dogs

Every year, New York's dog owners get together at Tompkins Square Park for a different kind of Halloween parade—instead of humans wearing costumes, this one is all about the best-dressed pooch. But if you think it's all about the "aww," hold on a second, because these photos may be more sad than cute.

My name is Tracy Willis, and I'm a newborn photographer and digital artist based in Dorset, UK. For my personal project titled "Animal Antics," I create composite photos of my dogs doing various human activities.

Photographers lending their skills to try and help shelter dogs is nothing new, but Slovenian photographer Katja Jemec's series "I Looked Up and There You Were" offers a different perspective than we've seen before... literally.

Usually the term "top dogs" is used metaphorically; in this case, we're being literal. The most popular pooches on Instagram, it recently came to light, are raking in money by the thousands for every product placement photo they post.

Dogs are said to be man's best friend. But they are often neglected and left to die by their owners in places around the world.

I’m not ashamed to admit it. I regularly use my fancy camera to photograph my cats.

You probably do it too. A new lens or camera arrives in the mail and you immediately lose sight of all the daydreaming you’d done while waiting for your package to arrive. You may have envisioned yourself photographing a beautiful landscape or capturing that perfect moment in perfect lighting of a friend candidly laughing. Pet photography is the farthest thing from your mind. You tear off the bubble wrap and what do you shoot first? Cats.

Brandon Stanton of Humans of New York has millions of online followers and two NYTimes bestselling books by capturing people's portraits and stories on NYC streets. Elias Weiss Friedman has had a similar type of success by photographing dogs.

18 months ago, 22-year-old photographer Rob Bahou started shooting a series of portraits focused on the two animals we know best: dogs and cats. His goal with the project is to show how expressive the faces of our beloved pets can be, treating the subject matter with respect and not focusing on breed, behavior, or funny moments. What resulted is a gorgeous and heart-warming project titled Animal Soul.

People often say that dogs and their owners look more and more alike as the years go by. For her ongoing project "The Dog People," German photographer Ines Opifanti is shooting portraits of dog owners trying to mimic the expressions on their dogs' faces.

If you're a dog lover, photographer Amanda Jones has a photo project that will tug at your heartstrings. After photographing 30 different dogs as puppies years ago, she revisited them and captured what they look like as older dogs. The before-and-after portraits, a series titled "Dog Years," show how dog's have a unique spark of personality that lasts a lifetime.

Photographer Andrew Fladeboe has spent years traveling to countries around the world with the goal of capturing the unique relationship between humans and dogs. His goal is to document the different ways cultures have come to rely on working dogs in shepherding livestock. The ongoing project is titled The Shepherd's Realm.

If there's one things dogs don't like, it's the Elizabethan collar, popularly known as the "cone of shame" or the "pet lamp-shade." It's a protective medical device that's also commonly used by owners to discipline dogs when they do something bad.

For his new project titled Timeout, photographer Ty Foster shot a series of portraits of dogs that captures the sadness and embarrassment caused by wearing the cone of shame.

"Dry Dog Wet Dog" is an ongoing project by Brisbane, Australia-based pet photographer Serenah Hodson. It's a series of side-by-side portraits showing dogs before and after they're soaked with water.

NASA astronauts often pose for lighthearted portraits, and here's another fun example: astronaut Leland Melvin's official NASA portrait includes his two very excited rescue dogs, Jake and Scout.

Photographer Guinnevere Shuster of the Humane Society of Utah came up with a fantastic idea for helping dogs get adopted: the doggy photo booth. Her photos of the dogs do a much better job at capturing their personalities than standard snapshots, and the results have been impressive: 93.26% of the dogs are now finding new homes.

If you look through the winners of the annual World's Ugliest Dog Contest, you'll find that many of the crowned contestants lack hair on most -- if not all -- of their body. For some reason, it seems people just aren't very fond of how hairless dogs look.

Photographer Sophie Gamand recently decided to make hairless dogs the subject of a portrait project titled "Prophesy."

When photographer Stuart Holroyd moved to Cyprus in March 2014, he heard about a woman named Kayte Wilson-Smith who runs a small rescue center for stray, abused, and/or abandoned dogs. It's called Bay Tree Rescue, is funded entirely by Wilson-Smith's pension and donations, and houses roughly 60 dogs at any given time.

Holroyd wanted to get involved in the project, so he decided to use his photography background to help. His "Bay Tree Project" is a series of fantasy portraits of the dogs that are meant to raise funds, awareness, and adoptions.

Alicja Zmyslowska is a Polish photographer with a passion and a gift for capturing puppies... lots and lots of puppies. From family portraits of pooches and their siblings to sports photos of dogs running through courses, she photographs anything and everything that has to do with man’s best friend, and manages to make her photos stand out from the plethora of dog imagery out there.

We've featured photos of dogs underwater, mid-shake, during bath time and in the middle of a gratuitous lick... but this is the first set of portraits we've seen that capture dogs in-flight.

