One of the pictures from that shoot ended up on a magazine and started getting attention. One day at the shelter, I met someone who said, “Can I hire you to photograph my dog?” I thought: You mean, for pay? Well … okay. The marketing of homeless pets actually plays an important role in saving them. I started volunteering at the West Los Angeles Animal Shelter, taking pictures of the dogs and cats there in order to help them find homes. Well, all those kittens found homes - and I thought: Maybe I can keep doing this. We went into an executive’s office - where we were definitely not supposed to be - and I photographed the kittens playing on the sofas. I offered to take some photographs of the kittens because I thought this might help them find homes. I was working at Sony when some of my co-workers found four homeless kittens living on the lot. But at one point it occurred to me that my passion was animals, not movies. The international element was really cool. I came up with ideas for marketing The Da Vinci Code, the 007 movies, and the Spider-Man movies - creative campaigns to market these movies in 75 different territories around the world. I was a design guy, working on movie posters, trailers, and advertisements for big studios including Sony and Walt Disney. I had another career before this, and it had nothing to do with animals. How did you become a pet photographer in the first place? But then one of those pictures happened to be posted in the right place at the right time, and someone saw it and liked it and other people got curious, and it was one of those things. I hadn’t been doing anything all that different with my photography before this - just trying to work hard and improve and have a great time meeting pets and their people. I never would have guessed in a million years that this could even happen. Did this overnight fame take you by surprise?Ībsolutely. You were just a mild-mannered pet photographer, minding your own business. They want to hang these in giant living rooms and offices. And there are requests from people who want to buy prints twelve feet across and twelve feet high. There are requests from people who want to buy prints of my work in regular sizes. I would do a shoot, including photography and videography, then go on a safari - and it would all be on them. And a cool pet company in South Africa wants to fly me out there to do a commercial marketing campaign. For example, one client wants to fly me to Germany to photograph a golden retriever. People want to fly me out to wherever they are. Most of the e-mails thus far have been from Europe, but I’ve also gotten a lot from Australia and Latin America, and right now it’s starting to take off in Asia. Well, there are requests from people who want me to photograph their pets here in the US, and from people who want me to photograph their pets elsewhere in the world - I don’t even know how many countries.

Seth casteel dogs