Smiling Siberian Sled Dogs: How the New Yorker Went to the Races
By Jim Austin
19 Dec 2008
Teamwork. Performance
under harsh winter
conditions. We're talking
sled dogs here, and a
picture of them I sold to
the New Yorker Magazine.
The New Yorker, the one
with cartoons, right?
That's the one.
In pursuit of a winter
adventure, I drove west of
Denver to the Winter Park
area. In a valley
surrounded by the
Colorado Rockies, was a
sled dog race course and
you could hear the dogs
singing.
As I got close
enough to watch them
race, it became clear to me how amazing Siberian Huskies truly are.
As I lay on on my stomach on top of a snow bank, and waited at the edge of the hard-packed race track, I heard the starting signal. Teams of two, four, and eight dogs raced in different heats around the course.
Lying down to photograph the sled dog race, I practiced 3 camera skills for sports subjects:
1) Get low to the ground and shoot up to get a clear blue sky background.
2) Use a faster shutter speed than you think you'll need.
3) Pan with a fast moving subject.
I got that "Aha" feeling of
capturing a peak
moment. Later, I
scanned this negative
and enhanced it in
Photoshop. The
original image had
the dogs stopped in
mid-stride. Adding
motion back into the
image with a touch of
motion blurring was
the key to feeling the
dogs zipping over the
snow, but what really
made the image work was the smiles on the dogs faces and their wagging tales. They seemed to prove the saying that "the reason a dog has so many friends is that he wags his tale instead of his tongue."
Later, I posted the image to the social image website, Flickr. Flickr is
free. Simply upload your pictures. Others can see them and comment on them right away. Before long, you are leaving notes for other people
about their pictures. The site has a fast search engine, so a buyer can find a specific picture they need.
Fortunately, the New Yorker Magazine staff were online,
searching. Wayne Kogan at the New Yorker phoned, offering to buy the
image after he'd seen it on Flickr. He sent a contract with details of
publication in a color advertising section. The smiling sled dog image fit
their needs for an ad for Colorado Winter Fun, in the November 3 issue.
While I could tell more stories of how much fun
we had that day, the better story is the one
about the Siberian Huskie itself, and we'll
end the story there. Originally bred by an
indigeneous people on the shores of the
Russian Bering Sea, the husky has a two-layer
coat to survive the arctic cold. Mushing
over the snow in a team, they can run the
equivalent of 10 human marathons in a row.
The Husky is known to sing, and talk rather than bark. Most surprisingly, the breed is known for its "snow nose." As an example of the this "snow nose", back in 1925, 150 huskies carried emergency dytheria serum over 675 miles in 5 days across Alaska, saving Nome from an epidemic. The lead Siberian Husky on that team, Balto, became the most famous canine celebrity of his day, after he stayed on the trail during whiteout conditions that confused the mushers.
Jim Austin M.A. , A.C.E , is the author
of a hardcover photography book titled
Photopia: Seeing Far and Wild.
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