Dignity Never Been Photographed 004
Carmel Valley, 2022
Welcome back to Dignity Never Been Photographed, a series in which I discuss a meaningful photograph I’ve taken
I took this image at my wife’s parents’ home in Carmel Valley in June 2022.
This is a picture of my dog. Her name is Carmela, which is a triple reference: to Carmela Soprano, to Carmel and Carmel Valley, and to Carmela’s caramel-colored eyes, so beautiful and expressive.
I love this picture, first and foremost, because it is a picture of my dog, and I love my dog more than almost anything.
We got a dog at my wife’s urging. I grew up with small dogs (Maltese, Chihuahua) that I believe I loved at the time. But they were poorly behaved (barking, biting, peeing inside), and they couldn’t really do anything, so I never made a particularly strong bond with them. As a young man, I appreciated dogs from a distance, the way you would a lizard in a terrarium: oh look, isn’t that neat?
If it had been up to me, we probably never would have gotten a dog—not because I didn’t want a dog, but because I did not want a dog enough to go through the trouble of getting a dog. Fortunately, it wasn’t up to me.
We got Carmela in May 2021, just as the Covid rush on rescue dogs was peaking. No dogs were available in San Francisco, so we had to drive out to Vacaville for Carmela, where she was staying at a specialized rescue designed for dogs with health problems and other conditions. Carmela was there because she had been pregnant when she was found abandoned in a Stockton parking lot, and pregnant dogs can’t go to shelters for some reason. She gave birth to eight healthy pups at the rescue, and a few months later she was ready to go to her forever home. Fortunately, that home was ours.
I like this image because of the facts implicit within it. One fact is that it was made with a camera shooting at a low depth of field. You can tell based on the amount of the image that is blurry and out of focus. The other fact is that Carmela has a long snout, even though you can’t really see it. If you understand the previous fact, you can understand this one.
Typically, low depth of field images taper gradually from one side to another: in focus to out of focus, out of focus to in focus. This happens in this image with Carmela’s body. Her chest, in the center of the image, is in focus. The rest of her body, extending right to the edge of the frame, is out of focus, her brindle stripes blending into a black and brown morass.
The fun of this image is in Carmela’s face. Her ears, which are roughly in line with her chest, are perfectly in focus. As we move inward from there, however, the rest of her face slips gradually out focus: first her eyes, then her jowls, and finally her nose, which sits like a blurry olive at the dead center of the image. Only the thinnest slice of the picture is actually in focus.
It is a two-dimensional photo, but it explains a three-dimensional reality.