Thursday, January 8, 2009

Slatted Shadows


The final Monday of 2008 was one of those few days per year when the light in the living room was of any quality, and there were models at hand. Not exactly willing subjects, mind you, but I put the 50mm lens on the 5D to see what I could get.

The harsh light falling on his white fur caused a hotspot around Legs' snout in the top picture. The focus and metering point was on his left eye for the mid- to three-quarter tones. Had I metered for the highlight then everything from the quarter tones on down would have been mud, and the ears would have blended into the background. By sacrificing a small part of the image, I save the whole composition.


For this one I closed one row of the slatted blinds over the windows to add more shadow to the background, and adjusted another to let in more light. In the first picture I like the way the light was limning the ears; by increasing the contrast this way I hoped to be able to capture more detail in the highlights and a stronger outlining of the ears.

I also used a faster shutter speed on this one than the first: 1/200 at f2.5 instead of 1/100. ISO was 320 for both. I did a little work opening up the color in the iris of the second picture.


1 comment:

Sherry said...

I just like the shape of his head and his sweet expression. He's the grateful cat. And let's face it...it's so rare that a cat is grateful. The other three carry themselves with a higher sense of entitlement.