Prim.

Prim., a photo by meagan.porter on Flickr.

My camera has been holed up in my purple padded case, waiting for spring. Any other season I'm toting my camera around constantly, snap happy, wanting to linger for extra minutes and hours outside. This time of year I'm a hermit, snug on the couch in my Snuggie with my brandy watching marathons of House reruns. It is difficult to find any kind of motivation these days with less light, sprinting from home to car and from car to work. And yet perusing the Flickr accounts of my friends and peers, I get a little bit jealous. Well, a lot jealous. Everyone else likes to take more winter walks than I would ever care for and they're the ones winding up with the amazing shots of hoarfrost and frozen lakes and things covered in snow.

Inside the house, attempts to learn lighting have been discouraging. Caught up in making wedding invitations and putting the finishing touches on our upcoming nuptials has left me little time for anything else, and I know that's no excuse. Days turn into weeks turn into months and my poor camera waits anxiously in my bag, hoping for more than just photos of check passings and ribbon cuttings. I hate blogs that apologize and make empty promises, disappear for months and then come back with excuses. I won't do that. I've been lazy. I'll do better and not for anyone else but for me and what I enjoy. That's all.

Fiona, always the prim and proper cat, perches above on a shelf in our house. Cats are so random but purposeful, an amalgam of joints and limbs and reactions with a little OCD thrown in the mix. Their routines are fascinating. I always wonder what's going through their tiny cat cerebral cortexes, so packed with neurons, making them sixth smartest animal on earth, twice as smart as dogs. And all that intelligence sometimes focuses on the most minute detail, like lining up all of one's toes on the edge of a shelf just so, arranging a tail just right. What else is life for if not positioning one's self just perfectly for a long nap? Maybe they've got it all figured out.

And Now for Something Completely Different

 

A video I made of Oscar playing with the Turbo Scratcher.

More photos soon.

Looking Down

Fiona looks down from the top of her cat scratcher. Inspired by another picture I took of Tabby, Em's cat.

I didn't start off knowing what I was doing taking pet pictures, and I still don't. But I've learned a few things shooting various cats - my own, Emily's, the MadCats. Lesson one - cats (and pets in general) always look better in natural light, hands down. No flash, no worries about weird looking fur or glowing eyes.

Lesson two - always take photos at eye level. Well, almost always. This pose of Fiona's was too good to resist. It's like the classic cat pose - infinitely curious about humans yet always looking down on them.

My cats are not afraid of my camera anymore, nor the shutter noise it makes when snap snapping away. But I always forget that they are conditioned to that sound until I take pictures of other cats.  Dottie got used to it the other day, though it made her nervous at first. And sometimes they don't like a big lens shoved in their faces.

With every "photo shoot" I do, I learn more and more. Techniques, what works, what doesn't, and how to make my subjects more comfortable. But I hope I'm getting better.  :)

My Brood Shares Breakfast

From left, Cleo, Oscar, and Fiona having a meal together.

It's a rare moment when I can catch all three of my cats in a photo together. Cleo and Oscar are like two partners in crime, but they often brawl with the much more timid Fiona. It's nice, though, when they share breakfast together.

Oscar usually starts licking my face as soon as the alarm goes off, like, "hey Mom, it's time to get up!" I try to make a point of not rolling out of bed and feeding them immediately, otherwise I'd be getting woken up earlier and earlier every day. Fiona and Cleo are smart enough to jump up onto the counter right away (a habit from when Fiona lived with a species-confused bunny), but Oscar is convinced he can't jump that far and cries until I pick him up and put him on the counter for food.

It's a delicate dance every morning, this breakfast routine, but we get it done.  :)