Dante meets his person.

Dante has been at Javacats from the time they reopen, but was a very shy and scared cat. He was always hiding in the back and was very difficult to photograph. He eventually started going into the lounge up high looking down on what is going on. Today, I was finishing up photographing some of the cats. This women walked in to adopt Dante. He had come down for her yesterday. When she walked into the lounge he had come down for her, so I tried to grab my camera to get some photos. Of cause, he ran away as soon as he saw me, but I then left the room and he came back down. A volunteer, Ed, came into the room to say good-bye. This distracted him enough for me to grab some of these shots.

Photographing The Big Give

I have not had a chance to photographed at Paws Atlanta since Covid-19 has hit. I was supposed to go this weekend, but there was a chance of exposure at Paws Atlanta so they close down to volunteers again. Hopefully, they are going to get back open soon. But on June 20, they had what they called The Big Give, and they asked me to photographed the event. They gave away enough food for 375 animals and flea prevention for 350 animals. It was good to be back. Here are some of the pictures.

Above is just some of the food that was giving away.

In addition, to giving the food. They gave away tick and flea prevention, which they had to give instructions on how to use. For example, it is important to keep the cat and dog ones separate as the wrong one can be deadly to the pet.

CBD treats for dogs were also giving away. These treats are for calming the dogs.

The line became long with cars backing up onto the highway.

While most of the people picking up came by car. The above man actually walked to pick up the food for his dog.

While the people were not suppose to bring their pets, of cause some came with pets and I had to photograph some of the dogs.

Of cause the most important thing was the people who were helped and those that helped them. Not to mention the many people who help donate the food and Banfield Foundation for donating the flea prevention and Toaster treats for donating the CBD treats. I am probably not as good of a people photographer as pet photographer.

Photographing Stella

It has been to long since I have photographed a dog. With Paws Atlanta not allowing volunteers since March, it has been three months. I got a chance to photograph some cats at Javacats Cafe, but dogs are a different animals. So it felt great to get an email asking me to photograph a foster border collie for Phoenix Rising Border Collie Rescue, name Stella. I met her at Skyland Park were she goes several times a day. I like to photograph dogs in places they are comfortable and her foster mom says she brings her there 3 times a day so it seem like a good place. We meet at 7 and started by throwing a ball around. She really loves to play fetch and probably could of played all day. This allow me to get some action shots along with some nice full body shots. She would bring the ball back, and lay down until you threw the ball. Below are some of the better shots.

Return from Covid-19 at Javacats Cafe

Javacats cafe was a great place for me to photograph cats that are available for adoption through Paws Atlanta. Javacats cafe double the adoption rate of Paws Atlanta. When Covid-19 hit, they had to close and the cats were placed in foster. However, when they were re-opening after a lot of the cats were not available for return. A big reason is that a lot of the fosters decided to adopt, which is a good thing. This caused the Cafe to reopen with just a few cats. The first weekend, they only had 4 cats, 3 of which were adopted that weekend. They manage to get a few more cats, but decided to close with the protest in downtown Atlanta and having to few cats. This weekend they got 10 cats. This allowed me to photograph a few of the cats, which made me feel good. A few of the photos are shown here. Also, over the shutdown, I changed my editing style a little and got to practice a little on these photos.

Black and White Photographs of Shelter Dogs.

Above is two photographs from early days of shooting at the shelter. I was not very much into doing black and white conversions at this time, but there was something about the first photo in color that I did not like, so I tried to convert it to black and white. I was surprised by how much better I like the picture. I used this picture to create my logo. I than started a little project for myself where I converted select photos of the shelter dogs that I had cropped to the square format. I actually choose doing the square crop, because that was the format that was used on the rescue website. It is also a good format for social media. Below are a couple of more recent black and white conversions. Also, I put them on Flickr at https://www.flickr.com/photos/fredstrobel/albums/72157641767741605 , if you are interested in seeing a lot more .

Photographing at Javacats Cafe

I started photographing at Javacats Cafe, 3 years this month. It provided me an opportunity to just photograph cats that were up for adoption. Above and below are some of the first photographs from Javacats Cafe. All of the cats are from Paws Atlanta and are available for adoption. Photographing at the cafe is not easy, it is a small room with not a lot of light so their a need to use high ISO, which can create a lot of noise in the photos. A full frame camera helps reduce this issue.

