{ 12:14 AM on 'Increase your chances of of adopting out your animal' }
Disclaimer: I am not in any way praising my works nor is this 100% accurate.
Sometimes it annoys and frustrates us that some beautiful animal never get adopted out yet ironically those 'normal' ones seemed to enjoy all those good luck of finding a purr-fect home. (even if it is amusing to some extent)
Fosters will certainly get to a desperate point when a long time goes by and the young kitten turns to a young adult cat and into a mature grown adult.
So what exactly can help prevent this, or rather, reducing the chances of such scenario from happening?
Without further ado, I shall provide some tips based on my experience on rehoming cats for the past 2 years
Camera
Your camera is as important as the subject being photographed and your skills. Without a good camera, one cannot expect that the photographs taken would be good.
Firstly, one should avoid using the cell phone as the resolution is not as good as the camera. The image size is also smaller. However, I do not deny that the photographs taken can be comparable to those taken by camera. For a beginner, I do advise that a normal digital camera used, unless you want to use a DSLR, which is very expensive but gives extremely high quality and focused shoots.
My camera is a normal Sony digital camera that cost around $2oo but it comes with a pouch, camera stand, charger, plastic display cover, etc
Pretty worth the money and all the photographs shown are taken by it
Photograph
Remember a picture tells a thousand words. A photograph conveys to its readers messages subconsciously.
1) Good Photograph
A good photograph does not mean hiring a professional photographer to snap pictures at your animal. A good photograph simply means a clear shot of your animal, in a pleasant background with your animal as the focus.
Let's take for example:
-Sunshine, taken by Wei Ling 2009
In this photograph, notice the centre of the picture is Sunshine and ultimately his face is the clearest in the picture. In addition, the background is actually his litter box (in other words, kitty toilet/washroom) yet it has the nice contrasting white colour against Sunshine's dark pelt. To avoid making the picture seem too cold, the pellets were there to neutralise the effect.
Hence, when people first view this photograph, their attention will be drawn to the centre, the focus of the picture, Sunshine.
Believe it or not, within 24 hours, 6 people called us to enquiry about Sunshine's adoption. So many that my friend had to ask me to take the post down ASAP
2) Enhancing the photograph
Compare this
to this:
-Latin, sent via MMS. Picture taken by Nurlilah through her handphone. Edited using GIMP
They are the same photograph but which one is more appealing? The second photograph is more likely to gain more attention as compared to the first.
Don't be lazy, make some effort to edit your photograph a little such as the colourisation and the colour contrast. You will be surprised by the difference it will make. There is no one formula to make the photograph the most perfect, it is mostly by trial and error.
When I say enhance, I don't mean fosters should start changing the colour of their animals. NO! It simply means to bring out the best of the animals' features and work to their advantage.
Softwares that you can make use of are photoshop or GIMP. Download them and make full use of them.
3) Human with animal
-Pussy, photograph taken by Wei Ling 2010
Try not to take the photograph with your animal, even if they may lack photogenic abilities.
Why do I say so? By doing so, you are showing that your animal is insecure, even with you! In addition, it may show that it is too much of a scaredy-cat, thus not making good companion pets or that it is too aggressive, thus it may put off potential adopters.
As much as possible, take the photographs with only the animal in the picture. This brings out the most natural look.
4) Background
Once again, no clusters, absolutely not.
Your background should be clear and made up of one theme so that viewers can spot your animal immediately.
Here are some examples:
Checkered:
Plain:
Furniture (gives a homely feeling):
Books:
Simple:
Hamster in a cage, the message is pretty clear
An emotional shot:
Plays on the mood of the photograph
These are pretty much some themes and background fosters can consider adopting.
Photography should be ideally done in an empty room or at least a clean and neat area of the house. The background can be deployed using a Mahjong paper (white), a large piece of cloth or using temporary wallpaper. This is used to achieve the 'studio shots'
5) Cage
-Bear-Bear, taken by Wei Ling 2010
As far as possible, try not to take photographs of animals in a cage.
This is because, it makes viewers feel that the cat is trapped in a cage, not a very good message you want to convey isn't it?
Unless it's a kitty dressing up as Rapunzel in a castle, a cat in a cage is one of the most unappealing photograph, although there are ways to pull it off, for example
Where the cage bars are kept to the minimum thus it reduces the unfavorable impression that the cat is being confined
Posting
Moving on, a good post is needed so that adopters can understand what the cat is like within a short post.
Here is what I prefer to stick with:
Latin
Age: 2 Months
Gender: Female
Colour: Pure white with some little ginger spots on the head.
