About us
Who We Are
Shelter Me Photography is a 501(c)(3), charitable, nonprofit organization based out of Pagosa Springs, Colorado. We have been photographing homeless pets in animal shelter, rescue and foster communities throughout the United States since 2009. Our mission is to increase live release rates of shelter pets by eliminating the societal stigma that has mischaracterized, devalued and condemned their existence for too long.
We accomplish our mission by providing onsite photography and workshop training free of charge. During our shelter visits, we photograph as many pets as quickly and unobtrusively as possible and provide the host organization with professional-quality web-ready images to post online. We post the same images and encourage our followers to share them to maximize each pet's exposure and viewer engagement. We set high standards for each image to be properly lit, framed, focused and, most importantly, capture a connection through eye contact with the pet that reveals its spirit and potential.
Every homeless pet deserves a professional-quality adoption portrait. Period. For nearly 20 years, SMP has proven time and again that a great picture can: 1) compel a viewer to visit a shelter whereas a bad picture can scare them away; 2) give the impression that the shelter posting them has better pets, a better facility or just plain cares more about their animals than shelters that don’t; and 3) attach an inherent value to a shelter pet and increase the odds of capturing the attention and patronage of those who live outside of “the choir,” where the stigma thrives.
Nanette and Chewy (the donkey).
Who We Are
Shelter-Me Photography’s founder and executive director, Nanette Martin, is an accomplished professional photographer with nearly 30 years of experience. Her work has been published in LIFE, People, Sports Illustrated, Reader’s Digest, Marie Claire Italy and other magazines; newspapers; textbooks; coffee table books and film.
Nanette founded SMP as an organic response to what she experienced while on assignment for People Magazine in post-Katrina New Orleans. The sight of starving and injured pets struggling to survive motivated her to return numerous times to document the rescue effort. That work evolved into photographing pets for rehoming, fostering and adoption purposes. After learning her images had “made the difference between life and death” for a transport of Katrina dogs, Nanette left her editorial career and began focusing all of her attention, skills and resources toward photographing shelter pets.
Having photographed well over 10,000 homeless pets, Nanette is one of the most experienced shelter photographers in the United States.
Why We Matter
SCOOBY
Scooby, a Pit Bull Dog (PBD) mix, was adopted from a Denver area shelter by a man seeking a playmate for his dog. The man took Scooby home and released him into his backyard with his other dog without first introducing them in neutral territory. A fight ensued and the man got bit while breaking it up. He returned Scooby to the shelter where protocol called for the destruction of any PBD with a bite history, no exceptions. Even though it was situational and not his fault, Scooby was scheduled for euthanasia. The kennel manager looked at Shelter Me Photography’s photo of him and his beautiful eyes, one sky blue and the other golden brown, pleading back at her. She simply could not kill him. Because of that photo, the kennel manager made a vow to Scooby that she would find him the right home. It took many months, but the right person finally arrived and took him into a safe and loving forever home. This picture saved Scooby’s life.
What separates SMP from the pack is our founder and executive director, Nanette Martin, a professional photographer since the late 1990s. When Nanette started photographing shelter pets in 2005, there were no resources available to prevent her from having to reinvent the wheel; there was no wheel to reinvent. Nanette relied on her professional training and shooting experiences to tackle the multitude of challenges encountered at each shelter.
Over an 8-year period, Nanette used trial and error to separate what worked from what did not work. The end result was a simple, yet highly efficient process grounded in sound photography principles that allowed her to capture professional quality images of up to 100 shelter pets in a day. She incorporated her discoveries and techniques into a guide book and launched SMP’s Workshop Training Program.
Today, Nanette continues to refine her process as changes in technology offer new solutions to old problems and workshop attendees raise new questions. The system she uses is her own
creation and no one knows it better than she does. In fact, you could say she wrote the book on how to photograph shelter pets. No, really, she did. Every workshop attendee gets a copy of it.
