Snap Up Some CATitude

Text and outline of a camera

Your cat is an unpredictable and frustrating creature. You never know when it might move, sleep or be in the mood for fun. So, patience is key when capturing the best cat fun! 

Kitty Looking Up Kitty Looking Down

Faint text on a coloured background

This week one great tip to help boost your success rate when you capture cat photos. Don’t look down at your cat!

It is often tempting to take a quick shot of your cat looking down at their cute face and raised paw but you can take a great cat shot without too much effort by looking upwards or at eye level.

Indoors Tips

As you can see in my photos sometimes I lie on the ground to get an eye level shot! It worked for this cute kitten from Feral Nation (FB). Try setting your DSLR/Mirrorless camera on the ground and risking a few shots. This can get you a cool surprise shot. You aren’t wasting film, just a cat photo you might just love!

Ground Level calico kitten looking at the camera

Not everyone can or even wants to kneel or sit on the ground or carper but here’s a great tip from our friends Dori, Jesse and Herman at Adorapurr.

  • Turn your smartphone upside down so you don’t have to bend or kneel too far.

This is a genius idea and so helpful if you are sat down and can’t get up, or stood up and the ground is too wet to kneel on (eeew).

Sleeping ginger cat in a cat bed

Alternatively, look ahead, get a shot of your cat at your eye level. This kitty shot of a snoozing ginger dude in a window bed is perfectly located for a close up to warm the heart. Wouldn’t we all love to nap so peacefully?

  • Beside you on a sofa or sat on a table gives you a chance to try cat photography without much effort!

Outdoor Tips

You have more opportunities to take fun and unique cat photos out in a garden or on a catio.

You can look upwards and get a real sense of space and drama, like this shot of Teddy, or my lucky black cat shot of Taz.

Looking up at a Tuxedo cat cat on a fence
Black cat sat on a fence

The contrast of black fur beside the bright green variegated foliage is rather special and something you might miss if you are staring at your cat on the ground. Don’t look down but try to lift your sights a little higher from time to time and view the bckground as part of your capture.

Black cat taken with a smartphone

Eye level outside can be a fence, a shelf, or a banister railing like this one that Taz is using to relax. Check the confident head tilt and the sharp eye. Not an expensive DLSR/Mirrorless but a simple smartphone shot.

Nest time you want to change things up a little bit, look at your cats another way. Take fun, silly and unlikely shots and they might surprise you. Sure they might not all work but even the professionals sometimes admit that most of their shots are not perfect.

Whiskers and Beans the Close-up Edition

Blue background and image of a camera on the right-hand side.

Tiny details can make a huge impact in photography so, if you want to elevate your cat photos, let’s explore the power of close-ups and macro modes. These techniques can add a whole new dimension to your cat captures of whiskers and beans.

Dash Kitten is an Amazon affiliate. We receive a small remuneration at no cost to you.

A new camera mode can be an eye opener for you and here, getting in close allows you to capture the intricate beauty of fur, paws, and noses. If you look beyond the standard cat portrait, the alternative view can look pretty spectacular.

Let’s start with the tools you will need for the job. You will need your camera, which can be a DSLR/Mirrorless or a Smartphone. Then you will need to either navigate to your macro mode on the camera, or use a macro lens.

Let’s look at what a ‘mode’ is, and what ‘macro’ really means.

What is a Camera Mode?

Modes are like pre-set recipes for your photos. A mode will tell the camera how to handle light, focus, and exposure. I believe that using the macro function on a DSLR/Mirrorless or smartphone camera is a great place to begin experimenting with cat close-ups.

Macro Symbol

There is a bit of snobbery around using modes. Some people insist you use manual but if you are a beginner this might not be a great idea so give modes like Av/A or Tv/T a try. Knowing your camera is a big part of building your confidence as a cat photographer.

Close-up of tabby cat eyes taken with a Canon DSLR
Dot Kitten Eye Closeup

What is Macro Exactly?

Macro photography is close-up photography of small subjects, including things like bugs and flowers. You can take macro pictures in a studio or outdoor environment so long as you are magnifying your subject sufficiently.

Photography Life

So, when you use your camera to take close-ups a whole new world of ideas opens up. Suddenly, the textures of strands of fur become crystal clear, toe beans reveal their unique textures, and your cat’s unique noseprint becomes the centre of attention.

You can start to take good close-ups either using your camera’s macro function (usually a stylised flower), or by using a more expensive DSLR/Mirrorless macro lens. (I aim to try and find one secondhand for my DSLR!) You can get a smartphone lens for your ‘phone at modest prices. Take a look at this Xenvo that works on iPhones and Androids.

