Fashion style photography of the CLAW (Community Led Animal Welfare) dogs sponsored by BOSS Dog Food
Excited doesn’t begin to describe how I feel about sharing my latest series of work with you! These fashion shoot inspired images form part of a brand new collection of shelter dog portraits entitled ‘How Beautiful the Ordinary Becomes’ and were made possible by sponsorship from South African dog food brand, BOSS.
This is my fourth collaboration with BOSS Dog Food, who are as passionate about promoting shelter dog adoption as I am, and we really upped the ante with this shoot to create as much buzz and attention as possible for these amazing dogs.
Over the course of a very busy day, I photographed twenty shelter dogs who are waiting at CLAW (Community Led Animal Welfare) in Roodepoort to be adopted. Inspired by British fashion photographer Tim Walker’s very flower heavy campaign for Mulberry, I wanted to create a luxury feel to the shoot and create images that were really eye catching, super sharable and really highlighted the gorgeous dogs at CLAW.
All the dogs at CLAW are mutts. Mixed breed dogs of all different shapes and sizes who are often quite difficult to find homes for (especially the plain brown dogs) because they don’t resemble any particular breed. I’ve been a passionate advocate for CLAW as an organisation as well as for CLAW dogs (I have four) since 2011 and as often as I can, I make the time to shoot portraits of the dogs that can be shared on social media to help find then homes.
I’ve found that again and again, that the better the quality of photographs available for marketing shelter dogs, the faster they get adopted. Not only does photographing the dogs away from the shelter environment make the images more appealing (seeing cage bars and dogs looking sad puts people off, big time), it also makes the images more sharable and allows the dogs’ individual characters to shine through. Shares on social media equal dogs finding homes, it’s as simple as that.
Each and every one of these dogs ended up at CLAW because they were unwanted and I firmly believe that each and every one of them deserves a second chance. You’ll see under each image that there’s a caption telling you a bit about the dog and who to call for more information about meeting them.
You’re probably wondering how on earth we managed to get the dogs to sit amongst the flower set ups and what exactly went on behind the scenes on this shoot. Let me start by telling you, it was chaos, if you watch the behind the scenes video you’ll get a good idea about just how chaotic this shoot was. Dogs have no regard for carefully created and designed flower meadows and the CLAW dogs had absolutely no problem jumping into, onto and through the florist’s set ups. Some of the dogs even tried to eat the floral displays.
A couple of them stopped to smell the flowers, which was very sweet.
These dogs may look a bit plain and ordinary, but my experience with shelter dogs is that they more than make up for their lack of pedigree with amazing personalities. My aim in creating this series of work with an elaborate set and a huge amount of behind the scenes work is to encourage people to look more closely at shelter dogs and to notice their individuality. The colours and flowers are attention grabbing, now that I have your attention, please take note of how very different each dog looks.
Many of the dogs in this series have been at CLAW for months. Some of them have been photographed numerous times and despite being brilliant dogs, are still getting overlooked. Loki (exhibit a below) has been photographed three times now since last August.
Please keep an eye on my Facebook page and my Instagram feed for updates on these dogs. I’m keeping everything crossed that this colourful campaign does the trick to get the dogs’ portraits shared far and wide.
CLAW is based in Durban Deep, Roodepoort, Johannesburg. You can find more information about them on their Facebook page here and you can call Michelle on 083 395 3011 for information about any of the dogs in this blog post.
I’ve kept the puppies for last because who doesn’t love tiny bundles of fluff like these gorgeous babies.
Massive thanks to BOSS Dog Food for making this shoot possible, the Documinute team for the behind the scenes video, Impressionant Events for the flowers and the team at CLAW for running with my wild ideas!
