This coverage was jointly sponsored by the National Geographic Expeditions Council and /Adventure/ Magazine. Later, I was awarded the Lowell Thomas award for best travel photography for my pictures, and Gretel won another award for her story. To read the story and watch an audio slide show, click here.
