Why it's important.
Most shelters are lucky enough to have at least one volunteer who is a professional photographer or serious hobbyist. But even if they don't, anyone can take a decent photo, even with a camera phone: It simply needs to be well-lit, with an uncluttered background, in focus, and catching the animal looking relaxed and happy. This might take a few more minutes than simply snapping a shot of the animal coming in the shelter door, but it can make all the difference in the world.
Take for example, these screen shots from the first page of the Petfinder page of Humane Society of Eastern Oregon from May 30 2013:
Jack and Butterscotch have been up for adoption for at least a week, and yet no one has taken decent photos of them. The photos are poorly lit, poorly focused, and the dogs look scared and stressed. Not the best image if you want to showcase an animal. And if a potential adopter clicks through to read more about these dogs, they don't have any description on their pages:
The only information we get is the breed, gender, and adoption fee. Nothing about the dog's history, personality, energy level, or suitability with children and other pets. Certainly, an interested adopter could call the shelter to get this information, but why put up yet another barrier to adoption when it takes only a few minutes to make this information easily available to the public? And these dogs have been at the shelter for over a week. That is plenty of time for a volunteer to spend some time getting to the know the dog and write a brief description in Petfinder.
A good, brief description of animal anywhere he/she is being advertised: Name, aprox. age, weight, or adult size if it's a baby, maybe a sentence or two of background history, 1-3 sentences on personality, and a cute quirk that will help the animal stand out a bit. End the description with the contact info for the shelter so that interested adopters don't have to go searching for it, it's all right there and they can call or email the shelter within seconds of becoming interested.
I've had this job myself for a couple of the rescues I volunteer for. Petfinder's interface is simple and easy to use. This is an excellent task for volunteers, and takes only a few minutes to set up, take the photos, and upload them to the website.
Being very generous, let's say it takes a total of 30 minutes of time per animal to evaluate them, take a decent photo, upload it, and write a description. There's only 11 animals on the Petfinder page, that's only 5 1/2 hours. A single volunteer could knock that out in a day at no cost to the shelter. And if its a task that's made routine by the shelter management, it's something that could easily be kept up to date when new animals are added to the shelter. 30 minutes per animal is not a lot to ask.
We know that Pet Rescue is capable of this photos because the one of Aurora is good! It's well-lit, in focus, uncluttered background, and she's in an eye-catching pose looking at the camera. Not perfect, but clean, happy, and eye catching, which is all you really need.
We also know that Pet Rescue is capable of writing good descriptions, because Duke and Tigger (although their photos are terrible) have them:
Moreover, on May 30 2013, there were only 11 animals listed on the Petfinder page, all of them dogs. I suspect they also have cats and kittens for adoption (they almost always do), and probably more dogs, but I don't know for sure because there is no information about them anywhere online.
All adoptable animals should be advertised, it only makes good marketing sense. The longer it takes to get them adopted, the more money is spent to house them and the more time they spend taking up space that could go to other animals in need.
The internet is just bursting with tips on photographing shelter animals. Here are a few of them:
How to take better photos of shelter pets, step-by-step
How photography can save pets' lives, from Petfinder.com
Ten simple steps that improve animal shelter photos
Taking great photographs of shelter animals
Five non-conventional tips for creating compelling images of shelter animals
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