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Negative Space ©Sarah Zemunski

Miki Johnson: When did you realize you were meant to be photographing dogs?

Sarah Zemunski: In my 3rd year at AAU, I began to get very frustrated. I hadn’t found my niche, and the work I was doing for class was just mediocre. Aside from school, I was working at a doggy daycare. I began taking pictures of the dogs in the play area.  That lead to photographing “The Dog of the Month” for the business. Every month, I would shoot a different dog, and the portrait would go up in the lobby.

At that time I never thought about shooting dogs for school. I thought it might be cheesy, and my pictures were bordering on snap-shots. Then in one class, I decided to present one of my dogs as an assignment. I was hesitant, and I thought people would think it was stupid. But everyone loved it! I got more positive feedback from it than I had for anything else I had done in the class. So I began photographing dogs for every assignment. The teacher of that class, Noel Barnhurst, really supported my work. If it wasn’t for him, and the people in that class, I may not have had the courage to show my dog work.

Since then, I’ve tried to fit dogs into all my classes. For my Architectural Landscape class, I photographed dogs with architecture. I just started photographing other animals this past semester. My teacher for Senior Portfolio, David Wasserman, told me I needed to shoot other animals to make my portfolio complete. At first, I was against it — I only wanted to shoot dogs. But now I am so glad I branched out! I feel the work I have done with other animals is my strongest. In fact, the portfolio I produced for the class was named best portfolio in my school’s Spring Show!

I think you should photograph what you are passionate about. I have always been passionate about animals, but it took me a while to find out I should be photographing them!

King by bushes. ©Sarah Zemunski

MJ: Tell me about how you got into photography.

SZ: As a child, my dream job was to work with animals. Photography didn’t come into the picture until later in high school. Growing up, I never really took pictures, except for snapshots of family and friends. In high school, I took a photography class and I eventually came to San Francisco and took classes at The Academy of Art University (AAU). I have two semesters left before I graduate.

When I first started out, the thing I liked most about photography was framing the shot. I wasn’t too interested in my subject matter. Mostly, I walked around and shot what I saw on the street. For me, it was about how the shapes and lines fit into the frame.

As I advanced at school, I experimented in several genres. For school assignments, I often shot people — I am now remembering how much I hated it! Some photographers are meant to shoot people. I am not one of them. But if I hadn’t spent all that time shooting, my work wouldn’t be as strong as it is now.

My dream photography job five years from now would be traveling the world to photograph animals (all expenses paid, of course!). I want to be known as THE animal photographer. I am interested in working with wild animals — and their trainers. I want to be the Annie Leibovitz of animals. Haha.

Zoey, in Sarah's Go Pro winning image. ©Sarah Zemunski

MJ: I have to ask, any funny/poignant stories about working with dog?

SZ: I am a dog-walker, so I have funny dog stories just about every day! The dog I photographed for the Go Pro contest actually ran away during the photo shoot. She is a timid dog, and is very attached to her owner. I felt comfortable enough with her off-leash, but that was a mistake. While shooting, she just started running away, slow at first, then sprinting. She was headed back to her house, since she only lived a few blocks away.

My assistant/boyfriend (thank God he was there!) took off after her. He chased her out of the park, and through the neighborhood. Finally, he caught up to her and brought her back. Zoey was so exhausted from the run, that it made her much more mellow for the photo shoot. Maybe I would have never gotten the shot of her in the ivy if she wasn’t so tired!

Since the photo shoot, Zoey has passed away from cancer. Her owner was thrilled to see my image had won the contest. She feels the image really captures the essence Zoey. I was so glad I was able to provide the owner with pictures to remember her beloved pooch.

"Silos" ©Brian Kosoff

Co-ops are a good place to start

My very first gallery presentation was actually in 1976 when I was 18, which resulted in my first solo show in New York City. Times were very different in 2001 when I presented to a co-op gallery, to which my acceptance was already a certainty. With co-op galleries, if your work is of reasonable quality and they need another paying member, well…you’re in. But co-ops deserves consideration, since my show there eventually led to my first gallery presentation that “mattered.”

