I got a couple decent shots of Dougy. No closed eyes, nice pose, Dougy being a cooperative kitty for a change!
Lounging on the ottoman….
Waiting patiently for the kitty toy.
We played kitty games while Dougy lounged in his favorite tub.
The trick? I turned on a second floor lamp to bring up the light level. There was no flash, so Dougy was more than cooperative for a change!
Dougy was minding his own business, snoozing in his new favorite box. What could go wrong?
Settled in for a long snooze.
Dougy is content!
“Hey, Dougy!”
Called to to get a better shot of his eyes, Dougy’s snooze is interrupted….!
“Hunh…!?”
Dougy reacts.
“Mouse turds! He has the camera out!”
Dougy realizes he’s about to get flashed!
Dougy has to make his move.
It’s now or never!
Up and out!
“You won’t flash me today!”
Dougy is ‘unanimous’ on that point!
Oh well! It was a typical photo shoot, with an uncooperative kitty and low light. What could one expect?
Low light and PhotoShop make for odd results. Here are three looks at Andy, taken in very low light without a flash, then heavily manipulated to find anything of interest.
Pointillistic Andy in the shade. Get the point?
Solarized Andy in a bit more light. Hey, great detail in the carpet! LOL!
Detached Andy floats slightly above the floor, but you can see some eyes in this one. And his horns…!
Yes, Taking photos of black kitties is a challenge!
One last photo completes yesterday’s paparazzo encounter. Dougy, finally, had relief from all the flashes!
“Woo hoo!”
Dougy is glad it’s over!
One of my favorite kitty video makers put out an excellent video on photographing dark pets.
If you have one or two (like I do!), you will recognize the problems he identifies, and feel inspiration to try to take those photos of the little darlings that seem impossible.
Or, you can continue to take photos like this one I recently posted of the boys:
Black cats are hard to photograph!
Sho Ko (Shorty and Kodi) channel on YouTube is fun, nicely done, and worth your time if you like kitties.Take a look if you aren’t familiar with this delightful channel!
Take a bad photo and turn it into something else.
One of my favorite photos of Louie my late ginger cat started out as a very bad photo taken with a camera with a nearly dead battery that failed to flash. A New Zealand friend added the super hero cape, and there we go! You’ve seen it before, but here it is again:
Today, when taking a photo of Dougy, the flash reflected off the hard surface of a binder in the foregound, wiping out pretty much everything. Here’s that photo:
Yet, there was something about the photo I liked. With a little imagination, tons of Photoshop, and the crop tool, this image came about:
I kind of like it. It’s Dougy art!
Nothing like having a black cat in a dark room and no functioning flash! Here’s a photo of Andy illustrating the outcome of that situation:
In its own way, though, it has some charm, so I decided to post it today anyway.
Caturday is on us once again! I decided you need to see the boys for a change. They are days away from their next grooming appointment, and look as much like the Persian cats as they ever do, with long, beautiful hair that is soft and pleasant to stroke.
Of course, they aren’t in the mood to cooperate. Both ran to bad places for photos: dark, dirty, cluttered places that serve two purposes, both to thwart pretty pictures of the boys looking as sweet as I’ve ever seen them.
They are beautiful cats! But they are like everyone else in my family. No photos, please.
Here’s Andy:
Yeah. By the dirtpot where I was growing grass for the boys. The grass is long dead, so it isn’t a very seemly foreground for Andy.
Crop the hell out of it, and be happy his eyes are open, at least. Never mind Andy’s giving his mean kitty look, you know, “Cat from Hell”. He’s actually very sweet-natured, a bit shy.
That left Dougy. Maybe Dougy’ll cooperate today. Probably not, but…!
well, he found the messiest corner of the apartment to plop down. Or one of the messiest. And it’s dark there. “Black-cat-in-the-coal-bin-in-the-basement” dark.
That’s about the best look at Dougy’s coat I’ve captured, but he’s hiding his beautiful orange eyes! Of course. His ruff is magnificent!
Dougy told me to tell you he’s not fat, he’s fluffy. Really.
So much for the cats on Caturday. Andy just came back over to the computer and he’s looking cute, cooperative, and…DRAT! He just ran off again when I raised my camera!
Sometimes I get the strangest photos because of low light conditions, flash that doesn’t go off, subject moving, me moving, the whole world moving, the rotation of the solar system in the Milky Way Galaxy….and the Big Bang. Some of these results just make me laugh!
Dougy the Alien
I spent much longer writing a letter to my Amsterdam friends than I thought it would take this morning/afternoon. All that time, Andy pestered me.
“Whaaat,” I whined, “…what do you want, kitty?”
Nothing I did or did for him settled him down. Constant interruptions.
Andy was a pest today.
About halfway through the letter, I took this photo of Andy. Not a brilliant piece of art, mind you. I took it with my webcam. Hit the button to take the photo and three seconds later, it makes the picture. A lot can happen in three seconds when you are taking snapshots of a cat! This was a best of several efforts. That’s how bad the rest were! Ha!
…in case you think I was lying about the other photo being the “best”, here are the five I took before I got the “good” one.
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tkmorin – This is the best one of the other five for eyes, but there was just too little detail on Andy’s face to make something decent of it. You barely can see his partly closed eyes.
Part of the problem, too, is in all the others his head’s turned or his eyes are closed.