Chip Simons: Dog Days
The dog pictures were the breakthrough for commercial photographer Chip Simons. The ironic thing is that he took them because he'd been told that his brand of offbeat photography wouldn't make it in the commercial world.
"I'd come to New York in the early 80s from New Mexico, and I wasn't getting any work. People told me I'd have to take 'straight' photographs if I wanted to make it. It was a pretty dismal time. After a long, miserable winter I'd gotten a bicycle and discovered Central Park. I'd see the dogs in the park and they seemed friendly and fun—the opposite of most of the people I was seeing—and I thought, I'd rather be a dog. So I became one through my camera."
This photo was one of the earliest in Chip's "I am a dog" series. He took it with his Nikon FE, 18mm f/3.5Nikkor lens and a red gel over the flash. "I walked around all day with the camera set at f/16.3 and 1/60 second, and as long as I aimed up toward the sky, everything was perfect. I'd see a dog coming and I'd put my camera right where another dog's face would be when the approaching dog would come to sniff him. As the dog went to sniff the lens, I'd take the picture. With all that depth-of-field, I'd get all the buildings and background stuff in focus.".
Once the dog images were published—first in Andy Warhol's Interview magazine—the clients started to show up, wanting to know more about the work of this "weird, dog guy." Chip got a chance to show his other work—the stuff people had said was too strange to be commercial—and before long his editorial and advertising illustrations were turning up everywhere. They still are. Chip is currently looking for a publisher to turn the "I am a dog" series into a book.
