Point of view -- Lookout below!

As I mentioned in my resolutions post, January is Point of View month. This week's photo shoot once again involves my cats. This is in part because I was too lazy to go out into the cold and look for something to shoot, and in part because I had and idea for what I thought was an original point of view to photograph a cat from. Namely, I was going to shoot them from below my glass tabletop, to catch them from a new angle and to show off their paw pads (which, when clean, are quite adorable).

It turned out my idea wasn't nearly as original as I thought. One day this week, while I was still formulating the idea for this shoot in my head, I saw that a co-worker's calendar (a daily calendar that has a different cat photo each day) displayed just such an image. Still, that didn't dissuade me -- after all, if I were to only take photos of things no one else had ever thought of, there'd be precious little to shoot! So today I got to work on this, set up my table, rallied the cats, and started shooting.

The process itself turned out to be quite a bit more difficult than I thought, for a few reasons:

1. my table isn't very big and has a metal stand in the middle, so my usable shooting area was quite small
2. glass is annoyingly hard to light without reflections (the word "duh" comes to mind)
3. my cats will not sit still, especially on a relatively small part of the table, without a very good reason. And when by some rare chance they do sit still, they literally sit. And their rear ends against glass do not make good photo subjects. I have photographic evidence of this.
4. glass is also hard to keep perfectly clean for very long when you have two cats leaving paw prints all over it.

After a frustrating hour or so, here are the two best results -- one per cat.

Lady was the more willing subject, being both calmer and more cooperative. It also helps that she actually responds to her name and would stare right into my lens whenever I called her. I just love her big olive-green eyes!


CB, on the other hand,was very hard to work with, since he's more likely to recite the alphabet than either sit still when asked or recognize his name. Even getting him in focus was hard work. Still, those cute pink paw pads make it worth it. (And yes, I know it looks like he's missing an ear, but rest assured, he was only bending it back for some reason.)


Now if you'll excuse me, I must go play with my cats.