Pictures of my cat

[imrumpf]

I just recently got a brand new camera for my birthday, the Canon Digital Rebel XTi. Since I am no pro at photography, I searched on Google for places to learn about tips and tricks with different shooting styles and techniques. of course, I came across DPS. I recently started to play around with my new toy, and I thought now would be a good time to join the community and show off what I have done, and to also get opinions from people on my progress as well as what I can improve on. I have two pictures i'd like to share and get a critique on if possible. Here are 2 pictures I took as well as all the stats that were used to take the picture:



Camera Model: Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL XTi
Lens: Canon Zoom Lens EF-S 18-55mm 1:3.5-5.6 II
Camera mode: Sports/Action mode
Exposure time: 1/50 sec.
Focal length: 18mm
F-stop: f/3.5
ISO: 400
White Balance: Auto
Metering mode: Pattern
Flash: none

Yeah yeah, I know my cat isn't the best looking thing in the world, but I love her and got her from the Humane Society, so that's all that matters.

I actually liked the 2nd picture so much, I cropped it to fit my 1280x800 laptop and then photoshop'd it. I made the picture B&W except for the eye, which i kept in colour. It's not very noticable, but I liked the subtle colour to it, so there wasn't such a huge glaring contrast. Here is the edited picture:



So there you have it, 3 pictures of my cat from my new camera. Personally, I am very proud of the one that I had put into Photoshop, but now I would like your critiques and thoughts on it. Thanks in advanced!

[Saralonde]

Thanks for posting the exif info.
I think changing it to b&w was a good idea. The color in the original did not really add anything important to the shot. I might crop it down a little more. The wall and floor aren't adding anything important either.
Not a bad cat shot. They can be hard to photograph. My cat was notoriously uncooperative.

[imrumpf]

With the black and white picture, I did it that way for a few reasons:

• The Black and white made it simple (which is great for a background because if it's too busy it will be hard to do your work)
• I really liked having the extra space on the side so a) I could put my icons there and b) it helped focus solely on the cat, which I find has a very curious look to her face.

If I could come up with 2 words for this picture i would have to say "relaxing" as well as "curiousity".

Thank you Saralonde for your coments on the picture. I have to agree 100% with you that the colour picture didn't do much for me, which is why I happen to like the B&W picture better (it also helps give me that more...serene...feel).

The B&W picture above was cropped to fit my widescreen laptop. I also made another version to fit a normal computer screen. This one has less cropping on the top (more body) and more cropping on the sides (less wall and floor) to make the size more square, thus fitting a normal screen just perfectly. Here is the square picture i made:



In all of my pictures, I tried to keep to the rule of 3rds that is always mentioned, which is why my cat is off to the side more and a little bit of background, which I find also helps give a bit of depth to the whole image. If you click on the link and view the picture full screen, you can see that the camera set a shallow FOD, which I find also helped give a feeling that the cat was reaching out to the camera (which is precisely what it was doing!)

Thank you for the comment though, it helped me see what I did right, and also what could be worked on to make that perfect picture.

[jiminyClickit]

imrumpf, Welcome

As a lover of cats in and out of photos, it is only from a photographic stance that I would say what bothers me about this: it reminds me of a trophy head mounted on a wall. After seeing maybe 50-60 feline photos on DPS, it's usually a head/body combination that most says "cat." The crop above is good.

[Saralonde]

Didn't stop to think of room for icons ! I like that last one with the left side a little more cropped and the shallow dof was a good choice.