  • BONUS TIP: I also use my Canon 22-250mm lens to zoom in from much further way and grab an excellent closeup shot. If you have a zoom lens this can give you the successful capture you want.

Closeup Slideshow

  • Tabby eyes closeup photograph
    Intense Eye Portrait

Taking Your Close-up Cat Portrait

Once you have decided on the mode or lens you want to explore, you can begin to practice.

Start with a small shift in your cat photographer’s mindset.

Look beyond the ‘whole cat‘ to a smaller element of the body such as a paw, toe bean, set of whiskers, or an eye closeup. To give you an idea of what I mean, look at the cicada in my slideshow. You will see that you can get much closer. Educate your eye to think ‘close and then closer still’.

Stand where you might take a photograph then move or zoom close. Check your results and try again. If you are using a zoom lens (like my 55-150 mm above) you have the option to stay further back but remember digital zoom can magnify camera shake so hold your camera firmly; brace against a stable surface or maybe try a simple one-legged monopod.

Close Ups Summary

Closeups bring you close to your cat and you can have so much fun exploring using the simplest camera settings on your smartphone, or Av/A on your DSLRMirrorless.

With a special macro lens there are a whole lot of tips for you to explore with your lens. If I get a macro lens I may cover it in a future post, in the meantime, if you use a proper maco lens, let me know and I can show off your shots.

Green Cicada in New Zealand

Cool Cat Rangi the Handsome Tabby

Faint Cat on a coloured background

Today’s selfie is one of the adoptable cats from Nko Ngeru Cat Cafe. I am very pleased with the portrait of Rangi I got the eyes clear and sharp (essential for any cat or pet portrait) and he looks so handsome.

Sunday Selfie graphic and a cartoon lady and her cat

The cafe has a collection of wonderful tabbies and black cats (as at July 2024) so it was cat photographers heaven to visit last week. The video gives you an idea of the wonderful relaxing space that greets you when you visit.

The cat cafe is the kind of place I would love everyone of you to visit and if you time your trip to take in the sensational Tapas Bar Soleil (FB link) downstairs you are so lucky. They do lunch Fri-Sun and evening meals.

I nearly tagged Rangi with his sister Aroha’s name (oops) but Neko Ngeru Cafe set me right. I think you will agree that this gorgeous boy with his cute bow tie takes a stunning and sharp portrait with a tiny blep.

Maori word: Aroha: (verb) (-ina,-tia) to love, feel concern for, feel compassion, empathise.

Tabby Toulouse Update

Someone is not happy with his crate rest but is healling well and has pain relief after his major operation. He appreciates all of your kind words of support (so do I, Thank you!)

Get Creative Editing A Cat Portrait

Banner with faint cats and word 'Testimonial'

Editing is where your cat photography can really come to life! It’s normal to feel a little unsure when you’re starting out, but fear not, there are some easy edits you can try to make your feline friend look pawsome. Don’t worry if you’re new to editing! Let’s explore some simple techniques that will make your cat the star of the show.

You can subtly enhance or go wild and get totally creative when you edit a cat photo, so let me introduce you to some super simple ideas that will make your next cat photos extra special.

Dash Kitten Photograph
Close Crop of Dash Kitten

Essential Cat Photo Edits

  • Cropping: Tighten the composition to focus attention on your cat. Basically, you edit out the background like the picture of Connor below. Experiment to see what works best. I have some good ideas here. Sometimes, all you need is to crop your image to centre attention on your cat. Connor (below) looks lost in the middle of the left photo but fills the cropped image nicely.
  • Exposure: Adjust brightness and contrast to make sure you have a successful image with the right balance of light and shade. Look for the brightness/exposure settings on your smartphone (often within your camera app) or experiment with Aperture or ISO on your mirrorless/DSLR.
  • White Balance: Correct any colour casts to achieve accurate colours. This might need remembering to adjust your WB on a DSLR camera to ‘Tungsten’ or a similar inside setting so your cat doesn’t look really orange or too blue.
  • Exposure Compensation: (EC) If your cat photo needs a nudge in the right direction, try adjusting EC on your DSLR/mirrorless camera.
  • Sharpening: Enhance detail, but be careful not to overdo it.
Connor Square Closup Photograph cropped of a handsome tabby
Connor Square Closup Photograph cropped of a handsome tabby
Crop Tool graphic illustration
The crop tool is two right angles with a line crossed through them.

