POST

Dog People

Tuesday September 6th, 2011

Over the last several years, Scott Witter has been itching to start a long term personal project. He wanted to produce a project that would tie together portraits revolving around a singular idea, opposed to his usual stand alone pieces. However, Scott couldn’t decide on a concept that sparked his interest enough, so for two years he shelved the idea of a personal project. He knew he wanted to create a more narrow vision before beginning. Then, recently, as Scott and his wife were walking through a park in their Los Angeles neighborhood, they began to take note of the many interesting dog/owner pairs. It clicked, and with a little idea boast from his wife, Scott decided to take on the world of “Dog People.”

Being a dog person himself—Scott and his wife have two pups—he thought it would be fun to explore man’s relationship with his best friend.

Scott’s first step was finding the right dog and owner pairs for the project. He went about it in several different ways—posting model casting calls, asking friends, and handing out flyers at local dog parks. Scott found Los Angeles to be the perfect location for rustling up unique dog owners, “we noticed a huge dog sub-culture that we didn’t know had existed. It was really a goldmine for me.”

Once he had his subjects, Scott got to work,

I wanted to approach this series with my usual stylistic techniques (heavy concentration on mood, lighting, composition, texture, and tone) while at the same time leaving myself open to new ideas and just letting what happen, happen. I also wanted to stay away from the images resembling a typical family portrait so I set a tone with the subjects by saying, “This is not a Sears portrait but your debut cover shot for Rolling Stone!” That usually got people in the right mood.

The shoots were not without their challenges though,

The dogs were not professionally trained and were very unpredictable. Also, not having much of a budget for the project unfortunately hindered our selection of locations. Reverting to “guerrilla style” shooting became the norm and we sometimes risked getting booted off a location, which actually happened once. The cops were usually pretty cool about it, they liked the idea of the project and were just happy we weren’t tagging a building.

Scott has enjoyed shooting the series. He’s also learned a lot from working on a personal project, many times returning to his computer after a shoot and seeing ways he could have improved on the shot. Scott wants to continue the project and hopes to just keep getting better and better shots. He also hopes to propel his personal work into more commercial successes,

I’d like to branch out to other parts of LA, photographing the rich of Beverly Hills, the surfers of the west side, and the celebs of Hollywood… all with their dogs. But the overall plan is to have the work showcased in a gallery and team up with a local dog charity to help raise money and awareness. There are so many great causes that need attention and I’d like to help in any way I can. I believe this project can really be a strong vehicle for that.

Also, from a potential client prospective, I want art buyers and editors to see my ability to take one idea and translate that into many photographs, whether it’s an editorial portrait series or a concept for an ad campaign. But for the general public, I want people to relate to that special bond that we all have with our pets, be it a dog, cat, or iguana. There is an unspoken language that we create with them, almost telepathic, and I want that to be felt visually.