The official Finding Shelter website is live, and I'm really happy with how it looks. It's also the first website that I built 90% on my own, which I have to say I'm kind of proud about. It certainly took a long time, and lots of coffee, and late nights, and yelling at my computer (how do professional web designers do it!?), but finally the project is online. It's the first of it's kind, and documents the intimate bond formed between animal shelter and rescue volunteers, and the abandoned animals they care for. Finding Shelter started in San Francisco and Los Angeles, but I'll be starting to raise funds via Kickstarter soon so that I can travel the country and work with shelters from coast to coast, turning the final product into a Finding Shelter book. On the website you can see portraits of volunteers/animals paired with accounts- in their own words- about why they do such intense work. Volunteering can be emotionally draining at times, it can be thankless, tireless, frustrating and heartbreaking. It can also be uplifting, life changing, joyful and miraculous. The Finding Shelter series aims to document all these aspects and more through honest and emotional black and white portraits. Below is one of my favorites from the series. Please visit the new Finding Shelter website to see more:

Finding Shelter: Animal Shelter Volunteer Portraits

“I often have the public make the comment to me when they see my work with shelter cats, ‘It’s so great that you work with these animals, you give so much to them’. I then correct them and tell them ‘You have it backwards; the animals give me a lot more than I give them.'” -- TIM + RHONDA, Peninsula Humane Society: Burlingame, CA

Finding Shelter Update