Today, I need no champagne to feel bubbly. I am so fizzy and filled with giddy goodness that I don’t know what to do with myself. I am so tee hee hee and a hoo hoo hoo!
And as an added bonus to an already great day, I improved my photo retouching workflow by a factor of a million. Celebraaaaation. So now instead of spending two days or so (ugh!) to process a couple hundred photos, I’ve got it down to a couple of hours. I’d like to get it down to one hour at most, which would include the post-processing of selected raw files, optimizing them for the 1. blog (including watermark) 2. the client proofing section and 3. the portfolio site, all of which need to be re-cropped to different aspect ratios, and resized to different dimensions. This is what’s kind of making things clunky for me right now, having to re-crop and resize the same photo 3 different ways.
Today’s featured pet is Ms. Kitty, proud owner of Kathy and her husband.
One thing that I’ve found a little challenging when shooting cats is their natural inclination to do absolutely nothing. Veebs is the master at doing Nothing, especially when you want him doing Something. One of my favorite poses well-known to all cats is the “loaf” or “boat” pose, where they tuck all their limbs underneath their bodies, front legs and paws curled over the chest so they look like they’re sitting on their own flotation devices, tail wrapped closely around the side. Push them out into open water and they’re ready to set sail!
But however much I like it, there is really only so long one can continue taking photos of the loaf pose. All angles can quickly be covered when the cat’s not moving. Thus, the cat must be engaged, whether she likes it or not. Usually they don’t, but the cat must move. The cat. Must. Play.
Or not.
Pretty please? Pretty please with a mouse on top?
Yessss….yessss! You know what to do, Kitty, you know what to do!
Such a very very VERY BAD MOUSE!
So on any other day it might have been nap time, but today for a little while we were able to make it play time…
And the shoot ended with a pretty pose.
I had a ton of fun on this shoot; there were some bust-out laughing moments as we tried to get a sometimes apathetic Kitty to participate. So thank you Kitty!
There are so many different qualities that I read in these photos: focus, domination, playfulness, stealth. I’m not a pet owner, so, who knew! These are really quite revealing. Great work.
Andrea
Gorgeous kitty! Amazing photographs. My favorite is the black and white of her extended (4th from top) reaching for the mousie. Does she have thumbs?
Yes – two thumbs in fact, on her right paw. It looks like she’s wearing oven mitts.
Hahahaha …., this is damn kickass …. hahaha good one!
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