vicissitudes of cat photography

One thing about digital cameras, you make a crap photo, and all you’ve wasted are the few electrons it took to create the image on the memory card. Occasionally, though, mistakes yield a potentially “good” photo that, with a little help from Photoshop, give the false impression you know how to handle a camera to make true art!

For example:

Impressionistic, “arty” photo of Andy and Dougy in the window, or a failed effort to get a focused photo of Andy and Dougy in the window, heavily processed in Photoshop.

Let’s face it, you can tell a cat, but not much! Andy looked cute in his favorite perch, but low light (flash went off each time I attempted to get a candid shot) and a wary cat from all the flashes of light in his face didn’t make for a happy subject. (Andy’s always wary, thanks to all those baths he got as a kitten.) Oh well, even a surly Andy is cute. He can’t help it!

I don’t know if anyone mistakes this for “art”, but this Andy portrait sure as heck took some major Photoshopping to capture his surly, little essence!

My digital camera will select an ultra-slow “shutter” speed for flash photos in low light. Slowly…! Before the flash goes off, your cat subject usually leaves Dodge to do something else, probably naughty and much more interesting! Not for this one, though, so I have to destroy it and everyone who reads this blog to assure no one knows I ever took a bad kitty shot. Never!

Photoshop couldn’t help this one of Dougy. I tried, man! I tried!

Another benefit of digital photography is the crap photos, once deleted, exist no more. There aren’t any negatives to betray the reality that my cat photo everyone admires is one of dozens taken that I couldn’t Photoshop into submission. I guarantee, very few of my photos are virgins.

Patience, persistence, practice, prayer, Photoshop, and a good stout pair of woven stainless steel mesh shark-resistant gloves yield great cat photos every time! If you lack any of those, however, try making videos of the little darlings. I bet I scrapped out five minutes of videos to get this one short vignette:

Notice the thumbnail photo that appears on the YouTube still is, well, pretty darn much like the first photo in this post, only I couldn’t run it through Photoshop to make it “purr-ty”!

=(^+^)= [Andy] =(^+^)= [Dougy] =(^+^)= [Andy] =(^+^)= [Dougy] =(^+^)=

[NB ~ Not unlike cat photography, this text went through 21 revisions – knock on wood! – before I called it polished enough for public viewing. Cat prose is much like cat photography: Patience, persistence, practice, prayer, proofread function, and a good stout pair of woven stainless steel mesh shark-resistant gloves yield great cat prose every time! But is it great literature? Dun-dun-dunnnn!]

=(^+^)= [Andy] =(^+^)= [Dougy] =(^+^)= [Andy] =(^+^)= [Dougy] =(^+^)=

You don’t believe me? Here’s a Screen Print of the revision record for this simple, little post. In addition to the 5 P’s for successful cat photos and videos is the “P” of perfection. Nothing’s too good for my readers! Rats! This addition makes another revision! “Argh!” as Charlie Brown used to say.