“Time spent with cats is never wasted,” Sigmund Freud once said. Today, to share another dose of inspiration, we’d like to introduce you to a person who has been proving Freud’s point through his camera lens: Walter George Chandoha (1920-2019), a famous master of cat photography. He also successfully shot other animals, such as fruits, vegetables, flowers, and New York City street scenes, but cats seemed to be the biggest passion of his professional and creative life. His archive grew to more than 225,000 photographs, with about 90,000 shots of cats among them. Walter Chandoha is often mentioned as the guy who made cat photos viral much before the era of memes.

In this post, we’ve picked up some gems of his cat shots from around the web, as well as backstage shots, for you to be impressed and inspired.

Also, welcome to dive into the history of stock photography, review the tips on black-and-white photography, check a pack of funny free stock photos with cats and download the library of 100,000 AI-generated photos of people free to use for your projects.