Well, not quite flight... more like 'falling with style,' to borrow a line from Toy Story.

Toronto-based photographer Pete Thorne has been shooting a series of studio portraits of dogs. Not just any dogs, though: Thorne is only accepting subjects that are "really, really old." The project is titled "Old Faithful," and now includes over 50 dogs.

Photographer Lara Jo Regan's photo series/book/calendar Dogs in Cars is a fun, tongues-out survey of the euphoria dogs experience on car rides.

We shared the series with you last year, but if you've been wondering how she managed to get such multi-dimensional images from such unique perspectives, she's put together a great behind the scenes video that reveals both her lighting rig and how was she managed to safely hang out of moving car windows.

It’s Friday. And after some potentially unfortunate news, it might do to share something that will help you start the weekend off on a better note. So, without further ado, we present you with a collection of photos that put a cute, SFW spin on HBO’s blockbuster show Game of Thrones.

If you remember our coverage of the 2014 Sony World Photography Awards, you might recall a photograph of an adorable dog, soaked with water after a bath. It was captured by photographer Sophie Gamand and won in the Portraiture category. Today, we get a behind the scenes peek at what goes into the making of her viral puppy portraiture.

In an effort to combat the ongoing belief amongst a great deal of the general public that pit bulls are an aggressive breed of dog, bred only to fight and hurt people, photographer Douglas Sonders has put together a PR campaign called Not a Bully -- and it is already helping to change people's perception of this lovely breed.

Budapest-based photographer Sarolta Bán is on a mission to shed a positive light on all shelter animals by creating images that will capture the eyes -- and hearts -- of anyone considering the pups for adoption.

As the owner of an extremely cute rescue puppy from my local humane society, I can attest to how wonderful it is to be able to rescue a pet whose life was previously in danger for some reason or another.

However, it's not a happy ending for many of the dogs in shelters. To help with that, Massachusetts-based photographer Fred Levy has started the "Black Dogs Project," a series that focuses on capturing portraits of black dogs against a black background.

Our quest to improve dogs' standing in the world of photography continues today thanks to an awesome photo series by LA-based photographer Lara Jo Regan that's bound to put a smile on your face. The series is called "Dogs in Cars," and if you like what you see you'll be happy to know that it's being made available as a 2014 calendar.

Carli Davidson's photos and slow motion video of dogs shaking off water and spittle have been a huge hit with people all over the world. In October, the photos were even immortalized in a book by the same name, and while she was working on that book, Nikon caught up with her at her Portland, OR studio.

Cats might be the belles of the Internet photography ball, but I'm a dog person and I'll be damned if cats get all the recognition. Photographer Carli Davidson's series Shake was a giant leap in the right direction, and now another canine advocate and photographer has stepped forward with his own series of portraits.

His name is Ty Foster, and where Davidson's series captured dogs mid shake, Foster's series Lick captures them in the middle of licking their own face.

We first shared photographer Carli Davidson's ridiculously cute SHAKE series back in 2011 before it had gone quite so viral. This week, her high-speed photographs of dogs making hilarious faces while shaking off water have been released in book form, accompanied by the above super slow motion video of the puppies in action.

When dog owners take their pets to a photography for studio, they're probably hoping for a series of portraits that make their little friend look "nice." That's most likely not the word that'll come to mind when you look at photographer Pablo Axpe's dog portraits in his project CANIO.

Warning: This post contains strong and disturbing photos of euthanasia and animal suffering.

Every year in North Carolina, over 250,000 animals are euthanized because there is no one willing to adopt them and care for them. This averages to nearly 700 animals killed daily. NC-based photographer Mary Shannon Johnstone has been on a mission to draw public awareness to the issue of animal overpopulation. Her gut-wrenching project, titled "Breeding Ignorance," offers an brutally honest look at the conditions inside animal shelters and the tragedy of beautiful (and often healthy) animals being put down.

LaNola Kathleen Stone is a New York City-based professional photographer and dog lover who uses her talents and free time for a very heartwarming cause: Stone visits the dog pound near her home and specifically asks to shoot portraits of the dogs that are the "least likely to be adopted", some of which have been there for over half a year and are likely in danger of being put down.

Remember those hilarious underwater dog photographs that went viral earlier this year? Seth Casteel, the photographer behind those shots, emailed us yesterday to say that he had been invited onto Good Morning America to talk about his work and how he creates it.

If you're a dog lover, you've got to check out the photography of 17-year-old photographer Jessica Trinh. Her two main photo subjects are her two dogs: a Golden Retriever named Chuppy and an Australian Shepherd named Daisy. Over the past few years, Trinh has captured hundreds of beautiful and creative portraits of her furry happy-go-lucky friends, aided by her keen eye for spotting gorgeous lighting and happy expressions. We dare you not to smile as you look through the images in this post.