They wanted to have fun images of cats shot from below, through plexiglass so their paw pads would be front and center and the viewer could see how clean the paws were after the cats walked through their litter pan. "Fresh Step" is all about clean paws. The clients had said they loved my fine art series and in the past I made sure the images for commercial assignments would end up looking different than my fine art work - since I like to keep them separate, but somehow this project slipped through and we ended up making cats look quite similar to my monkey and ape and Ursine (bear) series.

This cat litter campaign was meant to look very similar to my fine art animal series, which are shot on film. We actually discussed shooting on film but that did not work out. There was very little retouching, so - in hindsight - it could have worked out. Nevertheless, the hardest part was the frontal lighting since I was shooting the cats from below through plexiglass. It all turned out to be totally fine but we had to build quite an involved structure and the cats and their wranglers were about 10 feet up in the air and I was laying on my back on the studio floor. I tend to shoot with a long, flattering lens so they had to be high up. The cats were nonplussed. This is what it looked like with the platform and the lighting: https://bit.ly/2Q7Ndd9

The clients and agency were thrilled. The images are exactly what they wanted and they ended up looking like just like my art. So, they decided to use the images for a cat adoption experiential event in Chelsea.