Exposure Compensation (EC) is something that confuses a lot of new camera users,(including me when I first started). It may not be something you would use often but, if your environment lacks sunlight, or has times when it is too bright, you might enjoy experimenting.

Explore Exposure Compensation Post

Miranda Victrix. Tuxedo lounges on a wooden railing

Enhance Your Cat’s Features

Make your enhancements (also called increments) small and don’t rush. Yes you can undo but I have learned from experience and getting it wrong 😉 that a light touch from the start gives you successful results faster.

  • Eyes: Brighten your cat’s eyes to create a captivating look. People automatically look at a cat’s eyes first and you can use subtle touches of ‘dodge and burn‘ to make a difference if the eyes seem just a bit shady. This simple technique is fantastic and one I strongly recommend you explore. A very gentle touch can lighten an eye significantly and most apps and software have this function.
  • Fur: Use tools like clarity or texture to emphasise the richness and depth of the fur. This can really help sharpen a fuzzy texture. Again, you only need the lightest touch to make your cat’s fur look more convincing.
  • Colour: Adjust saturation and vibrance using your app or software to enhance your cat’s coat and eye colour. This is an area where you work in very small steps to make adjustments. Don’t hurry and don’t overdo it!
kitten resting it's head on a sneaker

Creative Editing Ideas

If you are happy with your cat photo but want to give it just a lttle extra ‘something’ why not try changing colour, or adding a framing effect.

  • Black and White: Convert your image to black and white (monochrome). This style focuses on texture, light and shape once the colour disappears. Your results may surprise and please you as this kitten image did for me. Originally a shot in bright colour, it looks effective and thoughtful in black and white.
  • Filters: A real asset for smartphone users. Each app will have different filters PhotoDirector, Snapseed and Pixlr and good places to start. See the triple portrait below.
  • Sepia Tone: Give your photo a vintage feel with a brownish ‘sepia’ tone.This is perfect if you like a gentler feel than black and white gives you. You will find this adjustment in your filter menus but, if you are not sure, check the photo software or app instructions.
  • Vignette: Darken the edges of the image to draw attention to the centre. Many software packages offer different ways to add this subtle framing device to your cat photo.
  • Magical Layers. I created a cat photo ‘overlay’ portrait pos with a short video and had so much fun, I know you will too if you try it. This take more effort but the results can be spectacular. Check the short video I created.

Cat Photo Overlay Post

Cat Photo Editing Software

You will have your own personal software favourites, especially if you use a smartphone, or regularly use a computer as a blogger or at work. Let me know any recommendations and I will be happy to add them to this post.

My favourite smartphone app is Snapseed (free) but I want to share this list of software recommendations is computer/tablet based. A good Online app is Pixlr.

  • Affinity Photo: A powerful and user-friendly option for beginners and professionals.
  • Adobe Photoshop Elements: Similar to Affinity Photo. Useful to amateurs and pros alike.
  • Free options: Consider GIMP which has a learning curve but is top quality.
Cat with starry background

A Final Feline Thought

Less is often more.

Subtle adjustments can make a big difference to editing a cat portrait. Experiment with different editing styles to find your own unique view of your cat. If you are not sure about your adjustment, walk away for a few minutes to clear your mind. This works for me when I am not sure if my adjustment has worked.

Toulouse Surgery Update

Faint Cat on a coloured background

Toulouse was rushed to the After Hours Vet on Monday night at 2.30 a.m. and then stayed at our local veterinary surgery for two nights to monitor his recovery before coming home for a night. Then things took a serious turn so you are getting a major Toulouse surgery update sooner than we expected.

As you can imagine this turned our world and our sleep patterns upside down but he is OK. Here’s what happened…

Sunday Selfie graphic and a cartoon lady and her cat

Toulouse Last Monday

He was not healing as he should.

The kind of blockage that caused our overnight vet visit usually follows a set path. Pain relief is administered and then a catheter is put in to allow the cat to pee. This then flushes out a lot of the crystals and debris that blocks up the cat. With the help of urinary food the cat’s issues often resolve. (Yes, it is longer and more complicated…)

Tabby with medicinal cone

After two nights at our local veterinary surgery with vets we absolutely trust, Toulouse was not getting any better and our vet Dr. Alice felt he might need more serious surgery or the painful problem would recur often and could easily put his life at risk.

Toulouse needed a perineal urethrostomy (see description below). This is major surgery but, thankfully, Lower Hutt has New Zealand’s finest feline veterinary surgeons who visits locally to operate.

Our local vets insisted Toulouse would be totally safe with Dr. Andrew, who has a lot of important qualifications, and who they value very highly indeed. So, we moved all our commitments around and turned the world upside down to make sure he could attend the Friday clinic at PetVet for an operation that would save him a lot of pain and future suffering.

