subscribe 0330 333 1113 I http://www.amateurphotographer.co.uk I 13 July 2019 29
CANINE-HUMAN PORTRAITSchallenges. ‘People don’t generally
take direction that well – if you tell
someone to do something, they look
like they’ve been told to do it, unless
they’re professional models. I used
tricks to get them to look a certain
way – so for example there is a
dog with one eye matched to a guy
winking. The dog looked tense, so
for the man, he’s holding a heavy set
of bar bells just out of shot so that
his muscles are taut, and it gave him
something to concentrate on.’
Although the set-up for both
humans and dogs was roughly the
same, technically the shots are
a little diff erent. ‘Usually, with
animals, you want to highlight a lot
of the things that you want to hide
with people. With animals, you
want to bring out all the texture –
but perhaps with people, sometimes
you want to hide that, so you might
blast a bit more light from the front.
With animals generally you shoot
most of the light across them to pick
up the texture.
‘Also, with animals, you kind of
just get into it – you’re not thinking
about them and their emotions,
which is hugely diff erent with
people. With humans, I’m always
concerned with how they’re feeling
and what they’re thinking. It’s
really weird for a person to stand,
particularly in front of a backdrop,
which seems to isolate people. With
the animals, you’re not thinkingabout that. It’s not that you don’t
care, but they’re just kind of
reacting to your food or whatever.
People will be thinking about
whether or not they look stupid or
what they’re supposed to be doing.’
When the fi nal set of images
was fi rst published, the response
to them was beyond anyone’s
expectations. ‘Just by coincidence,
it was The Times I spoke to fi rst
and they said they wanted to do an
exclusive on it. I gave it to them and
immediately it went viral. The next
day it was on Lorraine [ T V s h o w]
and after that my phone didn’t stop
ringing – and it just took off. The
press company said that within
about a week, the images had been
viewed hundreds of millions of
times – a million times would be
ridiculous,’ he remembers.Global sensation
The fi nished game, ‘Do You Look
Like Your Dog?’ has since been
translated into fi ve diff erent
languages and is sold across the
world. ‘It seems to be everywhere,’
Gerrard says. ‘People send it to me
on Instagram and it’s in places I
never thought it would end up, like
independent shops in Panama City,
Helsinki... Australia, Canada,
everywhere.’ Off the back of the
success comes the next project, the
previously mentioned cats project.
‘I can’t really talk about it, but you
know, use your imagination,’ he
sha res coyly.
Gerrard has made quite a name
for himself in the world of animal
photography. He has a regular
gig photographing the pets of
celebrities for Harper’s Bazaar.
At the time of our chat, he’d just
photographed the model Sophie
Dahl’s tortoise, and soon was off to
photograph Jilly Cooper’s dog. For
others keen to make headway in
animal portraiture, Gerrard advises
starting with canines. ‘They’re by
far the easiest (apart from tortoises).
With dogs you’re pretty much
guaranteed you’re going to get
something – even if it’s not what
you originally wanted.’
With that sage piece of advice,
I’m off to attempt to take more
photographs of my stubborn dog- hopefully I’ve got some
cheese in the fridge.
The game, ‘Do You
Look Like Your Dog?’ is
published by Laurence
King and is available
to buy from a number
of retailers. See
laurenceking.com.‘Telling strangers they
have a certain canine
quality needs to be
handled with tact’
Cenk (human) and
Horst (schnauzer)Emma (human) and
Ralph (Hungarian puli)