Rangefinder Magazine
April 2005
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Profile: John Lund by Lorraine A. DarConte
Animal Antics
Photographer John Lund has literally and figuratively pieced together a lucrative career with a little help from Adobe Photoshop and the animal kingdom. His card line—“Animal Antics,” published by Portal Publications—features amusing images of cats and dogs behaving like people—lounging in swimming pools, playing tug-o-war, having their hair done, and even getting massages. The photographs can be seen on everything from greeting cards to posters, calendars, jigsaw puzzles and stationery.
Prior to finding his niche as a best-selling greeting card photographer (approximately 100,000 cards per month), Lund focused on travel, advertising and stock photography. “Up until three years ago, I was also working on assignment. But when I reached a certain income point with stock and cards, I stopped taking assignments,” states Lund.
A great deal of Lund’s stock photography also consists of manipulated imagery, which is how he stumbled upon his winning series of images for cards. “I have a passion for creating conceptual stock photography. I created the cat with the canary feather in its mouth—an image that eventually became a card—as a conceptual stock image. I thought it was a fun image. I took a half dozen 8x10 prints to a craft fair (before placing the shot in stock) along with other work. They sold right away,” states Lund, “so I went home and printed 20 more and sold all those. I thought, ‘I have something here that seems to appeal to a retail audience.’ So I took the image to Portal Publications and proposed a line of cards based on manipulated animal images. They agreed, and we were off and running.”
A case of beginners’ luck? Not quite. “It took me 17 years between the time I first showed the company my work and the time they actually bought something from me. How’s that for perseverance?” he asks.
But unbeknownst to Lund, Portal Publications had not only seen his images, it had al-ready purchased one for a greeting card. “I didn’t even know it,” says Lund. “I get so many stock sales that I don’t pay attention to the individual buyers.” Based on the stock images Portal Publications had viewed—raining cats and dogs, flying pigs and a chicken crossing the road in tennis shoes—the company was able to fully grasp Lund’s idea.
A Team Effort
Creating the cards is a team effort. Every few months Portal Publications’ senior art director, Colette Carter, and senior writer, Peter Stein, put their heads together and come up with 10 to 12 new card ideas for Lund to shoot. “I long ago gave up trying to give them ideas,” says Lund. “The company has in-house writers who are paid to do this stuff. It’s one less thing I have to deal with. Although every once in a while they come up with an idea I originally suggested.” It takes Lund two to three months to create about a dozen images. “They provide me with layouts, and I usually bitch and moan, ‘What? How am I going to do this?’ Then I do it, and it usually comes out remarkably similar [to the layouts]. The cards are very much a team effort,” he reiterates. “I get most of the credit, but Colette is an essential part of the equation, and she deserves a lot of it.”
Lund begins production for each image by first contacting the animal trainer—Bow Wow Productions—who has a long history of working with the card company. The animals are selected, and Bow Wow Productions brings them to Lund’s studio where he photographs them. “Basically,” he explains, “I shoot animal parts—a paw, leg, a head—in order to composite an image together later. There’s also a stylist, animal trainer and propping and location selection involved. Then I put all the images together using Photoshop. On a per-image basis, it takes about a day of imaging to complete each one.
“When I first started, I used a program called Live Picture because it was vastly superior at handling hair and fur and doing composite work. But the company quit improving it and went out of business.
Photoshop has continued to improve, and it is clearly the way to go. I now use Photoshop for everything. Before, I was using Live Picture for 80 percent of the work.” Lund has also switched from film to digital. “I used to work with a Hasselblad, then I transitioned to a Canon 1DS, and now I’m using a Canon 1DS Mark II. I used to shoot an enormous amount of film, and keeping track of it was a nightmare. With digital, things go a lot more quickly, and I can tell right away if I got the shot.
“I was a little concerned that with digital capture it would be more difficult to position images,” admits Lund. “I used to position the slides on a light box to create the images. Now I use the Photoshop browser and a monitor with three different panels. I put my tools on one, the image in the center, and the browser on the right-hand panel. So as I’m putting the image together I can scan [with my eyes] all the different parts and quickly pull them up, strip them out, and drop them in.”
Lund also uses Speedotron strobes; he’s had the same power packs for 20 years. “I keep thinking about getting new ones, but the old ones are still working.” In addition, Lund utilizes a bevy of Apple computers, including several G4s and G5s. “I’m using all flat screens now because they look cool,” he adds. Lund also hires the occasional assistant to help him with the photography, but he does the greeting card manipulation himself.
