C3o—Lancaster Farming, Saturday, April 11,1981
BY SHEILA MILLER
HARRISBURG - Parked
outside the Farm Show Building, a
maroon Chevy Malibu station
wagon, sporting Maryland tags
and stuffed with feedbags,
buckets, and long, black boxes
waits patiently as its owner is
called back for one more job before
the two of them can motor home
It’s been a long, two days for the
car and its owner, filled with more
black and whites both cows and
film than the two of them have
shot in the same time span tor at
least a .week
Well, this is the last one for the
day the grand champion
Holstein bull at the Pennsylvania
State Holstein Show The Malibu’s
engine almost starts to purr at the
thought of heading home if only
he’d hurry up But then, no cow or
car ever hurried Jack Remsberg
patience and perfection are his
motto
Jack Remsberg (really John H
Remsberg, Jr but everybody
calls him Jack) is, at age 54, one of
the foremost livestock
photographers East of the
Mississippi
As he waits for Ray Seidel, a
dairyman from Kutztown, to bring
the calf out for the camera’s
critique, Remsberg focuses in on a
pouch of Red Man chewing tobacco
he plucked from his green coverall
pocket and positioned where the
calf will stand Satisfied the
picture will be sharp, he snatches
the pouch out of the shavings and
concentrates on the calf
“In this business you have to
know more about your subject than
photography,” Remsberg claims
‘ You have to be a student of
conformation able to recognize
an animal’s good and bad traits ”
Remsberg helps get the calf set
up positioning in front of the pme
tree back drop Moving slowly, he
positions the young bull’s feet,
snips off some unruly hair on his
top line, and gives just the right lift
to his forequarter with the help of
wood blocks
To keep the calf’s tail from
swishing like a cat’s while the
camera’s shutter is winking,
Remsberg catches some hair from
the switch with a fishing line,
anchors the line under a metal bar,
and feeds it out of the picture for a
helper to hold
Poised and ready to shoot. Jack Remsberg calls for "noise"
to get his subject's ears forward before pressing the shutter
button of his Mamiya professional camera. Remsberg, of
Middletown, Maryland, has built a reputation as one of the
top livestock photographers in the East.
Remsberg’s job is shooting cattle
Satisfied with what he sees
through his Mamiya’s ‘eye’,
Remsberg calls for the calf’s back
to be 'straightened with a pinch
while a two-legged noisemaker,
posing as a quaking pine tree,
keeps the calf’s curiosity up and its
ears forward As the shutter goes
off, the 30 minute ordeal is
recorded on film
The negative of Champion In
dianvale Kerchenhill Kona will
join the other 15,000 2*4 x inch
negatives on file in Remsberg’s
basement office just as soon as the
Malibu can get back to the home
farm in Middletown, Maryland
Jack was born and raised on the
farm, one of the top dairy
operations m the state And his
love for dairy cattle was prac
tically inherent being the son of J
Homer Remsberg, a national
director of the Holstem-Fnesian
Association for sixteen years and
former president
“I started milking cows from the
time I was enrolled in the first
grade,” Remsberg recalls ' “My
dad said if I was old enough to go to
school, I was old enough to milk
cows, too ”
Remsberg is proud of his farm
heritage and boasts, “We bred the
All-American 4-Year-Old of 1950
Lovcale Master Marcy ”
His loyalty to the family dairy
business influenced Remsberg to
stay on with the farm after
graduating from high school
“I worked on the farm four years
before going to the University of
Maryland to study dairy science I
received my Bachelor of Science
degree in 1951 The day I
graduated, I married Marcia Ellis,
a home economics major I met at
the University,” he reminisces
With his marriage to Marcia,
Remsberg got his first camera (it
was his wife’s) and together they
traveled to Anchorage, Alaska
where he served two years as a
First Lieutenant in the Air Force
“While we were in Alaska, our
first daughter, Valerie, was born
and I started taking pictures I
bought a $l5 Kodak developing kit
and started printing my own
photographs teaching myself
everything,” he remembers
“Besides everybody in Alaska
carries two cameras around his
neck all the time.’
