A Canterbury Tail

When I was nineteen, I thought I was a pretty good photographer, but I wondered if I could be a great one. I told myself that if I had some time to focus my attention solely on taking photos, out in the world, I might find out.

I took a semester off of college, and worked long hours in a steel fabricating shop to put together a little bit of money. I stuffed my Nikon F camera and four lenses into an army surplus, gas-mask satchel that I’d modified with stiff cardboard. With thirty-five rolls of Kodak Tri-X film sealed into a Ziploc bag, I flew off to England to begin a ten-week, European photo safari. It was early February, 1978.

From London, I took a train to Canterbury to visit my friend Jack, who was studying at Keynes College. On my first morning there, I got up early, ate breakfast and ventured out from his dormitory, on my own, to begin my photo expedition.

As I hiked into the surrounding fields, an early morning fog clung close to the ground. Looking across a valley filled with post-war tract houses, I saw the faint outline of Canterbury Cathedral, just visible in the town center two miles away.

Housing developments sprawled between me and the cathedral, cluttering the foreground. With my eye on the ghostlike cathedral, I walked deeper into the field in search of a better view. I found a place where, laying down in the grass, behind a small rise, I could work around the houses in the foreground.

I framed the cathedral’s hazy silhouette between two wintery trees and shot a few frames. I felt good, but not quite satisfied by what I’d seen in my viewfinder. In the pre-digital world, there was no monitor on the back providing instant feedback. You had to trust your instincts. Just as I was considering moving on, a man walked into the frame with his dog. I released the shutter one more time.

It would be several months before I saw the photos I’d taken that day.

When I returned from my trip, I spent a week in the darkroom, developing film, making contact sheets, and finally making prints. Roll-by-roll, frame-by-frame, I saw the photos I’d made while I was abroad, each one taking me back to a different location, a different mood, a different experience. In among those, I found a dozen or so that made me proud, and provided the confidence I needed to begin to pursue a career in photography.

For the next sixteen years I would pursue a number of different ways of making photography my career. When I finally turned my lens to the relationships between people and their pets, I found my niche, and things began to open up.

It has been a good many years since I was nineteen. Since that morning in Canterbury, thousands of people have made it a point to wander into my studio and into my frame with their pets.

Now, I see this photo as a portent, an intimation that sometimes in art, as in life (or in a career), it takes a dog to complete the picture.

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P.S. Pets

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Sutton Studios: Celebrating thirty years in service to people who love their pets.