Audrey Bellot is a French dog portrait photographer who turned her hobby into a profession. Spurred by an experience at a dog shelter, Bellot mixes an understanding of canine behavior with photography to achieve wildly successful results.
Over the past few weeks, as people the world over were asked (or ordered) to stay home and isolate, you probably saw more than a few viral photos of animals reclaiming habitats that humans are being forced to leave alone. Sadly, almost all of those photos and videos are fake.
Moscow-based photographer Olga Barantseva has built quite an oeuvre of mesmerizing imagery consisting of models posing with animals such as bears, wolves, raccoons, ostriches, owls, crocodiles, and snakes.
Photographs like the one above by photographer Shikhei Goh go viral on a fairly regular basis. If the stories are to be believed, given enough patience and a little (or a lot) bit of luck, animals can be captured doing all sorts of amazing things.
According to an analysis published on Weibo, however, the stories can't (or rather shouldn't) be believed. Photos like these, the article claims, are staged by photographers who force pet store animals into awkward and unnatural poses.