2013 Project 52, Week 44: Cats' closeups

Week 44: October 29 - November 4

There weren't a ton of plans for photos this week (well, I'd planned to go shoot photos at the NYC Marathon, but I never made it out of the house to pursue it; and just as well, it seems, since security was ramped up to crazy high levels).

I was fooling around with my equipment Sunday morning, specifically with my telephoto lens and my monopod. Sharon pointed out that the light coming from the window of the Cave was some of the nicest and brightest we could recall seeing in our year-and-five-months of living here; and Millie was glued to the window, watching for falling leaves and (I imagined) praying one of those leaves might turn into something she could eat.

105mm (DX) : ISO 800 : f/5.6 : 1/40s
Millie

Sharon distracted Millie to look in my direction while I fired off a number of shots. Funny, I had actually been thinking about practicing some portrait photography; while this wasn't exactly what I'd had in mind, it'll do. Of the many shots I took of Millie that morning, I think this one, with her weird and blank and dumb expression happens to be the best of the head-on shots I got with her eyes, not her nose, in sharp focus (And let me be clear: "weird" and "blank" and "dumb" are totally appropriate descriptors). This second one maybe looks a little more like her?

Looking out the window

[commence photography mumbo jumbo] This short shoot highlighted the struggle with shooting photos of pets, particularly those who move as frenetically as Millie tends to move. The light coming into the window, while lovely, wasn't enough to allow me to turn down my ISO, and it still required a fairly slow shutter speed; many otherwise usable shots were wasted due to motion blurring. I still had to stop down from the maximum f/2.8 aperture in the hopes of getting a good bit of her eyes in focus; perhaps in the future I could trade a faster shutter speed for a wider aperture and much thinner depth of field? [end photography mumbo jumbo]

Those concerns about shutter speed are less of an issue with Fuzz. (I'm kind of cheating with these photos of Fuzz; these were taken last December. But they're my favorite photos of her.) For these photos, I set my camera up on the tripod and took longer shutter captures of Fuzz. I worry less about motion blur with Fuzz, because, well... she doesn't do anything fast. You can't have motion blur if there's no motion in the first place...

Look at those big yellow eyes...

I have about a million photos of Fuzz that look something similar to this on my computer. As long as our dumb cats keep lounging around the house, I'll keep snapping away at them. (I love our cats. They can be dumb as bricks sometimes, but so help me: I do love them.)

Pet portraiture probably isn't in my future as a genre I'd seriously explore. But if you're interested in seeing more, our friend Stephanie (who actually shot our wedding) does pet photography, and she does it really well.

Upside down, because.

2013 Project 52 entries:

Wk 1 | Wk 2 | Wk 3 | Wk 4 | Wk 5 | Wk 6 | Wk 7 | 

Wk 8 | Wk 9 |  Wks 10-13 | Wk 14 | Wk 15 | Wk 16 | 

Wk 17 | Wk 18 | Wk 19 | Wk 20 | Wk 21 | Wk 22 | 

Wk 23 | Wk 24 | Wks 25-27 | Wk 28 | Wk 29 | Wk 30 | 

Wk 31 | Wk 32 | Wk 33 | Wk 34 | Wk 35 | Wks 36-37 | 

Wk 38 | Wks 39-40 | Wk 41 | Wk 42 | Wk 43 |