Remsberg and family returned
It’s a team effort priming a champion for the Remsberg anchors it with a fishing line, held
camera. Getting the animal posed to per- taut by one of the helpers. All this effort for a
fection sometimes takes hours. To keep the picture? You bet—and it’s one worth framing,
bull calf’s tail from swishing at the wrong time,
to the farm in Maryland in 1953
After having been bitten by the
photography bug in Alaska,
Remsberg didn’t put his camera on
the shelf after coming home
“I started taking pictures of our
cows that were heading for a sale,”
he recalls “Then, a couple of other
guys said they wanted me to take
pictures of their cows for the next
year’s sale Soon, there were
dispersals and shows to shoot
“I never advertised or sohcted
work it all came to me And, I
did all of this between milkings and
did all my processing of film at
night ”
As on many dairy farms, there
came a time when the Remsbergs
had to make a decision to either get
bigger or get out of the dairy
business
“My dad decided to sell out for
economic reasons in 1970 That’s
when I went to photography full
time
“Before that, it had already
gotten to the point where I was only
milking in the mornings
“This is a unique career If you
do a respectable job, there’s no end
to the demand If you’re not so
good, you could have trouble ”
Remsberg attributes some of his
success to being in the right place
at the right time.
“I had been kicking around the
idea of going full-time in the
livestock photography business at
about the time Stroymeyer and
Carpenter retired They were the
only dairy cattle photographers
around they were from New
York ”
Today, shooting dairy cattle on
film comprises 99 percent of
Remsberg’s work with an oc
cassional horse or sheep picture
thrown in for variety Remsberg
recalls his first job in Penn
sylvania was a picture-taking
session for Clarence Cornman, a
Cumberland County dairy farmer
whose son Clarence Cornman,
Jr is an official classifier _ with
the National Holstein Association
The life of a photographer is not
always sunshine and roses, as
Remsberg points out There are
days when the working conditions
find him braving 100 degree heat
or wind chills of 40 degrees below
(the client’s name was Glenn
Freese Oxford), or rain, like last
Wednesday’s showers
And getting an animal posed for
a picture can take anywhere from
30 minutes to 3 hours, he explains
T try to accent the cow’s good
points and hide her poorer traits,”
he says "Customers are happy if I
can get an animal to look as good
t belter than -,he im •• .n . 1V •
f /
**
I guess you could say I flatter the
animal on film
“Just like people, some cows are
more photogenic than others
and they can have their good and
bad days too ”
Remsberg confesses he has kept
his business fairly local so he and
his Malibu aren’t on the road too
much of the time, concentrating
his work in New York, the
Carolmas, Mississippi, Virginia,
Maryland, Pennsylvania. New
Jersey, Delaware, and West
Virginia
“Twice a year I go to Select Sires
in Columbus, Ohio to photograph
their bulls, and I also shoot
Atlantic Breeders Cooperative,
Lancaster and Sire Power,
Tunkhannock ”
The photographer emphasizes
his is not a job for a ‘hyper’ person
it requires patience He
chuckles as he recalls an incident
that happened at one of the
Holstein shows at the Farm Show
Complex
“I was taking a picture of Bob
Kauffman’s bull when it suddenly
got loose and headed for Cameron
DHIA names directors
New Directors of the Pennsylvania DHIA include, from left
to right, back row: Ellis Denlinger, treasurer, Gordonville; Jay a|
Howes, secretary. Warriors Mark; front row; J. Robert
Kindig, vice president, Conestoga; and Oliver Butler,
president, Wellsboro.
e
Street He was almost on the
highway when the fellows got him
headed back to the barns where we
finally caught him "
Packing the last of his gear into
the station wagon, Remsberg is
ready to head down the highway
himself, back to the family farm
where he built his home and one
man business For sentimental and
economic reasons, he keeps a few
head of Holstein on the farm which
is run now by his daughter. Bar
bara Fisher and her husband
Remsberg speaks fondly of his
family, Marcia and daughters
Valerie, Gail, Barbara and Jill
And he is proud of his four grand
children, born last year to his four
daughters in order of age
“I never could get away from the
love of dairy cattle,” Remsberg
says as he prepares to leave "This
is one job you have to like to do, it’s
not easy, it’s a demanding oc
cupation
“The most satisfying part about
it though is I’m able to work with
the most honest and dedicated
people in the world farmers ’’
* * V
r . -c,
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