Behind the Scenes: Looking Fabulous in Fur

“I take the conventions from the fashion world and apply them to the underclass barnyard animal,” Rob MacInnis said.

Some of the first animals he photographed belong to Angela and Frazer Hunter, who own a farm overlooking the Northumberland Strait in Nova Scotia. Luckily, Mr. MacInnis knew the Hunters through a mutual friend. Had he called them out of the blue with a proposal for a fashion shoot on their organic dairy farm, they might not have been quite as receptive.

“I would have thought he was crazy,” said Mr. Hunter. “Who wants to take a portrait of an animal?”

Instead, he chose to make portraits of barnyard animals.

Or, as Mr. MacInnis puts it, “The blue-collar animals of the animal kingdom.”

These are “animals not left to their own devices,” he said. “They’re the animals we selected for consumption and production.”

Mr. MacInnis isn’t the only photographer thinking of animals as portrait subjects. James Mollison made portraits of apes, and Vincent J. Musi’s portraits accompanied a story in National Geographic about animal intelligence.

Mr. MacInnis uses a medium-format Hasselblad camera and photographs his subjects under dreamy lighting, much like that used in Glamour Shots or glossy editorial spreads.

Under his lights, cows and chickens possess soulful expressions, their eyes sparkling. Goats and donkeys are proud, defiant, bashful. A sheep grins.

There are group portraits, too; ensembles that he said are intended to recall “Annie Leibovitz star-studded photo shoots,” like those in Vanity Fair.

Mr. MacInnis, 32, was trained as a fine artist at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design.

One of his pictures, “Opening Night,” was purchased recently by Leonard and Susan Nimoy. The animals in this image were photographed separately and then assembled together on stage during the production of the print.

Rob MacInnis

“There’s something so startling and tender about it,” Ms. Nimoy said. “Some of the animals are stars in the making and those animals on the left are anxious to come on stage.”

The Hunters might have had doubts about Mr. MacInnis and the assistants he brought from school. “Farmers are fairly conservative in their outlook,” said Mr. Hunter, remembering the shoot. “When you get four or five art students coming to your farm, they certainly look different.”

But now, the Hunters own a portrait by Mr. MacInnis.

“He epitomized Davey,” Mr. Hunter said of the picture Mr. MacInnis took of their Great Pyrenees. “Down to a tee.”

The aspiration of any portrait photographer.