50 Animal Photos That Deserve To Be In The Hall Of Awkward Fame

To get the playful and derpy sides of animals to come out and play during photoshoots, Lathrop tries her best to just let the pets be themselves. 

“I just stand back and let them interact with their owners while I look through the lens. I always take a bag of what I refer to as "ear getters" to get their attention or their eyes to look at me when I want that. But it's really a lot like working with human toddlers, I just gotta go in with a lot of patience and the ability to change my plan for posing on a whim because animals don't always do what we want them to.”

Hoglund’s secret to derpy yet adorable photos is to ask the owners what tricks or funny things their pets do.

“That gives me a general plan of what might happen, but I stay open to what the animal actually does. An example is a photo I took of two golden retrievers in a convertible. Typically, people want their dogs to look at the camera. We got that shot, but then the pups saw other dogs walking in front of the car and looked forward. That was the humorous shot because it looked like they were driving!”