I had a look through some of the stuff in here and I have to say there is some great pictures in here. I thought I'm gonna give it a try and share some of my pictures for constructive criticism



ISO: 1600
1/125s
f/4.5

What I like: The blue eye and the white gloves. To me this is a somewhat artsy image...cat in the dark.

What I do not like: Putting the pointed cat on a black background loses the pointed areas, the nose, and the ears. My eye also goes to the V shaped fur on camera right, I realize it is natural and due to the pose...but I just see a big V.

Very pretty cat.

You need a hair light to separate the cat from the background

The eye color is pretty, and I think having both eyes being shown would be better, or a tighter shot on in which you can see more emotion from the one eye that is visible, if that makes sense =S. To me animal portraits are all about what the eyes convey.

Also a technique used to make people stand out from dark backgrounds and look 3d on TV, have a source of light coming from behind the subject (more or less) and very high. This would help bring out the top portion of the cats head where the dark fur currently blends with the background.

Thanks guys.
The whole point of the shot is the one blue eye and the gloves coming out of the dark - it is a sacred birman after all and this is what they are famous for. I agree that a bounced off flash would probably help but a full on hair light would be too much - kind of wanted to get a sense of mistery here - a cat on stage, never revealing all her secrets, coming out of the dark but still being part of the dark, if that makes sense. I didn't want yet another portrait of a cat on the balck background.

Tyler, I don't know about TV but the hair light in people photography really depends on what you want to achieve. I've done a bit of modelling in my life and was only lit by proper hair light from above very few times. Depends on the artistic effect you wanna achieve and personally I'm not a big fan. I have some diffusers on the way and shall give that a try when they arrive.

Thanks again for all the comments coz they're really useful.

Hi Olga,

Would you be mind if I posted a version of your photo? I did a quick re-process on it. My comments are not far from others here. Essentially I think that this shot is just a bit under-exposed. As a result, you lose the tips of the ears, and ideally this would be great to keep in the photo. You are right about the eye...just beautiful.

James