HENASAURUS – turning Henry into a Dinosaur
New Zealand is known to have pretty hot summers, which can be quite hard for a Newfoundland with an extra thick woolly coat. So in the summer months I use to get Henry, my beloved Newfie, clipped. It was during one of his grooming sessions that I came up with the crazy idea of photographing him as a dinosaur “Do you think you could leave him with a mohawk down his back?” I asked as I was gathering up the clipped off winter coat into a bag, my brain ticking over as to how I might create dinosaur spikes down the back of my ever faithful and suffering muse Henry Miller.
The next day, Henry was back in my studio posing again. We were soon to discover that this shoot was going to take a little more patience from all of us! The previous evening I had created cardboard cones in various sizes out of cardboard, I covered each cone with the fur clipped from Henry, using PVA glue and hairspray to fix the fur to the cardboard. I would create the Dinosaur spikes down the back of Henry by attaching the cardboard cones, using bobby pins (hair clips) to the strip of hair left on Henry’s back, his ‘mohawk’. This was a VERY time consuming exercise; Henry was always so incredibly patient, but even this took its toll on him and he shook the cones off numerous times before realising if he just sat still it would be over quicker…..and he always appreciated his dinner on shoot days, tender panfried beef eye fillet!
Finally the team of Dinosaur spike creators had attached the cones and I had shaped Henry’s real tail into spikes that joined his back. The lighting and camera were all set ready, so we just had to encourage Henry to sit back up from his slothful slumber and he turned and in true expert manor gave me the perfect ‘is this over yet’ expression that allowed me to capture the first and only image of the mystical Henasaurus creature. If you are one of the lucky owners of one of these prints, if you look closely you can see the line of fur that shows his mohawk strip and the excessive use of bobby pins used to hold the cones in place.
All these images are captured true to camera, on film, and have no retouching applied to alter the image in any way.
If you would like to own this image you can purchase a print and many others from our online store www.henryandgeorge.com