What brought me to this co-op gallery was simple — my wife. One of the attractions of our cute Hudson River town was the fact there were seven galleries near by. When we’d walk by a gallery, my wife would nudge me about joining one of them or seeking representation. Even though I was spending a fair amount of time shooting landscapes after rekindling my interest in it a year earlier, I’d usually dismiss the idea saying I really didn’t have that much time to spend on it. But to be honest, I was uneasy about being seen as a commercial photographer “playing” at being an artist. But my wife continued to encourage me, and I eventually showed them my work, handed them my check, and was accepted as a member. If only it was so easy at non co-op galleries!

Look at all your work together

A few months after joining this co-op gallery, it was my turn for my solo show, in April 2001. The day I hung the show was the first time I had been physically surrounded by my new work and the first time I noticed that I was already showing rudimentary signs of having a style. It was illuminating. I highly recommend that every serious photographer literally surround themselves with their work and give it a good look all at once.

The show opened and I have to admit I was extremely curious how the viewers would react. I pretended to be just another viewer while eavesdropping on people in an effort to hear their honest reactions. I was very pleasantly surprised. My fears of being chased out of town by torch-wielding townsfolk turned out to be unfounded. Not only was the work well received, I actually sold prints — quite a few in fact! By the second weekend of the show, I had made a very respectable profit, and it began to appear that I could make a living doing this type of work. I would no longer need an expensive photo studio in Manhattan and the pressure from such a high overhead. I was elated; however, one gallery would not be enough to replace my established commercial photography business. I would need more galleries.

Show them what they want to see

First I did a little research to narrow down my list of galleries to ones that seemed to have an appreciation or interest in my genre of work. Just like showing my work to advertising clients: show your hamburger picture to MacDonald’s ad agency, your lipstick photos to Revlon’s.

Once I had my list of potential galleries in NYC, it was time to make calls. Some galleries were willing to see me for an in-person presentation; others just wanted me to drop off my portfolio. I had two 11×14” portfolios of my landscape prints, matted and mounted — one for drop-offs and one for in-person presentations.

Be prepared to put on a show

On day, I had arranged to drop off a portfolio at a gallery and also had made an appointment for an in-person presentation at Edward Carter Gallery. Both galleries showed a lot of B&W landscape work, ECG at one point touting itself as the biggest collection of Ansel Adams prints. The morning of the Carter meeting I received a call from the gallery where I had dropped off my portfolio. They thanked me and said I could pick up my portfolio at any time. I was disappointed but arranged to pick up the first portfolio and then went to see Mr. Carter at ECG.

When I walked into ECG I was blown away with how beautiful the gallery was. It was not the typical white walls and emptiness. This gallery had dark gray, nearly black walls and the prints, mostly Ansel, just popped off of them. There was a seating area, double Eames chairs, and Mr. Carter asked me to sit. He removed an Ansel print from the small wall directly in front of the chairs and asked me to present my work in that spot — the same spot where the Adams’ print had just hung!

Now, I had a lot of experience, about 25 years worth, showing my work to people: art directors, creative directors, picture editors, etc. But this was different, it was my personal work. It’s one thing to show an AD who works on a cosmetics account your assignment work with other cosmetics clients, and something else entirely to show someone work that has much deeper meaning for you. And as I held each image in the spotlight for Mr. Carter to see, I couldn’t help but notice that I was facing several Adams prints, and behind me were several more, and I’m starting to think to myself, “Who am I kidding?”  Whether you love, hate, or are neutral regarding Ansel Adams’ work, there’s no denying his contribution to photography. He’s not called St. Ansel for nothing. There’s actually a mountain named after him.

Don’t jump to conclusions

So I finish with my presentation, and the whole time Mr. Carter had been stone-faced, poker-faced, so I was not expecting a desirable outcome. I boxed up my prints, sat down next to him, and he turned to me and said, “I’d be honored to represent you.” That was not quite the response I was expecting. So, trying to be cool and acting as though no other outcome could have been possible, I ask him what the terms of representation were (good comeback!). Of course I started dialing my cell phone the second I walked out of the gallery, only to be frustrated by a lack of reception until I stepped outside onto Broadway. “Honey, I got an NYC gallery!!”

