'A simple devotion to the medium'

The Dogness of Being

Photography used to demand patience.

You loaded a roll of film. You measured the light. You pressed the shutter knowing you might not see the result for days.

Now we press a button, tip our camera forward and see the image instantly. Shoot again. Shoot again. Shoot again.

The technology is miraculous.

But somewhere in that speed, something essential slipped away.

I’m engrossed in Ansel Adams’ autobiography right now and one passage won’t leave me alone. He ends a chapter on his friend David McAlpin with his attempt at expressing his credo.

A great photograph is one that fully expresses what one feels in the deepest sense about what is being photographed, and is thereby a true manifestation of what one feels about life in its entirety. This visual expression of feeling should be set forth in terms of a simple devotion to the medium.

A simple devotion to the medium.

I keep coming back to that phrase.

In an era where photography has become almost frictionless, it feels quietly radical.

Digital photography is astonishing. I use it every day. It allows me to work quickly, to respond to fleeting moments with dogs moving through wild spaces, to deliver beautiful artwork to clients.

But the process has also become compressed.

Shoot. Import. Edit. Deliver.

Sometimes the entire arc from shutter to finished image happens in hours.

As I re-enter the world of film photography, I hold my Nikon FM and wonder how on Earth I used it to shoot Western Hockey League and other sports action.

Film demanded a quick hand and a lot of precision.

A roll of film and a quiet kind of gratitude

Film asks something different.

Film asks you to slow down.

To feel the weight of the camera in your hands. To hear the mechanical advance of the film. To know you only have a limited number of frames. To wait for the roll to come back from processing. To hold a strip of negatives up to the light and study them through a loupe.

You don’t just make an image.

You wait for it.

There is a poetry in the process. A quiet devotion.

Adams was writing about landscapes, about the grandeur and intricacy of the natural world. But the deeper idea – the one that keeps echoing for me – is about belief.

Photography begins with belief.

Adams wrote:

I believe in the vigor and values of the world of nature… I believe in people… I believe in photography as one means of expressing this affirmation.

Reading that made me ask myself a question.

What do I believe?

What photography can reveal about women and dogs

My own credo sounds very different than Adams’. It should. We’re different humans, living in different times and training our lenses on different subjects.

His work brings landscapes and vistas to life.

My work centres on dogs.

And the women who love them.

Dogs have walked beside us for thousands of years. Not as decorations, not as accessories, but as companions who steady us. They watch us. They guard us. They challenge us. They remind us who we are when the world tries to make us smaller.

And women, throughout history, have been told to shrink.

To soften their voices. To take up less space. To make themselves easier for others to tolerate.

But anyone who has stood beside a powerful dog knows something different.

Dogs do not shrink.

They stand.

Grounded. Present. Fully themselves.

When a woman stands beside a dog like that – truly stands, not posing for someone else’s expectations – something shifts. There is a steadiness. A grounding. A quiet claim of space.

That’s the moment.

Not a performance.

A recognition.

Photography, at its best, can reveal those moments. It can show dogs with the dignity they deserve and women with the strength they already carry.

And in doing so, it becomes something more than documentation.

It becomes gratitude.

A way of saying “thank you” to the animals who have walked beside us for millennia. Who have guarded our camps, followed our trails and shared our homes.

A way of honoring the strength they reflect back to us.

Maybe that’s my credo.

Not landscapes and granite domes, like Adams.

But women standing tall in wild places, a dog beside them, both of them fully present in the world they inhabit.

A moment of steadiness.

A shared ground.

A photograph that recognizes what is already there.

Whether it’s on film or in pixels.