I’m off to an Arabian horse show this weekend.
When I was nine years old I remember going over and over my favorite magazine “Arabian Horse World.” I loved to study the beautiful images of this spirited horse, but I always found that my favorite images seemed to not be determined by bloodlines but they seemed to be horses that were photographed by the illustrious Johnny Johnston.
In my early 20’s I was working in a professional photo lab when a woman brought in two 8×10 prints; one was a dynamic close-up of an American flag billowing in the wind and the other was a head shot of a majestic horse. She asked if we could cut and paste and make the flag the background (this kind of thing was done before Photoshop, too!). I took one glance at the horse image and asked if it was a Johnny Johnston photo. The woman almost fainted. Johnny was from Texas, not a local yet. She asked me how I knew it was a JJ pic? I said because I only knew of one of person who took incredibly beautiful images like that.
She offered me a position to work with her and Johnny on the spot. We both were surprised that day in a wonderful way. Johnny had just moved up here recently, and I worked in the office and on local farm calls, including assisting in photographing Shirley MacLaine’s Arabian horse at J. Z. Knight’s (VP Kahlua) palatial estate in Yelm.
A simple artistic tip I remember from Johnny is to wait for that one moment when there is a spark, a connection. Often it is of an animal being at peak awareness before moving into action. It is there just for a fleeting moment. If you miss it, you’ve missed it. Second best isn’t even close.
After assisting JJ for a couple of years I started my family and photographed children, since that was what I was surrounded by with all my friends seeming to have children near my son’s age. All of a sudden the photo requests came so often I started Crystal Photography on Bainbridge Island in 1993 and have had a studio here to this day.
But every once in awhile, I head out to horse country, to where my heart was first captured—my love of the beauty, spirit, and intelligence of the Arabian horse.
