Inner Animal

My first memory of using a camera was when I was 11. I was in fifth grade on a class field trip to Catalina Island. The only picture I remember taking was of water in a shallow cave. When I got home, the camera and film got packed away. To my knowledge it has never been printed.

Knowing what I know now, familiar with the camera’s voracious need for light, I am virtually certain that the picture would have been awful: dark with no clear subject to guide the eye through the picture.

There is no shortage of books (or websites) to teach people the technical aspects of how to use a camera (shutter speeds and aperture) or the artistic aspects of how to take a better photograph (use a plain background, move in close, and put your subject off center).

This kind of information is important, but it is just the beginning. Photography, like any other art, is about finding a way to express yourself, and that takes practice.

I got my first digital camera in 2003. I had just graduated from law school and my parents got me a Canon S400 point-and-shoot for my birthday. It was beautiful to look at, easy to use, and it took good pictures. It was not without its limitations: close up pictures were often blurry, indoor pictures were suffered from flash blowout, busy backgrounds were rendered in sharp, districting focus. Even so, it was fun to take pictures, lots of pictures.

My favorite subjects are people, but while I appreciate posed portraiture, I prefer pictures with a little more personality: posed, but animated.

Fortunately, my family indulges me, willing to follow directions like: big eyes, big hands, stick out your tongues, you’re a moose. I didn’t learn to summon inner animals from a book (or a website). I learned it from Kendra. During one of our first photo shoots, Kendra put her hands up to her head like antlers and she was transformed into a moose. It was an instant success and has been repeated many times for my amusement.



In addition to the moose, Kendra also has an inner Giraffe (one arm straight up in the air, hand bent over forward to form the head, pinky and pointer up to form the horns).



She also has a Tyrannosaurs Rex. Contrary to the Hollywood version with its hunched-over stance and menacing jaws, Kendra’s version emphasized the tiny arms (elbows bent to the chest), and moves with exaggerated steps followed by bounding leaps (perhaps closer to a Velociraptor) until it is within range to deliver the signature evisceration by tickling someone’s tummy with the tiny arms.



I think inner animals are very funny. They also help people loosen up and take better pictures.

Not everyone likes having their picture taken, including Jenny. But unlike others that mask their distaste under a thin venire, she graciously agrees to play along (as she puts it, she has gotten better at ignoring me). Still, until recently, she had trouble finding her inner animal.

After a few false starts, copying the giraffe, experimenting as a tiger (a Princeton Tiger to be precise), we finally found it: a yap dog. It is basically an inverted moose (hands down for floppy ears like a cocker spaniel) that says “yapyapyapyapyap.”



It is Genius. It is the kind of photograph that isn’t featured in books, but it has personality, it is art, and it makes me smile like I’m 11.