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I was exceptionally busy last week shooting and editing adoptable animals at the Tri-Cities Animal Shelter and Benton-Franklin Humane Society. In 5 hours shooting time and countless hours post-production time, I make portraits for 32 adoptable animals for their adoption pages. I wish my schedule would permit me to do as much every week.
I hope you enjoy!
It’s beginning to feel like every time I blink another week flies past. This week marked the start of my History of Photography class at WSU-TC and I’m hopeful for a really good semester. I’ve seen a few images from the first project and I’m hopeful that the entire class is doing as well with their projects.
The publicity drive for Shelter Cats started in earnest this week which is great timing since it seems that Amazon.com decided to start shipping early and the first books have already been received by eager fans. In fact, it seems to be doing well enough at Amazon that it is now in the top ten Hot New Releases category for Nature and Wildlife Photography. Granted, that might be a fairly narrow subset of books but it includes recognizable names like William Wegman and Ansel Adams. Not bad at all.
I also had my first media appearance this week. On Thursday I was very happy to be an in studio guest of Crystal Costa on KVEW-TV’s Good Morning Northwest. My three minutes or so in the spot light (well lots of lights really) went well and a clip of my interview can be seen on their Facebook site.
Behind the scenes I’ve been working on setting up book signing events and expect that there will be three in the Tri-Cities before all is said and done. I will be giving a brief lecture and doing a book signing at WSU sometime this fall, will be doing a combined book signing and cat adoption event at the Columbia Center Mall Barnes & Noble and will likely do something soon at Hastings. A signing for Third Place Books in Lake Forest Park just north of Seattle is also in the works likely for mid-November. Details for each will follow once they’ve been finalized.
Of course, on top of all of that, I’ve been photographing cute critters. This week alone I photographed adoptable 32 cats and dogs. Add to that training for my first marathon and I suppose it’s really no wonder that I could use a nap!
I’ll make another post this weekend to share some of my favorite photos from this past week’s session. In the mean time, I want to wrap this post up by offering my most sincere thank you to everyone that has offered their support and help over the last few years. Shelter Cats would not have been possible without all of you!
The whole publicity experience for Shelter Cats is new and exciting to me. Yesterday I learned that Robb C. Sewell posted a review of Shelter Cats on the EDGE on the Net website. The publicity for Shelter Cats is being coordinated by Rob Moore of 60 Cycle Media in New York and while we’ve discussed the big picture, I don’t know who is reviewing the book much less have any advance knowledge of pending reviews. I have to say that it’s really a lot of fun to read what other people think about the book. I know I love it but I’m probably more than a little bit biased. Maybe I’ll change my mind if a bad review comes across my desk and I hope I don’t have to find out.
Thanks Robb and I’m glad you enjoyed the book! More importantly, thanks for thinking adoption first and giving four shelter cats a loving home!
Yesterday I had the pleasure of photographing Mazy at Howard Amon Park in downtown Richland, WA. I don’t often do commissioned portrait sessions for clients and what’s more, I very rarely do on location sessions so it was a real pleasure to meet Mazy and her person at the park yesterday evening. I was a little nervous going into the session because it was still pushing 100 degrees at 6:30 pm and I was afraid that Mazy would be too hot to work it for the camera. I shouldn’t have been so concerned, Mazy was a real pro and when we met a few minutes before 7:00, she was ready to go.
You’d never know this girl is ten years old – she’s full of life and had just a very small bit of white around her mouth giving her a very distinguished look. Mazy is super smart too – she is only a month away from taking her exam to become a certified pet therapy dog. Good girl Mazy! Maybe some day I’ll photograph her in action.
Here are a few of my favorites from yesterday’s session. Enjoy!
I received an advanced copy of Shelter Cats and I have to say it looks pretty good. I might be a little biased. I’ve actually had the book for a couple of weeks now and have been showing it off to friends and family. I’m really looking forward to its release on September 7, 2010 and it is available for pre-order now everywhere books are sold.
The initial print run was 15,000 copies which is pretty good for a photography book and as I’ve mentioned before, a portion of every book sold will go directly to the ASPCA. In addition to the per book fee that the ASPCA will receive, they are also selling the book through their website and earn additional profit on those books sold because they are able to buy them at wholesale and then they sell them at retail prices. If you haven’t already purchased your copy of Shelter Cats, I’d highly recommend that you consider purchasing from the ASPCA’s website.
