Going to the Dogs...and Cats

More of my charitable giving—sorry, humans—tends to go to animal-related causes. Not that I’m misanthropic (there are a few people-focused causes I support), but I am an animal lover and always have been. Sorting through the various charitable appeals this past weekend, I saw I’d collected quite a few calendars from groups like the ASPCA, the Humane Society, the National Wildlife Federation, and so forth. I flipped through the various calendars, appreciating the images and mentally ticking off which of our friends have children to give them to. Not that I don’t love the winsome pets or the stunning wildlife scenery, but I have enough calendars—and besides, I use my BlackBerry for scheduling everything anyway.

So I finished reading all the adoption tales of the cats and dogs featured in the 2008 ASPCA calendar, flipped it over, and there on the back cover was a picture and bio of the photographer—none other than Jack Deutsch, the photographer who also has been doing most of JCK’s cover shoots for the past 10 years!

Jack’s bio did mention his work with jewelry and that JCK (under its old corporate parent name, Cahners) was a client. Somehow it had slipped my mind that Jack also does the ASPCA calendar—and I even had asked him once about what it was like to photograph all the animals. “You spend a lot of time on your stomach,” he said.

I’ve always wanted to put a cat on the cover of JCK, wearing a diamond collar. Years ago, I had pitched then-editor George Holmes on the idea of a beautiful, elegant, green-eyed white cat (coincidentally, of course, I just happened to have one) wearing a diamond tennis bracelet or an emerald or peridot bracelet as a collar. Holmes patiently indulged me, then said if JCK was ever going to put a cat on the cover, it was going to be a Siamese (which, coincidentally, he and Debbie had.)

Suffice to say, JCK hasn’t had a live cat on its cover yet. And, knowing cats’ general attitude about being asked to do something like pose repeatedly for the camera, I don’t know that we ever will. Switching gears, I once thought a golden retriever would be a really neat model for a gold product photo shoot, but Jack was decidedly cool on the idea. With the low-key patience for which he’s famous, he pointed out that retrievers like to jump on things and chew on things (as senior editor Jennifer Heebner will attest) and that maybe a frisky pup wearing lots of expensive jewelry wasn’t a great idea. Still, I haven’t given up on the idea, and now that we know a photographer who’s used to working with both animals and jewelry….