Visit to the vet: "I do not like this place. Somebody is going to pay for this. Just letting you know." Comments? Room for improvement? Taken with a Nikon D5000, 18-55 mm lens with...

RMM Loc: Suburban New York

"I do not like this place. Somebody is going to pay for this. Just letting you know."

Comments? Room for improvement?

Taken with a Nikon D5000, 18-55 mm lens with available light, camera raw. Temperature corrected, cropped.

Nightski

RMM wrote:

"I do not like this place. Somebody is going to pay for this. Just letting you know."

Comments? Room for improvement?

Taken with a Nikon D5000, 18-55 mm lens with available light, camera raw. Temperature corrected, cropped.

The focus on the right side of the kitty's face including his eye is soft. The bright white background, and then the partial human in the background are distracting. The tag is cut off at the bottom.

djtravels Loc: Georgia boy now

One interesting thing. I can see what's on the opposite side of the room in a reflection in the cat's left eye. The eye on the right side of the picture. Never noticed something like this before. Maybe I should clean my glasses more often.

Nightski

djtravels wrote:

One interesting thing. I can see what's on the opposite side of the room in a reflection in the cat's left eye. The eye on the right side of the picture. Never noticed something like this before. Maybe I should clean my glasses more often.

and it may be that a snippet of this photo would make a pretty cool image. Would that be a minimalism type of shot if the photo was cropped to the cat's eye?

RMM Loc: Suburban New York

Nightski wrote:

The focus on the right side of the kitty's face including his eye is soft. The bright white background, and then the partial human in the background are distracting. The tag is cut off at the bottom.

Shot with available light with the lens wide open. Both eyes were not going to be in sharp focus. He wasn't exactly staying still. I consider myself lucky to have gotten the shot. Sorry, didn't have time to repaint the vet's office a nice, soft gray. :) The partial human is what's keeping the cat from jumping down and standing at the door meowing piteously. Or demandingly.

RMM Loc: Suburban New York

Nightski wrote:

and it may be that a snippet of this photo would make a pretty cool image. Would that be a minimalism type of shot if the photo was cropped to the cat's eye?

You might be right. That eye may show up elsewhere. Have you any experience trying to get good shots of a black cat? I think my success rate is somewhere below 3 percent.

Nightski

RMM wrote:

You might be right. That eye may show up elsewhere. Have you any experience trying to get good shots of a black cat? I think my success rate is somewhere below 3 percent.

No, just experience with white Westie's. I feel your pain. :|

lighthouse Loc: No Fixed Abode

Its a snapshot.
Snapshots are what they are, not much point trying to improve them.
Do you already have a better shot of your cat?
If you do, I would delete this.

MtnMan Loc: ID

RMM wrote:

"I do not like this place. Somebody is going to pay for this. Just letting you know."

Comments? Room for improvement?

Taken with a Nikon D5000, 18-55 mm lens with available light, camera raw. Temperature corrected, cropped.

The cat is done wonderfully. Getting the exposure right with black fur is difficult.

Something needs to be done with the shirt and face fragment. They are distracting.

For example...

RMM Loc: Suburban New York

MtnMan wrote:

The cat is done wonderfully. Getting the exposure right with black fur is difficult.

Something needs to be done with the shirt and face fragment. They are distracting.

Kind of hard to eliminate them, though not impossible. Maybe it's my monitor, the image seems too dark now, but the idea seems to work. Personally, I have an aversion to altering a background too much, except when I'm going all out for what I guess you'd call an "arty" effect.

RMM Loc: Suburban New York

Someone sent this to my wife. The cat is a ringer for ours.

http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=mWhD5bc6Fmg&vq=large

MtnMan Loc: ID

RMM wrote:

Kind of hard to eliminate them, though not impossible. Maybe it's my monitor, the image seems too dark now, but the idea seems to work. Personally, I have an aversion to altering a background too much, except when I'm going all out for what I guess you'd call an "arty" effect.

Instead of darkening you could blur it. You can get that effect also with a low f-stop. Since the cat is the subjectI don't mind having the background dark.

RMM Loc: Suburban New York

MtnMan wrote:

Instead of darkening you could blur it. You can get that effect also with a low f-stop. Since the cat is the subjectI don't mind having the background dark.

The f-stop was as low as I could get it with that lens (18-55mm). I have a Nikon f/1.8 50mm D, but it doesn't have autofocus with the D5000, and it's the equivalent of a 76mm lens. I knew he'd be moving a lot, so I wanted the autofocus so I could get a shot before he moved.

MtnMan Loc: ID

RMM wrote:

The f-stop was as low as I could get it with that lens (18-55mm). I have a Nikon f/1.8 50mm D, but it doesn't have autofocus with the D5000, and it's the equivalent of a 76mm lens. I knew he'd be moving a lot, so I wanted the autofocus so I could get a shot before he moved.

In lieu of that you can blur the background with post processing. I masked out the cat and kept the sharp/properly exposed one on top so then can go back and do anything to the underlying layer. I darkened it but instead could have applied a Gaussian blur...which gives a result similar to a shallow depth of field.

RMM Loc: Suburban New York

MtnMan wrote:

In lieu of that you can blur the background with post processing. I masked out the cat and kept the sharp/properly exposed one on top so then can go back and do anything to the underlying layer. I darkened it but instead could have applied a Gaussian blur...which gives a result similar to a shallow depth of field.

Or, for something entirely different check out:

http://www.uglyhedgehog.com/t-161135-78.html#2765445