James Mollison set up a mini photo studio in one of Tokyo’s canine spas and photographed a bunch of its lovely furry clients.

-courtesy MAP

National Geographic photographer Vince J Musi is an award winning photographer whose unique take on animal photography was recognized in the 2011 PDN Photo Annual. The early deadline for the 2012 Photo Annual is TODAY at midnight PST. The image above  is from a story on wild things bred for their aggressive behavior. Scientists in Novosibirsk, Russia, are comparing these rats to those bred for friendliness to understand the connection between genetics and behavior.

All photos © Carol Beuchat.

Carol Beuchat started photographing dogs in 1999 while in South Africa as an Honorary Professor at the Univ. of Cape Town. Since returning to the States in 2003 Beuchat has been dedicated to dog photography full time. She explains, “Dogs are such interesting animals, perhaps more than we generally realize if we only see them as pets.  At the dog park, the leash is off,  the dogs are free to interact with each other (if the owners will let them), and what you can observe is real canine behavior.  I started photographing at the dog park while there with my own dogs, and I was astonished at the amazing facial expressions, the athletic maneuvers, and all the teeth on display while they played each other. As fierce as the dogs might look in photos, they are very careful not to hurt one another, and they even seem to calibrate the roughness of play to the size and age of the playmate.  I’ve come to really appreciate how differently dogs play with each other than they do with people, and also that providing dogs with the opportunity just to be with other dogs really enriches their lives.”

Beuchat recently self published DOGSPLAY: The Joy of Being a Dog, which is available in hardcover from Blurb or as an eBook on her website.

All photos © Rod Morata.

Most photographers bring their cameras with them everywhere they go, so a unique moment or interesting discovery doesn’t go undocumented. Rod Morata, a Brooklyn-based editorial photographer, decided to take this idea one step further and commit to taking at least one photo each day of the year. Morata says, “In 2011, I started a 365/photo-a-day project for the first time in years and brought a camera with me everywhere I went to document everyday [life].  I’ve seen a lot of 365 projects in the past and thought it would be a great photo exercise to start one of my own. I was curious to see what I would come up with and what a year of my life would look like in pictures. Generally, I take portraits and photograph in a more controlled environment. This was a good opportunity to work outside of my comfort zone and record interesting things I see but usually don’t photograph.”

An exhibition at Gitterman Gallery in New York City of Machiel Botman’s black-and-white photographs from the past ten years is concurrent with the release of his third monograph, One Tree (Nazraeli Press, 2011). A key figure in Dutch photography, Botman has always photographed as a way to understand life. He is not restrained by photographic conventions; rather, Botman utilizes a variety of exposures, depths of field and focal distances, resulting in a style that is uniquely his own. His books are equally singular. They are autobiographical and chronicle the stages in his life, but they do not follow a linear narrative.

“Tree House, 2008″

“Lea, 2002″

“Horse and Church, 2008″

“Ijke’s Hand, 1999″

All photos © Grayson Schaffer.

“There’s a gang of guys from Alaska that get together each fall at the same hunting camp in North Dakota. Most of them have dogs from the same kennel—Wildrose—in Oxford, Mississippi,” says photographer Grayson Schaffer, a senior editor at Outside magazine. With more than a dozen dogs in the field, they’ve got to be well trained, otherwise you’ll end up with a scrum fighting over each pheasant that goes down. Ideally, when a pheasant flushes, a dog should sit and wait for the handler to send him out for the retrieve. That way you’ve only got one or two dogs searching for each bird. For everyone in camp, hunting is more about watching the dogs work than it is about shooting birds—though that’s definitely part of it. According to the North Dakota tourism department, more than 900,000 wild pheasants are taken each year in the state.

“What I am interested in is showing the animals simply in the state of being. In the state of being before they are ‘no longer are.’ Before, in the wild at least, they cease to exist. This world is under terrible threat, all of it caused by us. To me, every creature, human or nonhuman, has an equal right to live, and this feeling, this belief that every animal and I are equal, affects me every time I frame an animal in my camera. The photos are my elegy to these beautiful creatures, to this wrenchingly beautiful world that is steadily, tragically, vanishing before our eyes.” – Nick Brandt

Brandt does not use telephoto lenses because he believes that being close to the animals makes a huge difference in his ability to reveal their personality. He writes: “You wouldn’t take a portrait of a human being from a hundred feet away and expect to capture their spirit; you’d move in close.” After this photograph was taken in 2007, this elephant was murdered by poachers. Nick Brandt began the Big Life Foundation in 2010 to better equip rangers who enforce anti-poaching laws in Amboseli National Park. Nick Brandt is represented by Hasted Kraeutler gallery in New York City.

“I found this wonderful jumping spider in the brush looking at me as if he wanted to have a conversation.” Lyndon Johnson’s arachnid portrait was included as part of The Great Outdoors 2011 online gallery.