Here’s a story from my days in Wales when I was hired by the Welsh Lamb industry to produce some advertising photos for a brochure. The art director wanted a beautiful valley and mountains in the background and a photogenic flock of sheep, a shepherd and his dog in the foreground. (The next part contains a disturbing photo, do not continue if you are easily offended!) This wasn’t an easy job as not only did the location have to be scouted out but arrangements had to be made for good looking sheep to appear in the right position.
This was all achieved with the help of three dogs, two shepherds and assorted farmers and assistants. To get the shot meant moving quickly and taking a lot of photos to suit the art director’s vision and everything went well up to the point where I heard a bellow of laughter from the shepherds.
I looked around to see the oldest sheepdog carefully backing up to my new Hama camera bag (luckily closed) and proceeding to deposit a steaming pile of poop right on the top of the bag. Out of several hundred acres of Welsh hillside to poop on, she chose my camera bag! Amidst the laughter, one shepherd turned to me and remarked sagely, “She don’t like Englishmen, that dog.”
Yep, hilarious but I took a photo of this impromptu still life – blue camera bag, rolling green hills and a pile of poop gently steaming in the crisp mountain air – wonderful award winning photo. I sent it off to a photo mag who returned it with a note that it was “totally unsuitable for publication due to graphic nature of content.” Ha! and this from a mag which used any excuse to show naked female models! Even the camera bag manufacturers weren’t interested to know that their bags were actually dog poop proof!
There is no photoshopping in this photo!