Coincidently, later that week I receive a call from the owner of the gallery where the staff had told me to pick up my portfolio. She asked why I had picked up the portfolio when she had been interested in meeting with me and talking about representation. Apparently someone on her staff had made an error. I had to tell her that I had just signed with another gallery — a real bummer since 9/11 ultimately put ECG out of business, and her gallery is still doing really well.

About a week after my meeting at ECG, I went with my wife, my parents, and my uncle (who was an avid photographer and had introduced me to photography) to ECG. There, next to prints by Ansel Adams, hung my own prints. It meant a lot to me then — and whenever I see my work hanging in the company of gifted photographers, it still means a lot to me.

"Eden" by Women In Photography exhibitor Kelli Connell ©Kelli Connell

Miki Johnson: Tell me briefly about the goals of WIPNYC and why it was important to be able to offer this grant.

WIP: Women in Photography is an online exhibition project designed to highlight the work of emerging, mid-career, and established artists. Our goal is to be a resource for curators, editors, and publishers, and also to create a visual dialog between women artists working in the photographic medium.

We have both been overwhelmed by the positive response to the site. Both of us have spent a great deal of time thinking about what we want the site to contribute to the photographic community. The next logical step in our programming was a grant. Because like the site, it allows us to both support and call attention to the work of women artists.

MJ: What is the main goal of this grant?

WIP: The main goal of the grant is to provide funding to one female photographer in support of a project. I think funding is a problem for artists working in all mediums, unless you have independent means or are extremely successful in the commercial art world. Photographers must pay for film, processing, equipment, travel, in addition to the high cost of creating work for exhibition or self-publishing. We both have struggled to fund our own work and find great importance in these types of opportunities. With so few grants available, it just seemed great to be able to give back.

MJ: How will you determine the recipient? Do you have any tips for photographers planning to submit?

WIP: We will select the recipient based on the quality of work, and the need of the applicant along with the strength of their project proposal. The most important thing is to submit five of your strongest images from a cohesive body of work as well as make sure to write clear, concise, and persuasive project goals. The grant is open to women at any stage in their career, except students. It is open to the artists previously shown on WIPNYC.org as well.

MJ: And the grant recipient will also be exhibited at WIPNYC.org?

WIP: The grant recipient will have a solo show on the site in June. In addition, we will have an award reception, including a slideshow presentation of the grant recipients’ work at the National Arts Club in New York City.

Because the solo shows we feature are online, we can reach a broader audience. Our visitors do not need to be in a specific city because they are accessing the work worldwide. The site traffic has grown dramatically with each show, which is one of the benefits of exhibiting work online. Several of our artists have seen a noticeable increase of traffic on their own sites. Being featured on the site has led to many things, including magazine assignments and inquiries from publishers and galley representation.

• How much Photoshopping is too much? Judges of a Danish photo contest seemed to think that they have the answer. Last month, Danish photojournalist Klavs Bo Christensen was disqualified from the Danish equivalent of Pictures of the Year contest because the photographs that he submitted “went too far” in digital manipulation. The incident, not surprisingly, sparked a lot of discussions in Denmark and eventually among the English-speaking blogosphere. According to NPPA, Jens Tønnesen, the webmaster for the Danish Union of Press Photographers, decided to explain the story to people outside of Demark, and did an English translation of an article he posted on the Pressefotografforbundet website, where you can see the three images in question placed side by side with their RAW files. Check out interesting comments about this story at PDN Pulse and The Online Photographer.

• Robert Adams, who is known for his landscape photography of the American West, has won the Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography and received a $60,000 prize at an official ceremony in San Francisco on April 15, 2009. The Foundations’s citation describes Adams as “one of the most important and influential photographers of the last forty years.” An exhibition of Adam’s work will open at the Hasselblad Center, Göteborg Art Museum in November, 2009. Ansel Adams, Irving Penn, Richard Avedon, and William Eggleston are some of the previous award winners.

• Paul Melcher, named one of the “50 most influential individuals in American photography” by American Photo, explained in a post on the Black Star Rising blog why the Chris Usher v. Corbis case is important to all photographers. While Usher won the case, he was only compensated for “a lousy $7 per image” for the 12,640 images that Corbis has permanently misplaced. Melcher argues, with great reasoning, that what this ruling means is that agencies or publishers will no longer have to worry about losing photographers images because “it will be cheaper for them to trash them than to return them to you.”