Photographing Cats at the Shelter

Photographing cats is different than photographing dogs. The cats are kept in four different rooms in Paws Atlanta in their Cat cottage. Typically, the cats will actually stay where they are and try to observed the area, if they are if you do not scare them or enticed to come play. This sometimes makes it easier to shoot than the dogs. Some may be friendly and come up to you. Above are two photographs from one of my first session photographing the cats (Holly on top and Frisbee on bottom) . One of the major difficulties in photographing the cats at the shelter is identifying the cat that needs to be photographed. Some of the care takers know the names of the cats and can point them out, but if the cat is new and there are a lot of new cats it is not possible. So this requires scanning the cats for the microchip. A lot of the cats do not like people running the scanner over the back of their neck where the microchip is placed so they will run as soon as you try to identify them. This can make for a fun time chasing a cat trying to get the scanner to read the microchip. Another issue with the photographing of the cats in the shelter is the light is not the best, for this reason I am glad to have what is called a full frame camera, which allows the photography in low light (using what is called high ISO) without a lot of noise. Even then I need to use a relatively slow shutter, so the cats need to be relatively slow or they will be blurred. One way around this is flash, but when I first started I was less willing to use flash on the cats. If I can avoid flash, I still avoid it as it can sometimes scare the cats.

A Fun Shoot

Monday, I open up Facebook to find out that one year ago, I photographed this dog named Andrew. Two things really stuck out about him, the first was his big smile. The second was his ears were chopped off. This was done to try and make him look mean. A few days later I photographed him below at the Walk for Paws event right after he was adopted, however, that adoption failed due to the child in the family was to much for him and he became scared. So he was returned and was happily adopted out later. He now has his own Instagram with his canine sister @prince.and.princess.of.paws.

A First Full Shoot

The first full shoot at Paws Atlanta was done after the volunteer orientation that I had to do, here are a couple of the animals I photographed that day (Chanel and Joel). It was done with Jen Gregg a photographer who was doing it for a while. I found out that the photos were done in a play pen that they normally use to introduce the dogs to potential adopters. Usually the dogs will run around in the play pen and tire themselves out. This makes it a little easier to Photograph them. If not one trick Jen taught me is to tie them up with a leash, but I try to avoid doing that. Treats are a better way. Also, making a lot of noise can help significantly in getting them to look at you.

First Shoot at Paws Atlanta

My first time at Paws Atlanta, I meet up with the director of marketing at Paws Atlanta and took one puppy out to test. It was not my best work with one photo above, but the puppy above was Emily Dickerson. I found out that a lot of times with litters they will give them names that are themed. In this case, the litter that Emily Dickerson was involved in were named after famous authors. I, also, found out that the preferred format for putting pictures on the website was square. I have learned to love this format and is a reason for a lot of the photos on the website being square.

The Beginnings

The above photo is one of my first digital photos and of cause it is a photo of my sister’s dog Mr. Magoo taken in October 2003. I figure showing one of my first digital photos on my first blog post would be a good way to start and tell about how I started in photographing shelter animals. I started late in photography and it started when I moved to Atlanta for a job and decided that I needed a hobby. I decided that hobby would be Scuba Diving. After learning to Scuba Dive, I picked up an Aqua Shot camera that allowed you take pictures underwater with a disposable camera. I found I really enjoyed taking pictures of the underwater animals. I have not Scuba Dive in a long time, but this lead me to getting my first Single lens Reflex (SLR) camera, which was a Canon Rebel. To learn to use it properly, I took classes at The Showcase School (It is now the Atlanta School of Photography). I took several classes over several years and practiced a lot. These classes also included dark room classes as I liked the idea of controlling everything to the output of a print you can hold. The problem with film is that it is difficult to print color film by yourself, but about the this time Canon came out with a relatively affordable Digital SLR (DSLR), which was the Canon Digital Rebel. Of cause, I had to get it. I had continue to learn on this from 2003 to 2007, but eventually upgraded to the 40D, which I used from 2007-2013. During this time, I found Adobe Lightroom, which helped me organize my photos and also Flickr, which allowed me to show my photos. I also learn to print the photos using an Epson Photo printer. During this time, some of my favorite subjects were my sister’s and mom’s pets developing a nice bunch of photos that I placed on Flickr. One day, I saw a post on Flickr from a photographer who was leaving Paws Atlanta to go to Colorado and that they were looking for photographers to help photograph the cats and dogs. About this time, I upgraded to a Canon 6D, for its low light capabilities. I was hesitate to apply, because I was not confident in my abilities. A couple of months later, I sent the email with a link to my Flickr album with the photos of my sister’s pets. They were happy to have me come and photograph the animals and have been doing it since 2013.