What, no birds?
A few weeks ago in another diarists creation I sort of hinted that I had tons of flower and cat photographs, and I might be stupid enough to do a diary on them. Well with about 8000 photographs scattered through two computers and several disjointed external hard drives, I knew that doing a seriously complicated diary on the subject would take hours and hours.
So I cheated. I went for one photo session taken in the past, with a subtle little hint of the future.
This isn't a very serious diary, there are only two distinctly interesting subjects, and it is mostly one style of photography. But it is my style.
The first set was taken about two years ago, of my cat Connie sitting on our (okay, her) sofa. We got her in the spring of 2005, about 4 months after our dear stubborn (his name was "Stubby", on account of his kink tail, but stubborn fitted him well) Siamese passed away, and we wanted to give his brother ("Pointy, on account of his not having a kinked tail) company. So after about 10 trips to 5 shelters, we found Connie. She's a very gentle Persian-DSH blend, known as a "dilute" or pastel tortoise-shell. We picked her out of a room with about 30 cats in it, because she was the most calm, gentle, good-natured and had a very mild disposition with other cats. We wanted a "cat" cat, one who would get along with almost any other cat. Now for her history: She had given birth to a set of kittens, and was found on the street. Most likely her owners didn't want to take care of her, they never spayed her or treated her with any real love, and they dumped her.
That was in late 1995. She spent nearly 10 years at the shelter.
I soon found out that she was a pretty good subject for photography. That mild-manner and calm disposition made her a natural. But it really worked when I started experimenting with some camera effects.
All of these photographs are unedited. These are original shots, taken by my Canon 20D camera, with a Sigma 28-135mm F2.8 lens. This large fast lens, with nice zoom spread and close focusing point helped dramatically with the technique displayed here. First, a few shots.
I'm sure as hell I didn't invent this- actually the "lens" invented it for me one day as I was taking a long exposure shot of water, while I was on a bridge. The heavy lens changed zoom length on me (to get this right, you need a lens with the same focus point as you zoom in and out) and I decided there was something here. These shots are taken at about 3 seconds, with F32 or thereabouts. Very long exposure for a cat! But as I'd said, very patient cat.
By varying the exposure time, the "slide" and by having specific holds at certain focal lengths I could "compose" these shots, making them seem like ghost images. Some shorter timed exposures with rapid changes had a different effect, somewhat like a tunnel.
And some have slight changes of perspective which give a deeper image of the distant shot (smaller focal length) while giving wispy trails and odd intersections of lines from the pillow.
This is a particularly odd shot, with her sitting on an angle.
Now for another subject- the aforementioned Siamese Pointy, in a wider shot, with a bit more background.
Now Connie's dark color gives a different texture to the work, makes it all soft and blurry and chocolaty. But Pointy's vast contrast, his bright white fur causes overexposure on the long focus point, making him almost seem to glow from within. This is a real spectral photograph, his "aura" is showing.
And finally we come to the most recent shot. Last week I treated myself to a Lensbaby 3G lens. It is a variable focal plane lens, with bellows and three long set screws which permit some extremely odd effects. With most lenses, the "sweet spot" is dead center. Everything flows from the center outward- you can aim at a peripheral point to get a different focus point with a standard lens, but with this you can set the "center" of focus literally anywhere. This gives you insanely deep blurring, and by using different angles you can shoot the same scene 1000 times with the same light, the same distance and subject and never the same shot twice. It is almost like a tilt-shift lens, but with less pure control and about 1/6th the cost. Check out the nose- the nose is almost in perfect focus, but the rest of the cat is totally blurred.
Edit: I forgot to mention, that for all of the long exposure shots, I used a tripod. You really need a good one, and a shutter cable helps as well. Anything that keeps you from moving the camera except for the zoom lens is essential.
Update: Found the solarization shot (on the laptop), here it is.