To celebrate the launch of our new Dad Grass CBD Dog Bones, we begged director, still photographer and fellow dog-lover Scottie Cameron to help us capture the classic, laid-back stylings of some of our friends' best friends. And doggone it, both he and his best friend fur-ever Kevin (pictured below) deserve a round of a-paws for the photo series they put together, which we at Dad Grass HQ have dubbed "Doggy Styles: Vol 1."
Scottie sat down with us after our shoot to light up and chat about howl he's doing, what he's working on, and how Kevin became one of the hottest pups in Hollywood. Full interview below.
What is your background? How did you get to where you are?
Growing up in Australia and watching all the American skateboard videos and magazines, being completely consumed by its wonder. Then actually realizing one day that someone, lots of people actually put all that together. Photographers, film makers, designers toiled over this stuff. Of course they did! It was a real ignoramus awakening.
Anyway, I realized there were people involved in skateboarding and its peripherals making all this stuff. Artists like Spike Jonze, Mike Mills, Geoff McFetridge etc and it made it feel accessible and you could actually just do this thing with no one's permission. So, I started messing about taking pictures, making goofy films, shooting 16mm film, renting lights that I had no idea how they worked then someone said "Hey do you want to take some pictures for us even though you have no idea what you're doing" and I said "Sure, thank you".
So that happened a few times, then it all felt too overwhelming because I really had no idea how a commercial or advertising shoot needed to go, and I was getting these commercial and advertising shoots. So, I packed it up in Australia and moved to New York, to just jump in the deep end and be around it all. It was great. Turns out no one knew what they were doing and it was fine and if you really loved something enough you'd work out a way to make it function.
Confidence grew a bit, and I'd just hit up different advertising / design businesses and got a positive response to what I was doing. I was a working photographer in New York City! Then you realize New York City eats your soul, so you move to Los Angeles where there is no soul, but at least there's great weather and you can do whatever you want. And here we are now.
Has cannabis been a part of your creative process (either now or in the past)? If so, how has that relationship evolved?
Not particularly. I was always super young hanging out with the older kids, we'd go skateboarding, and they'd smoke a bunch of weed, but it always seemed like they were adults, and I was just a kid and maybe I'd be into that later because that's what older people did. I guess later never happened, or maybe it will when I stop being a kid.
What are you working on these days?
Making short films and other personal projects. Doing the film festival thing for a little with those and writing a feature film that we're hoping to make.
What is your experience shooting with animals?
Zero! Well, one other time I did a dog photo shoot. But both times have been with hilarious rescue dogs that are just goof balls with no real obedience skills. So you just have to give into the madness and hope for the best. Luckily dogs are truly wonderful and even when they're being insane you get great pictures.
What was your approach for this shoot? Why did you go about it this way?
The thoughts were just having dogs in a chill environment, but still very much a photo shoot one. So, we wanted it bright, clean and let the character of the dog and simple art direction do its thing. We also had to light it in such a way that the dogs could roam around a bit, as that is what they were always going to do. Trying to control them and lights in a very specific place would never work out well.
Tell us everything about Kevin!
Kevin is a lovely little critter. We were signed up for a dog fostering thing and there was old male dog named Kevin that looked great, but we missed out on that Kevin and they offered us another young female dog that kind of sort of looked like old male Kevin. We agreed to just look after her for the weekend, but within 20 minutes we knew she was our Kevin for life. (Her name was Poochy originally).
We love Scottie and we know you will too.
Check out his website here, his Instagram here and his latest short film, El Portafolio, here.
And while you totally can get away with munchin' on our top quality Dog Bones, we recommend heading over to dadgrass.com and checking out our human treats like CBD joints, flower and tinctures.