Lund’s biggest challenge when creating his images is making the mental leap from an animal’s anatomy to a human’s. “When [the animals] are drawn, they are drawn like humans doing human-like things.” So Lund must figure out how to make a cat holding a toothbrush “look natural” and not weird. “For me, that’s the most challenging aspect of the job. For example, say I need to shoot cheerleading poodles with their pom-poms held out. Well, dogs don’t spread their legs out; they don’t move in that direction. So I have to figure out ways to get it to work without irritating the animals.”
A Little Advice, a Little Joy
After several years as a top-selling greeting card photographer, Lund, who knows a thing or two about the business, offers up this advice: “Make it very easy for the person or company you’re approaching to visualize what you’re doing. If you want to sell greeting cards, go in with a dozen images made up to look like greeting cards—complete with captions or text. You want to make it as easy as possible for them to envision.
“For instance,” he continues, “I took my greeting cards to a book publisher and said, ‘Hey, these would make a great book. It can be called Animal Antics, and it can be about what animals do when humans aren’t there. And they said, ‘This is a collection of greeting cards, not a book.’ So I hired a designer to mock up a book. I took the same images to the same publisher and the same art director, and they said, ‘Wow, this is great.’ I signed a contract, and now I’m on my third book. People need to see the image as the product they carry,” reiterates Lund. “I think it’s also important to have a line rather than a single image or two. That will make it an easier sell. And it’s always a good idea to research the company you’re seeing and make sure they want the kind of images you’re producing.”
Besides the obvious financial rewards, Lund enjoys his work because it brings joy to others. “After 27 years as a photographer, no one ever says ‘Thank you.’” But thanks to his card line, he receives three to four emails a day from people thanking him for bringing smiles to their faces. “Right after 9/11 a flight attendant called me up and said I brought the first smile to her in a week. It’s cool,” he concludes, “because I’m actually putting some happiness out in the world. It’s a nice thing.”
Lund and photographer Nevada Wier are currently working on a book about Ladakh, a portion of India bordering Tibet and Pakistan. His conceptual stock photography is available through Stone, The Stock Market, Workbook Stock, The Stock Connection and Ag Stock USA. He’s won numerous awards including: The Communication Arts Photography Annual, The Print Design Annual, Western Art Director’s Club, PDN/PIX Digital, Micro and Publishing News. To see how Lund makes his images, check out his new Photoshop book, Adobe Masterclass Photoshop Compositing With John Lund (Peachpit Press).
Lorraine A. DarConte is a freelance writer/photographer living in Tucson, Arizona. Her work has appeared in numerous publications including, The Rangefinder magazine, Newsday, and Tucson Visitors’ Guide.
Captions:
1. Little Talks
We built the set in the studio then photographed the cat and dog. The cat was composited from six separate scans and the dog from five. Hasselblad with E100S film. Live Picture was used for compositing and Photoshop for retouching.
2. Cat Yoga
This was my neighbor’s cat King Louis. He was shot in my garage with a Nikon F100 on E100S film. The background, an Aikido dojo, was shot on E100-S with a Hasselblad. Live Picture as used to composite the image.
3. Cat& Canary
This image started it all when I presented it to Portal with the idea of doing a line of animal cards. The cat (actually a kitten) was shot on E-100 with a Nikon F100. The feather was captured with a leaf DCBI. The compositing was done with Live Picture.
4. Tango Dogs
One of my favorite images! We built a set complete with the chandalier…which was a very expensive rented antique. The wood floor was Pergo flooring. The dog with the rose in her mouth is a whippet who had been rescued and was very nervous, but very sweet. All was shot with a Hasselblad on E100S film. Composited in Photoshop.
5. Massage Cats
We built a set for the floor, wall and plant. The massage table was a half-sized prop, and the towel was wrapped around my assistant’s head. The cat being massaged was composited from five different images…but the massuse was a single shot! Hasselblad E100S. Composited with Live Picture and retouched with Photoshop.
6. Sumo
I had a young Japanese assistant who was mortified that she had to wear the outfits! I find bulldogs very difficult to shoot as they are heavy (consequently hard to hold up in position) and tend to be a little on the listless side! On top of that you have to keep watching for, and wiping, drool. Hasselblad E100S. Live Picture was used for the compositing.
7. Tugowar
The sky was shot with a Fuji 617 Panorama Camera on E100 film. I used a Canon 1DS to shoot the sod, puppies, kittens and rope in the studio. Switching to digital captue has significantly lowered the time to produce each image. Composited in Photoshop.
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