Photographer Exhibits 'Doggies at the Beach' to Raise Funds for Pet Foundation

Larry Brambles has found a way to combine his love of dogs, the beach and a cause in his latest  artwork.

He started his career in law enforcement as an FBI photographer. Since retiring from private investigation work about six years ago, he has been able to concentrate on photography for pleasure and fine art.

The Agoura Hills photographer is presenting a "Doggies at the Beach" exhibit at Gardens of the World in Thousand Oaks through Jan. 29. All proceeds will benefit the Westlake Pet Foundation, which provides medical treatment for abused and neglected animals.

Brambles previously exhibited photos of Pacific Coast piers. That led to photographing surfers, then dogs running on the beach and eventually dogs surfing.

As with the piers, Brambles tries to bring out the "personalities" of the dogs. To that end, most of the titles of the exhibit's 32 pictures are the names of the dogs, photographed mostly at West Coast beaches.

Brambles discovered many of the subjects were rescues. He photographed "Mister Freeway" at Bastendorf Beach in Oregon, where he met the owners and learned they had found the dog on the freeway and tried unsuccessfully to find his owners.

Brambles doesn't always start out planning to photograph a dog. For one photo at a beach in Oregon, he just wanted to catch the sunset between two rocks as the fog was rolling in.

"I was concentrating on the composition, and this dog comes running around the corner," he said. The dog became the focus of the picture, and Brambles later found out the dog's name was Karma.

Brambles gets in the water for some pictures. Photographing Tess at Haystack Rock in Oregon, he held the camera low and used a wide-angle lens on automatic focus.

"I ran along with the dog and just click, click, clicked. This one worked," he said. "We are in a digital world now, so I am not using up a lot of film."

Along the way, Brambles discovered that dogs surf and included two famous surfing dogs in the exhibit: Abbie and Ricochet. Abbie has one of the longest records in surfing, and Ricochet tandem-surfs with disabled children and adults for therapy and to raise money for charity — so far more than $100,000.

In one photo, Ricochet is tandem-surfing with Ian McFarland, a boy whose father had been teaching him to surf before he was killed in the automobile accident that injured his son.

Brambles' photographs were published with a story about Ricochet in Cesar's Way magazine.

Brambles eventually started training his own dog, Heidi, also a rescue, to surf.

As part of the training, he took the German shepherd to the dog pool at the Barkley Pet Hotel in Westlake Village. There he met Daniel Slayton — a veterinarian at the Westlake Village Animal Hospital and co-founder of the Westlake Pet Foundation. Meeting and hearing stories about the animals led Brambles to designate the organization as beneficiary of the exhibit.

In his art, he had been experimenting by digitally manipulating color, contrast and saturation.

"I tried different techniques to create an abstract look," he said. "But I was never completely satisfied with that."

Another photographer introduced him to a program by FotoSketcher that digitally manipulates the pictures to look like paintings.

"Now I am not only a photographer but also a painter without being a painter," Brambles joked.

After discovering FotoSketcher, he explored all the program versions, including pen and ink, pencil drawing and various painting options. Despite initial doubts, the program he likes best is called Cartoon.

"I thought: I don't want my photos looking like a cartoon," he said. "But the first one that came up, I thought: This doesn't look like a cartoon; it looks like a watercolor painting. I was ecstatic. I tried more, and they were coming out really great, and I said: I found the program I want."

The process is automatic, and transforming a photo takes a couple of minutes.

"It's amazingly simple, but the results are incredible," Brambles said. "Anybody can download the program, but it starts with a good photograph.

"I use ultrasmooth, archival fine-art paper. It's a combination of good photography, digital manipulation and the type of paper I use.

"You have to master all the principles of photography. Composition is just about everything — it's so, so important. You look for colors and angles. If you have clients, you have to find out the personal connection of the owner with the pet."

Brambles eventually would like to start a pet portrait business and also plans to continue exhibiting his photos, he said.

"As long as I can click a shutter, I will be doing this," he said.

Brambles' website is: http://www.ilovepacificpiers.com.