In 1949, Bannister bought a dog of her own, a female Boxer whose name was Deerecrest Fawn-Dawn, aka Duchess, bred by Marie L. Hosford of Greenwich, Connecticut. Bannister eventually bought a male Boxer and bred Duchess to him, and then gave the puppies away. Daughter Lynda Bannister says that after her mother died in 2005, some of those long-ago Boxer puppy owners sent emails, gushing and saying how much they loved those dogs. Whether she was photographing babies or Boxers, Bannister employed similar techniques. In her slim 1958 book, “How I Photograph Babies and Pets,” she outlined six “simple secrets” for landing the perfect shot: • Prepare well in advance to ensure you and your camera are at the ready. • Get in very close on the subject, so it fills the screen. • Keep things plain and simple, with no distracting patterns or cluttered backgrounds. • Try to capture action, without too much posing or artificial orchestration. • Give yourself lots of time. • And be sure to
enjoy the process.
Tricks of the Trade In one of the book’s
chapters devoted to pets, Bannister reiterates these six keywords – “ready,” “close,” “plain,” “action,” “time,” and “fun” – along with some of her tricks of the trade. Elicit expression by clucking or snapping your fingers. And, of course, have a deep reservoir of patience. “Even the tone and inflection of your voice are important in working
with dogs,” Bannister advised her readers.
career. She marketed a line of Bannister Baby dolls, responded to requests to photograph the children of celebrities such as Grace Kelly, and was also a World War II pinup girl. However, the photographer dropped out of public view in the mid-1970s. Retiring to Long Island, “she became a recluse,” Lynda Bannister says, “living on her little compound.” But today her vision lives on, in thousands of impossibly precious photographs that capture exactly what we love about babies and dogs – their innocence, their magic, and their insistence on staying resolutely in the here and now.
“She just had a knack, a way with babies, and animals, and people, to get them to do what she wanted them to do,” says Lynda Bannister, who recently retouched a photo of her mother’s that drove that point home. In it, a young boy of about seven years of age is contemplating trying to pull a tooth out of a dog’s mouth with a pair of pliers. The younger Bannister was struck by her mother’s impeccable timing in getting the complex – to say nothing of potentially disastrous – shot. “There was absolutely
no contact – she got the shot just before the little boy got hold of the tooth. And I thought to myself, ‘How did you do that?’” Bannister had a full, fascinating, and high-profile
All photos courtesy of Constance Bannister/Getty Images
Article gathered from https://www. akc.org/expert-advice/news/ constance-bannister-and-the-art- of-photographing-dogs/
Missouri Pet Breeders Association | Page 19
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