Taking Pictures of Your Pet
Having trouble taking a great picture of your cat? Have you wasted a lot of energy with nothing to show for it but blurred shots and scratched arms? Having seen from behind the eyes of cats, their perspective is much different than ours. So here is one of the tricks I use to get a fantastic picture.
If you have access to a great tree with a Y trunk, or branches that are smaller but capable of holding your feline friend, set them up there. Let them up in the tree, so that they are looking down at you for a change.
Watch if your cat is afraid to move, like most cats are, or start taking off up the trunk. If they start climbing upward, grab them before they get too high to reach. (I know from my childhood kitten boot camp, that cats ALWAYS GO UP a tree, not down). However, the ones that are scared stay put, many bored cats with stay in place, not wanting to burn the energy to move.
While your cat gets accustomed to the perch, snap some shots from beneath them, or at least at kitty eye level. Have a cat toy or a treat in hand, so that instead of focusing on climbing further up the tree, they are focusing on you. and wondering what you are going to add to this fun new game next. I have achieved focused, intense interesting photos of my cats this way. Just don’t leave them up there unattended. If you do, a ladder may soon be in your future!
If you want to skip the drama by the possibility of onward tree climbing, you can use a fence to pose your cat on. I have a block fence that my cats run up and down on, and have gotten some incredible pictures of them there. The plus to this is that they are at eye level, so you aren’t looking down on them.
In your life with your cats, keep your digital camera within grabbing reach. Cats and kittens are spontaneous creatures, so often they get “a wild hair “ and start running around very unself-consciously. The best feline photo I have is of my cat Betty running up and down a chair:. She is taking a breathe with her butt in the air and a sparkle in her eye, completely vertical in the chair.
Digital cameras have given animal lovers a great gift. We can take multiple shots while only creating the ones that are fantastic. If your cat is suddenly missing from the frame because he moves faster than you do, you just delete it and try again. With the digital, it is not as important to have perfect lighting and framing on the shot, because you can put the picture in a photo-editing program like Photoshop. I would recommend Elements, it does the basics and doesn’t cost as much as other programs. Use it to get the picture centered, lighted and colored to your specifications.
You can print the photo on actual photo paper, but also try colored paper or using the photo as a header for stationary. There are many on-line free scrap booking and editing sites, Flicker, Smilebox, and PhotoFunia all deal with different aspects of photo sharing and photo editing.
Today there is no excuse to not have a photo of your best friend in your wallet, or on your cell phone (88% of pet owners have photos of their pets in their wallets, much more common than a photo of their spouse).
Pictures of our furry children are treasured and precious. They document your life together, remind you of a special mood or event, and give us solace when we have to be away from them.
Plus, just like kids and grandkids, no one’s cat or dog is as special as your own!! Go on to Funtopia and make a picture of your pet on the cover of a magazine! Brag a bit! No one will know you have the only cat that sleeps upside down and falls out of chairs unless you document the event!
In conclusion: if you have a tripod, use it (they now make a tripod for the iphone believe it or not), natural light is best and photoshop hard and heavy. Make sure your pet is having fun, and have treats at the ready.
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Enjoy, Ann
