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Pet photographer finds himself in the dog house after passing off composites as original photos

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New Zealand pet photographer Ben Sheehan found himself in the dog eat dog world of Photo Stealers, a site dedicated to outing cheating and stealing photographers.

The award-winning photographer ended up on the front page of the Photo Stealers site when several photographers noticed an uncanny resemblance to many stock images in the backgrounds of his dog images. Compositing images together from various photos is a common and reasonable way to create original art, but usually, there is some unwritten understanding that the artist acknowledges the fact that they are composites and doesn’t usually try to pass them off as their own.

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This Norwegian forest cat has a bigger Instagram following than you

The Norwegian forest cat, Pepper, and his two “siblings” have grown a very decent following on Instagram. It was in 2018 that Camilla and her boyfriend, Sondre, saw the charming kitten online. They couldn’t resist the long-haired charming Pepper. The couple named him after one of their favorite bands, Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Both Camilla and Sondre have daytime jobs. Noticing that Pepper was bored when he was left alone at home, they brought a second cat to the household. Not surprisingly, they named her Chili. Eventually, Camilla and Sondre got a third cat. The couple didn’t name Limo after the band like the other two, but a hot chili pepper; Lemon Drop, Limo for short.

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This is what happens when you ask a photographer to cat-sit for you

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I love photographing animals in the studio, and I’m obviously not the only one. When actor and photographer Josell Mariano was asked to look after his friend’s cat, Jade, for whom an Instagram account has now been created, Mariano decided to go a little… “extra”.

With a full-on photo shoot, Mariano recreated a cheesy 80s style portrait session. Yes, with a cat. And the results are both hilarious and amazing.

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Google Lens can now identify your pet in photos to create photo books and make movies

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It doesn’t feel like almost a year ago since Google announced Google Lens. It’s Google’s machine learning system to assist your camera to help make your life easier. It helps it to identify what it’s looking at and then do or show you things based on what it sees. Now, Google has announced that it can see your pet. And not only see them but identify them. The goal is to offer you photo books and videos dedicated to your furry friend.

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10 tips to make great dog photography in under 2 minutes

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I love photographing animals. It’s great fun and they often come with a lot of personality, especially dogs. And who doesn’t have a dog or know somebody with a dog you can play with? If you’ve never tried photographing dogs before, though, it can be a bit of a learning curve. But to make life easier, here’s photographer Phil Harris with 10 tips in 100 seconds to get your creative juices flowing.

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10 tips to create better animal photos for rescue shelters

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Good photos are instrumental in the animal rescue/shelter world. You only get one chance to have the animal make their first impression on a prospective adoptive pet parent. Poor photos can literally be the death of adoptable animals. In this article, I will give my top 10 tips for better animal rescue shelter photos, designed to melt the hearts of the potential adoptee.

When at all possible, I highly recommend using a DSLR camera in order to produce the best results. In reality, this is not always possible, so many of these tips can be used even if you are forced to use a cell phone or point and shoot camera.

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These puppies names are Click, Bokeh, Nikon, Sensor, Skrim, and Gobo

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Late last year my wife and I had to say goodbye to one of our beloved dogs Sophie. She was far too young and her loss was devastating. After several months one of my breeder clients (Kristen from Zero Gravity Australian Shepherds) announced a litter coming. I have photographed many of her litters and have used her dogs as models in many of my concept shoots. We have always admired her dogs so we decided it was time to add a puppy to our home.

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I held a professional head-shot photo booth for dogs at a local Pet Fest, the results are hilarious

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After the fantastic experience I had hosting my first Dog Photo Booth at Glens Falls Pet Fest in City Park, Glens Falls last year, I knew I had to return for the 2nd annual event. As simple as the concept may sound, hosting a photo booth (let alone one for dogs) involves a number of technicalities. Having never hosted a photo booth before, last year was a tremendous learning experience for me as a photographer.

When the event ended, I shared my photographs online and they were viewed by hundreds of thousands of people — which was pretty cool. After the fact, I had photographers reach out to me and ask questions about my experience, my equipment, pet photography and more. The project opened opportunities for me to write articles for popular photography blogs. I even licensed one photo of a dog to a large veterinary acquisition firm. This was all great, but the truth was that last year I failed to break even on my investment in the event and as much as I loved my product, it just wasn’t worth the amount of time I’d put into it, financially. Additionally, there were issues with lighting, with lines of people waiting to have their dog photographed, and with my delivery process.

For this year’s event, I opted to take the more traditional photo booth route —  instant photo delivery. That meant buying a 4″x6″ photo printer (Epson PictureMate 225), and associated supplies. I opted to switch out the blue vinyl backdrop I used last year for a white cloth backdrop to create a clean white, headshot-like photograph. This simplified my lighting setup while maintaining a professional-looking image. The end result was a beautiful, take-home product at $10/photo or $15 for the photo and the digital file emailed after the event (with 10% of all sales going to a local animal shelter). Once again, I made my dog Red model the prototype:

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This mother created adorable photos of her son and their rescue dog

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Photographing your children as they grow and blossom into the young adults they will become is common to almost all parents.  Some parents, however, like to think a little differently.

Commercial photographer Grace Chon is one of those people.  With assistance from the family’s 7 year old rescue dog, Zoey, Grace created an adorable series of photographs of her young son, Jasper.

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