84/ 100 Annie
The reluctant model.
As I mentioned a few posts ago, one goal I set myself on this most recent trip to India was to ask whether the dogs I was photographing actually had a name. It turns out that actually quite a few had been named by their caretakers. Some, of course, such as Annie in the photograph above, weren’t street dogs at all. They were as much family pets as my own dog Chip.
When I asked people whether they knew anything about a dog’s identity almost always one of two things would happen. Either the person would say no, they didn’t know anything about the dog and then continue about their day. Or they would tell me the dog’s name, and then proceed to try and help me get the best photograph of the dog in question, whether I wanted any help or not.
Even in my wedding photography work I am a really big fan of capturing images without interfering and, exactly as at a wedding, I would usually see a dog in a lovely composition and have to race to grab the shot before a well-meaning person tried to make it do something they thought was more appealing. Most of the time this simply resulted in the irritated dog walking away, leaving me with no photograph at all.
In these photographs Annie, a lovely labrador, was curled up nicely in front of the fridge in the back of this shot, lit only by the bright light spilling from the sugar-laden cabinet. She lived with a family in a tiny shop that was just a room in their small house in Varanasi. It is a very handy little shop because it was practically next-door to our apartment and was a great source of bottled water.
I ought to have taken the photo I wanted before asking about Annie because, as soon as I chatted about her, the folk in the shop immediately woke up the very reluctant pup and tried, unsuccessfully, to make her stand and pose for the photograph.
It wasn’t exactly the shot I wanted, but it was still a fun photograph to have anyway and the outtakes below are quite amusing.