Even though the release is almost a month away, I’ve been working with publicist Rob Moore of 60 Cycle Media to set up local, national and international publicity for the book. Details for most will follow soon but for the time being, I’m very excited to announce that I will be a featured guest on Tracie Hotchner’s Cat Chat. Cat Chat is aired on the Martha Stewart Living Radio Network on Sirius/XM radio (Sirius channel 112 and XM channel 157 for those of you with the Best of Sirius package). The show airs every Wednesday from 8:00-9:00 pm Eastern and I will participate on the October 20, 2010 show. Tracie’s welcome email states that Cat Chat reaches over 18,000,000 subscribers across the United States and Canada. While I’m sure that not every one of those 18 million people listen to each show, it sure would be fantastic if even 1% of those subscribers bought Shelter Cats! More importantly, it will offer a great opportunity to talk about the importance of animal adoption and of course the importance of spaying or neutering pets to reduce the number of cats and dogs euthanized every year due to lack of resources.
I will readily concede that there are perfectly valid reasons not to spay or neuter dogs and cats BUT I’d argue that for the vast majority of people, those reasons don’t apply. If your dog or cat is a pet and if you are not a responsible, professional breeder please sterilize your animal. Even if you don’t think your actions contribute directly to the estimated 3.8 million cats and dogs euthanized last year due to lack of resources, spaying and neutering your pets has documented health benefits for your animal.
These thoughts are not new to me but recently were brought to mind again after meeting Hannah and her kittens. I photographed Hannah after she was brought back to the Benton-Franklin Humane Society after being in foster care while she raised her kittens. Her kittens are really cute and I had the chance to photograph them a couple weeks after I photographed Hannah. Hannah was surrendered to the humane society when her owners realized she was pregnant and they were not able to (or didn’t want to) deal with her pregnancy and her raising her kittens. As is the case at BFHS, she immediately went into a great foster home where she was able to raise her babies in peace. But one day, she darted out the door and came back pregnant. In less time than it took her to wean her previous litter of kittens, she had another litter of kittens on the way. If she had been spayed in her original home, there would be up to a dozen fewer cats in the world today making it that much more likely that some of those 3-6 million animals estimated to be euthanized this year would be spared.
So I close today with a plea to please spay or neuter your pets!
Tonight is the July Kennewick Art Walk and again my work will be featured at Zinful Panini Grill and Wine Bar. As it turns out, the artist that was going to be featured in July had to withdraw so I was asked to leave my exhibit up for another month. While it was unexpected, I am happy for the chance to show my work to potential new clients. Robin and I are planning to visit all of the businesses participating this month and I hope to see some of you there!
My work will now be on display at Zinful through July. Please check it out at 114 W. Kennewick Ave in Kennewick.
As a “famous pet photographer,” I was asked to be one of the judges for the Caster.com Buzzin into Spring photo contest. I’m not sure that I’m famous yet but I was more than happy to judge these cats on their “Aww factor”. Follow judges are Gwen Cooper (author of Homer’s Odyssey) and Modern Cat (a design-oriented recourse of cat products). Today was the first day of judging.
Take a moment and browse through the entries!
I don’t have any cats so I didn’t participate but I’ll leave you with one of my subjects from this week’s humane society shoot “bee-in cute”.
I received an email this week from Janet Preloger, Director of Alumni at the Academy of Art University inviting me to be the School of Photography’s featured alumnus in the “Out There” section of A Journal. The journal reaches nearly 150,000 alumni and industry partners so I want to make sure I hit the highlights. I need to provide a head shot of myself in my “work environment” so I’ll be hitting Judy up today at our BFHS session to photograph me with a cute adoptable critter (anything to deflect the focus from me – right?). I also need to provide a few samples of my work and a 35-40 word biography with highlights of my career. I’m a little worried about that last bit. I can barely even type a simple blog post about the honor in 150 words or less.
I’ve been waiting for just the right project to submit my Cats that Love Me series to and earlier this month I finally had my chance with the Projekt 30 juried competition Wild Life. I was very happy to learn today that my portfolio was chosen for the exhibit.
You may have seen some of this work on Facebook. The Cats that Love Me series was born of the fact that my humane society work is sometimes quite unappreciated by my subjects. While I’d obviously never use one of these photographs for their adoption pages, I can’t help but laugh when I see the odd snarl or sneer show up when I open the images in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. I dedicate this exhibit to Lola and to all her feline friends that would like to see me burn in the eternal fires of damnation. I only hope that my charitable work will spare me from the fate you believe I so richly deserve.
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