Size: Kitten
Sterilised: No (too young)
Microchipped: No
No Toilet Trained: Yes
Health: Excellent
A beautiful girl of lovely colours, Latin is sure to bring you joy. Keepcats rescued her from SPCA upon hearing that she would be put down, hoping that a wonderful family would be the one to welcome her in their household.
All the animal's medical information, personal date and the foster's contact details are shown clearly.
Short and straight to the point, it aids in the viewer's understanding of the animal in the shortest period of time.
Advertising
Advertise everywhere! Generate publicity for your adoptee and make sure more people know about him/her!
Here are some places you can try out:
Cat Welfare Society (for cats)
Pets Channel
Pets.sg
Singapore Forums (any forums based in Singapore)
Oxl
Singapore Classified
Straits Time (note that a $40 fee is imposed)
I hope this is able to help every foster and animals around
Copyrighted 2010, Wei Ling at Keep C.A.T.S.
All materials are produced by Wei Ling
Article can be reproduced but
Strictly no reproducing without crediting the source
Saturday, October 2, 2010
{ 12:14 AM on 'Increase your chances of of adopting out your animal' }
Disclaimer: I am not in any way praising my works nor is this 100% accurate.
Sometimes it annoys and frustrates us that some beautiful animal never get adopted out yet ironically those 'normal' ones seemed to enjoy all those good luck of finding a purr-fect home. (even if it is amusing to some extent)
Fosters will certainly get to a desperate point when a long time goes by and the young kitten turns to a young adult cat and into a mature grown adult.
So what exactly can help prevent this, or rather, reducing the chances of such scenario from happening?
Without further ado, I shall provide some tips based on my experience on rehoming cats for the past 2 years
Camera
Your camera is as important as the subject being photographed and your skills. Without a good camera, one cannot expect that the photographs taken would be good.
Firstly, one should avoid using the cell phone as the resolution is not as good as the camera. The image size is also smaller. However, I do not deny that the photographs taken can be comparable to those taken by camera. For a beginner, I do advise that a normal digital camera used, unless you want to use a DSLR, which is very expensive but gives extremely high quality and focused shoots.
My camera is a normal Sony digital camera that cost around $2oo but it comes with a pouch, camera stand, charger, plastic display cover, etc
Pretty worth the money and all the photographs shown are taken by it
Photograph
Remember a picture tells a thousand words. A photograph conveys to its readers messages subconsciously.
1) Good Photograph
A good photograph does not mean hiring a professional photographer to snap pictures at your animal. A good photograph simply means a clear shot of your animal, in a pleasant background with your animal as the focus.
Let's take for example:
-Sunshine, taken by Wei Ling 2009
In this photograph, notice the centre of the picture is Sunshine and ultimately his face is the clearest in the picture. In addition, the background is actually his litter box (in other words, kitty toilet/washroom) yet it has the nice contrasting white colour against Sunshine's dark pelt. To avoid making the picture seem too cold, the pellets were there to neutralise the effect.
Hence, when people first view this photograph, their attention will be drawn to the centre, the focus of the picture, Sunshine.
Believe it or not, within 24 hours, 6 people called us to enquiry about Sunshine's adoption. So many that my friend had to ask me to take the post down ASAP
2) Enhancing the photograph
Compare this
to this:
-Latin, sent via MMS. Picture taken by Nurlilah through her handphone. Edited using GIMP
They are the same photograph but which one is more appealing? The second photograph is more likely to gain more attention as compared to the first.
Don't be lazy, make some effort to edit your photograph a little such as the colourisation and the colour contrast. You will be surprised by the difference it will make. There is no one formula to make the photograph the most perfect, it is mostly by trial and error.
When I say enhance, I don't mean fosters should start changing the colour of their animals. NO! It simply means to bring out the best of the animals' features and work to their advantage.
Softwares that you can make use of are photoshop or GIMP. Download them and make full use of them.
3) Human with animal
-Pussy, photograph taken by Wei Ling 2010
Try not to take the photograph with your animal, even if they may lack photogenic abilities.
Why do I say so? By doing so, you are showing that your animal is insecure, even with you! In addition, it may show that it is too much of a scaredy-cat, thus not making good companion pets or that it is too aggressive, thus it may put off potential adopters.
As much as possible, take the photographs with only the animal in the picture. This brings out the most natural look.
4) Background
Once again, no clusters, absolutely not.
Your background should be clear and made up of one theme so that viewers can spot your animal immediately.
Here are some examples:
Checkered:
Plain:
Furniture (gives a homely feeling):
Books:
Simple:
Hamster in a cage, the message is pretty clear
An emotional shot:
Plays on the mood of the photograph
These are pretty much some themes and background fosters can consider adopting.
