Ridiculously adorable and completely dumb animal pics populate the Internet in volumes. Animal lovers have a quirky hodgepodge of Buzzfeed listicles, Bored Panda galleries, and puppy-promoting Instagram accounts like that of the talented Earl Boykins to sift through. In praise of goofy seriousness, we’d like to offer an endorsement of the canine portraits by German photographer Elke Vogelsang.

Vogelsang’s three pooches, Noodles, Scout, and Loli, are rescue dogs. Vogelsang is a portrait photographer by trade (yes, that includes dog portraits), but says she started on this sillier series as a hobby after she got Noodles. To expand her portfolio while also capturing Noodles’s puppy-like demeanor, she shot the pups in myriad positions, with props ranging from eye patches to picture frames. But it’s this series–Nice Nosing You–that views dogs from one angle: their all-important snouts.





Nice Nosing You is the rare set of photographs that can turn an ordinary dog into an abstract piece of art, just by finding a novel angle. Shot with Fujifilm X-20, the photos capture each pup’s cartoonish noses so vividly that it feels like you’ll get a face-licking if you linger too long.

See more of Vogelsang’s work here.

[h/t Colossal]