Day 2. January 5th 2011

So with little time free today i thought some pet portraits would be good. So i settled down with the cats to take their picture. I'm now well aware of where the phrase never with with animals or children came from!

So portraits are about even lighting and nice simple composition and usually a small depth of field (background out of focus). Some issues with animals are, firstly they move around, A LOT! For small sleepy cats who do spend a lot of their time motionless they had to pick this moment to want to run around. Second issue with photographing cats are their highly reflective eyes which catch the slightest bit of the flash and turn your lovely little moggie into the cat from hell with bright daemonic glowing eyes!

I overcame the first obstacle with some patience (part of the reason i'm late with this blog), the second was sorted by taking the flash off camera. So holding a wireless flash at about a 45 degree angle I took a few pictures of Star.

I picked this one as it was the most serene of Star's pictures as she kept chasing my flash around as it beeps when recharging. I also love the glowing salt lamp behind her. It's been pointed out on several occasions how hard it is to photograph black animals and it's true! Best advice I can give is to make sure the light is coming from the side to help the animal to stand out from the background.

Of cause you can't have one without the other. After taking pictures of Star cobweb was just sat on Kitten Kingdom (a glorified 5 foot tall scratch post with two beds on the top) so I snapped this!

I did very basic post processing in photoshop basically just adding a touch of contrast and then a little vignetting to darken the edges.

Seeing as today was a bit of a struggle with work and all, I'm going to photo something at work! No idea what yet...

Thanks for taking the time to read this,
Gordon