Photography should be ideally done in an empty room or at least a clean and neat area of the house. The background can be deployed using a Mahjong paper (white), a large piece of cloth or using temporary wallpaper. This is used to achieve the 'studio shots'
5) Cage
-Bear-Bear, taken by Wei Ling 2010
As far as possible, try not to take photographs of animals in a cage.
This is because, it makes viewers feel that the cat is trapped in a cage, not a very good message you want to convey isn't it?
Unless it's a kitty dressing up as Rapunzel in a castle, a cat in a cage is one of the most unappealing photograph, although there are ways to pull it off, for example
Where the cage bars are kept to the minimum thus it reduces the unfavorable impression that the cat is being confined
Posting
Moving on, a good post is needed so that adopters can understand what the cat is like within a short post.
Here is what I prefer to stick with:
Latin
Age: 2 Months
Gender: Female
Colour: Pure white with some little ginger spots on the head.
Size: Kitten
Sterilised: No (too young)
Microchipped: No
No Toilet Trained: Yes
Health: Excellent
A beautiful girl of lovely colours, Latin is sure to bring you joy. Keepcats rescued her from SPCA upon hearing that she would be put down, hoping that a wonderful family would be the one to welcome her in their household.
All the animal's medical information, personal date and the foster's contact details are shown clearly.
Short and straight to the point, it aids in the viewer's understanding of the animal in the shortest period of time.
Advertising
Advertise everywhere! Generate publicity for your adoptee and make sure more people know about him/her!
Here are some places you can try out:
Cat Welfare Society (for cats)
Pets Channel
Pets.sg
Singapore Forums (any forums based in Singapore)
Oxl
Singapore Classified
Straits Time (note that a $40 fee is imposed)
I hope this is able to help every foster and animals around
Copyrighted 2010, Wei Ling at Keep C.A.T.S.
All materials are produced by Wei Ling
Keepcats started are a group of students who aim to change the society's mindset of strays and animals.
When the projected ended, we disbanded in a way but the remaining members gathered some animal lovers to help with sterilisation and rehoming
Dedicated to raise awareness for animals
C.A.T.S - Care for Animals in The Society.
Although we have a really catty name but we care for all animals, including dogs, hamsters, tigers, snakes. No creature should be denied of an existance on Earth
We are an unregistered non-profit organisation and we do not have a shelter. All the animals listed are fostered by the volunteers themselves
Recruitment
We always need members! Fill this in if you are up to the challenge!
Name:
Contact:
Helping with:
Residential area: (No need to provide exact address, just ang mo kio, jurong, etc will do)
Positions available:
Adoption Foster (taking care of kittens while waiting for them to be adopted out)
Temporary Foster (taking care of cats/other animals during their recovery period after sterilisation/surgery)
Sponsor/Donors: (Providing Financial help for sterilisation of cats, medical bills )
Event volunteers (help with events, eg manning of booths)
Transportation: Help to transport cats to, for example, the vet's
Our Success Cases
Sterilised 147 (45 during Spay Day) cats and rehomed 66 cats as of 9 August 2011.
Sterilised 16 dogs (industrial park at Sungei Dakut) as of 9 August 2011. Every 2 SPCA voucher of the month goes to the dogs
Witnessed 6 cats adopted (Helping to post adoption from our site but not under our projects)-
Prince, Manja, Tigger, Power Twins, Stephanie's kitty
Sterilisation
12 cats At AMK Block 777 ( this is not the actual block )
14 cats At AMK Block X09
4 cats at Toa Payoh block X15
10 cats on XX Dec 2010
20 cats from Jan 2011 - April 2011
Individuals: Sunlovemoon's mummy, Changi pregnant cat, Tangerine, Grandmother cat, Hermosa, 3 Hermosa kits, Siamsiah's cat, Siamsiah's friend's 3 cats.
Cats for Adoption
More information will be provided on their individual blogpost
Adoption is free but a $80 sterilisation fee is to be paid upon adoption. This is merely for the sterilisation of the kittens and not adoption itself.
There will be 2 separate contract that you have to sign when if you were to adopt our cats.
Fosters may like to post their cats for adoption on our site too
Scroll down for more information
Half Cardigan
In Stock: 1
Price: SGD $40.00 (UP $49.90)
Never worn before
Our expenditures - updated 19 November 2011
Donations 2009
2010g
Balance
..............................................
Total donations minus Total expenses
2009: $124.50
2010: $-3747.20
Total: -$3871.70
$
- note that for negative, we are dipping into our own pocket for funding aka borne by members -
g