Hello Again. I wanted to share some of my recent photographs. As you may know from my previous posts, I am particulary interested in lighting at this point.

I want to thank everyone who has been so kind as to answer my posts - as a newbie, I hoped the board would be welcoming and I found it to be so. I should probably explain that as a teenager I studied photography in school. I learned to shoot on a Canon AE1, which was a film camera that was (IIRC) all manual. I learned to develop my own pictures in black and white and all that good stuff. I shot mostly equestrian photos during that time. I picked up more classes in college, and continued to shoot equestrian events.

I had a long dry spell after that, where my interest in photography was discouraged by others and I got "rusty" so to speak. I have always remembered some rules of composition and so on, but it is possible that I will get something wrong because as I said, I'm rusty.

I am retraining myself to take pictures and understand exactly what I'm doing and this board is part of that for me. Photography is more than a hobby to me, and I want to get as good at it as I can which, to me, means LEARN. So I'm here to do that.

Sorry if that's more than you ever wanted to know about me, but I wanted to explain where I'm coming from in case I ever sound stupid when I post here. I have been a photographer for a long time, but I am wanting to kick my skills up to a new level. Hence my questions about lighting, and camera bodies, and lenses and proof marks.

Now, some pictures! All were shot with a 28-105mm zoom lens at about 60mm.


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This is Betsy Ross. I love the expression on her face, and the blackness of the "hole" behind her. The round opening gives an intersting effect, I think, to her gracefulness. Maybe I'll start a projct involving cats inside circles.....



This is Lawyer.



This is Sparkle - another kitty in a round opening.




This pretty girl is Willow. I was going for more of a studio look with her.




Finally, this is Desiree. She is very, very shy, and her face was all I could get. However, I tried to use the composition to demonstrate her personality- her caution. I like how her black fur on her head blends into the blackness inside her box and her slightly downcast eyes.



Thanks, everybody!

Hi
I really like the first and last image the most. All of them are lovely cats.

I agree on the first and last. With a little toning down of the exposure the other one on the hole could be great too. That type of image could easily become your style.

Thanks. :-) Jim, which one could I tone down- the black adn white kitty in the hole? (Sparkle?)

I have to admit that the first one of Betsy is one of my favorites. She is a really sweet kitten; she let me hold her for about half an hour before we got that picture.

Yes, Sparkle. Just some recovery of the whites.

You could use the shadow highlight tool (which I hate) or select the whites, copy to a new layer, set it to multiply and adjust the opacity to taste. You could also burn it in a little manually.

Layer/multiply to fix the whites, or if you shot in RAW use the new adjustment brush in Adobe Camera Raw. Nice photos. With Sparkle, I would also suggest fixing the 'green eyes' that your flash created. Betsy Ross is my favorite.

Hey,

I also want to echo that about that first shot. You did a beautiful job with the light.

James

Beautiful shot on the first cat. You seem to be learning just fine. My shots get worse with the more I learn, which surprises me because I didn't think THAT was possible...lol

very good pix !!!! Thank you ! I had a lot of cats, when we were living in another house, there were the cats of the street, but I liked them very much so..by your pics I remembered them