Chona Kasinger2013-04-20 22:32:40 UTCChona Kasinger is a freelance photographer and writer based in Seattle. Her work has been featured in Rolling Stone, MTV Hive, Marie Claire and The Huffington Post. View her website at chonakasinger.com.
Animals Talking in All Caps is exactly what it sounds like: photos of animals paired with tongue-in-cheek dialogue. Capitalizing on the virality of Tumblr, Justin Valmassoi, runs ATIAC for its audience of well over 100,000 followers.
Occasionally relatable and always witty, ATIAC appeals to both animal lovers and Tumblr users in search of a hearty chuckle. Essentially more refined versions of the Lolcat meme, Valmassoi’s posts often mock societal norms. Sheer silliness and carefully curated photos has proved a winning combination, earning him both a small army of fans and book deal.
“People who were raised by wolves haven't seen half as many wolves as I have," Valmassoi says.
Despite the sheer magnitude of Kookaburras, Orangutans and Weimaraners he has captioned over the years, Valmassoi has never actually been to a zoo. Yet we find ourselves nestled away at the Woodland Park Zoo, in Seattle’s Phinney Ridge neighborhood, where we discuss hippopotamuses, Creative Commons and his upcoming book (Aug. 2013, Crown/Random House). And of course, we snapped photos in real time for ATIAC.
When did you first have the idea of pairing animal photos with
captions?
I guess the first one was in 2009, maybe? I think everyone with a Tumblr has captioned an animal at some point, though. It's just one of those things that happens when you're not paying attention. I made a few more over the next year or so, mostly to entertain my friend Stacey. When I moved to Seattle in 2011 I collected them all in one spot at her request, then made a few more because I didn't go out much, and that was the entirety of how ATIAC came about. Just a compilation of random half-jokes that snowballed into something much bigger. I certainly never intended to do it full-time. I was just really bored and about 2,500 miles away from all my friends.
What cues in animal photos do you read the most for dialogue?
I really like body language and facial expressions. There are a lot of amusing animal pictures on the Internet (obviously), but a ton of them are contrived or really blatantly weird. I prefer normal photos of normal animals pulling really human faces (exasperation, inebriation, contempt) or doing things with their bodies that imply non-traditional animal behavior (waving, pointing, acting sexy).
I'm not saying I've never used a ferret hugging a vibrator, but I prefer a couple of otters that look like they’re arguing or a praying mantis with a highly sassy stance.
From where do you pull animal images the most?
I get almost everything from Tumblr, either via submissions from readers or from wildlife/nature-themed blogs. I think Animals-Animals-Animals, rhamphoteca and getawildlife are my top three sources of images, mostly because they have a good eye for my kind of stuff, but also because they all do a very good job of linking to the photographers' websites.
MARTHA WANTED ME TO COME BY AND TELL YOU THE BARBECUE IS CANCELED.
What is your process of sourcing the images going into your book, and can you tell us a little bit about the implications of crediting photographers for their work?
That was the worst part of the whole thing, and a large part of why I like the aforementioned animal/nature blogs. I basically had to sit at my desk for, like, 11 hours a day every day for a couple of months and plug images into Google's image search, then sift through literally thousands of results trying to find the highest resolution or the largest image, in an attempt to trace it back to the source.
Contrary to popular opinion I am really shit at the Internet and I'd never had to do that before, so it was a long and kind of suicide-inducing learning process. Once I found the original I had to figure out the photographer's contact info, then email or call them, explain what I was doing and ask for permission. A ton of them were great and very excited; a few were mad that I had used their stuff on ATIAC without permission (which necessitated explaining just how many uncredited photos are floating around Tumblr, and how hard I had to work just to find their Flickr). And most of the people I tried to contact never got back to me, or had died, or at least forgot to update their info for a few years, so their pictures won't be in the book.
I also asked for submissions from readers who like to photograph things, and I got quite a few from that, which was nice — much easier than months of fruitless googling.
I think there's a definite sense of communal ownership that comes with the "digital age" ... everyone thinks that anything they find on the Internet half belongs to them.
