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Photographer Uses Technical Wizardry to Help Rescued Animals Find Homes

Self-taught Hungarian photographer Sarolta Bán is best known for her surreal landscapes, which have been displayed in galleries across Europe. She creates dreamlike scenes, often populated by magical beasts, with photo manipulation software, and tells Yahoo Shine that she sometimes layers as many as 100 individual images to create a final product. She says she doesn't title her images so people can use their own imaginations to find personal meanings in each picture. Bán recently started using her skills to help real-life abandoned animals around the world find homes. She invited her more than 100,000 Facebook fans to submit photos of homeless pets, and she is transforming them into evocative, majestic portraits. Bán has received dozens of photos from Spain, Argentina, India, France, Hungary, and the United States in the two weeks since she posted the invitation and expects to get many more after she reaches out to shelters. "Abandoned dogs sadly have really few chances to appear on a photo that will help them get out of the shelter... [one] that stands out from the crowd, and 'speaks' to a person," she writes on the project page. "I would really like to help sheltered animals, and for sure a good picture can be worth a thousand words." The project ends in mid-April, and anyone who adopts one of the dogs or cats will receive a signed portrait of the new pet. — Sarah B. Weir, Shine Staff