I think there's a definite sense of communal ownership that comes with the "digital age" ... everyone thinks that anything they find on the Internet half belongs to them. But after talking to a couple hundred photographers, I can definitely tell you that's one profession who, collectively, would really like people to at least take five seconds to link to their work. It turns out that a couple of the people whose stuff will be in the ATIAC book have taken a ton of my favorite animal photos from the past couple years, and I had no idea who they were. I can see how that would be really, really frustrating: to find out that your work is really popular or at least well-liked and has been reblogged around Tumblr 62,385,689,432,658,314 times — and nobody knows it's yours.
What difficulties have you encountered in transitioning from ATIAC’s online medium to the published world?
I've lost 15 pounds and grown a beard. I think I have an ulcer. My hair is out of control and I think it makes the people at 7-Eleven a little afraid of me.
Other than that, just the usual "creative vs. accounts" stuff you always hear about. Inane as the premise of ATIAC may be, I still have an image of it in my head, and it maintains a certain artistic integrity. Once you're in the machine, though, all of that goes right out the window. Giving up creative control of something you've done, for you, for a very long time, is never easy, I don't think. For instance, I always wanted the cover to look like this:
To me that's a very funny seven-layer joke — people could read it on the train and nobody would make fun of them. But it will end up having an animal photo on the cover and probably a font that makes me want to throw bleach in my eyes. Because it has to appeal to the widest possible range of people (or some lie that people who like selling things tell themselves), so my dreams mean nothing and I probably won't like looking at my own book.
Also, just the reality of producing content on demand, under deadline, is a lot harder than most people realize. If I hadn't had to do all the permissions/photo hunting/organization, it probably wouldn't have been a problem, but doing all that while coming up with good captions, plus cranking them out for the Tumblr itself (I post quite regularly) at the same time ... well, look at my beard thing. Look at my skeleton body and horrible hair. I'm a wreck.
What can we expect to see in the ATIAC book?
Since the "It's just what it sounds like" tagline has been there from the get- go, I kept it pretty simple. It's basically just a coffee table version of the website, so if anyone was worried that it would have interactive 3D QR stuff or pop-up photos with holographic word balloons, you can rest easy. (If you were hoping it would have those things, I'm sorry.) It's about 50/50 old and new content. Some fan favorites, some personal favorites, some slightly reworked captions paired with new photos and a bunch of shiny new entries that will be ... whatever it is that I do, I guess. New pairings of mildly absurd or occasionally poignant text with very sexy images of expressive animals and insects.
What advice do you have for other creatives hoping to take their work from the web to the printing press?
Always ask for full creative control of the cover. Always!
Also, I guess it would help to think about all of the aspects of your work that function well because they're online, and then figure out if they translate to print media or will have a similar audience once it's a book. Some stuff will probably have to go. Some other things will need to be added. Print and digital are two totally different realms that don't necessarily overlap well, so it's important to have a pretty solid idea of what it will be when it's in someone's hand instead of on their screen.
Do you have any vision of ATIAC beyond a book? How do you see this project evolving?
To be honest, I just want a vacation. I can't even tell you how many animal photos I have seen in the past two years.
People who were raised by wolves haven't seen half as many wolves as I have.
People who were raised by wolves haven't seen half as many wolves as I have. I'm also kind of scatterbrained, and tend to have four or five things going at once. I'm a writer upon occasion (in lowercase, and without pictures) and I make 'zines a lot. I'd like to keep moving from project to project while my brain is angled toward each one. ATIAC is probably the longest I've spent immersed in one thing.
I also got married in April of 2012 to a beautiful, sarcastic Scottish woman (our wedding and visa application was actually partially funded by ATIAC reader donations last Christmas), so I'm trying very hard to move to Glasgow and start a proper life with her. That's the most pressing thing on my plate of pressing things right now. The whole book process has been done alongside the whole visa application process, which I'm sure is a huge contributing factor to my horrid stomach ailments and atrocious sleep schedule. So whatever I do next, I'm hoping to do it from the UK.
Who knows, though. I might just end up doing Animals Talking In All British Accents or something. I just kind of follow whatever weird path life happens to present me, which is how I ended up standing at the zoo with you today.
What is your spirit animal?
PJ Harvey? Tavi Gevinson? That okapi that got to meet Ryan Gosling when he was filming Ides of March? I have no idea.
This story was originally produced for Tumblr Storyboard.
Images courtesy of Animals Talking in All Caps, via Flickr, @spacesheep, Endless Loop Photography
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