Tabby with medicinal cone

A perineal urethrostomy (sometimes referred to as a PU) is a surgical procedure that is most commonly performed on male cats with a urinary obstruction. This procedure removes the narrowest part of the urethra (the tube that transports the urine from the bladder to the exterior of the body), allowing easier urination along with a lower risk of re-obstruction.

VCA Animal Hospital (explainer)

Toulouse was delivered (nil by mouth from 9 p.m. the previous evening) to Dr Andrew who spoke to us about what he would be doing and how we would need to monitor Tooly when he went home. Then we left the boy at PetVet for his perineal urethrostomy and an overnight stay for monitoring at the clinic.

Medication

After coming home Tooly is on Gabapentin (2x per day) and Meloxicam (x1 per day) with a Fentanyl patch (for stronger pain relief) that will be removed in four days time by our local vet.

‘This Cone Shall Not Pass’!

Cone of Shame Struggles

Saturday we were able to collect Toulouse from PetVet.

Apparently he caused much amusement to the vet nurses as he is a wriggler, and he charmed them all in spite of not liking his ‘cone of shame’! The nurses said he would need the hard plastic cone to avoid licking his incision so armed with this, we took him home.

  • The first thing he did was bolt straight out the cat flap and across the garden but, being woozy I managed to grab him and bring him back inside!

You can see from the photograph that the cone stayed on for a bit….. OK it stayed on for about three minutes then he wriggled out of it and we had to rethink the protection of his incision and the Fentanyl patch he might be able to lick.

Tabby with medicinal cone

We reverted to the more flexible circular collar (blue in the photos) and bandaged a trainer sock firmly on to his paw with the patch.

We had a packet of two of the socks (you know the kind that look too small to fit a human until you put them on and they stretch?) This stops him nibbling at the patch and keeps him away from the incision although we are keeping a close eye on his behaviour and later added a second sock to make absolutely sure.

Hungry Toulouse

When we got him home Toulouse ate and ate and ate. Two full sachets of urinary food with his Gabapentin! The medication makes him slightly spaced out and keeps him less agitated while he is on crate rest which is no bad thing.

  • The crate rest will be for three weeks; with two more weeks of house arrest.

Patient of the Day

The nurses awarded Toulouse a certificate for being their brave Patient of the Day after his serious surgery. We are very proud of this and I will get it framed for him.

I will report further as Toulouse gets better.

Certiciate for a cat from Vet Surgery

Savannah Pawtracks

This week saw the passing of our great friend and blogging colleague Savannah from Savannah’s Paw Tracks. She along with Seville and Dash had several adventures together that crossed three blogs over a period of time. They were fun and her loss is a truly sad one.

Depth of Field Cat Portraits

Camera outline on a brown background

My Thursday post last week on the blog introduced an element of photography that can cause a bit of confusion to new photographers – Depth of Field.

This is a technique that allows a cat photographer using a DSLR or mirrorless camera to soften the background.

The soft background can look really nice as you can see from these photos of some of my favourite feline models. (It also makes an untidy room look better!) For smartphones, check your ‘portrait’ mode for a similar effect.

This favourite image of handsome Taz shows him posed near a tree branch that is softer thanks to the camera settings. I am adding the f-stop under each photo so you can see the difference it makes.

Setting – f5

Definition of Depth of Field

Depth of field‘ is the distance between the closest and farthest objects in a photo that appears acceptably sharp.

Photography Life

Miranda’s photo made me realise how many of my cat photos have the kitty posed facing to the viewer’s right. I need to check my photo albums to see if this is something I do a lot, or if it is something the cats make me do!

Tuxedo cat looking to the right
Setting – f6.3

Take a look at this closeup of Toulouse.

You may have seen this photograph before because it is a favourite capture of our tabby boy. Again, the soft focus background softens a lot of visually ‘busy’ background that might have distracted you.

Toulouse the tabby Close Up
Setting – f3.5

Finally, a second photo of Taz. This is a smartphone image using iPhone ‘Portrait’ mode. This mode simulates the effect of the soft focus a DSLR/mirrorless camera lens creates. Black cats make excellent models and, with just a touch of light on an overcast day, his fur has definition and he looks rather cool.

black cat sat on a rug draped on a bannister
Smartphone Portrait

OK I am biased but I love a nice black cat to photograph!

All American Pet Photo Day 2024

Faint text on a coloured background

July 11th is the day all pet lovers grab their cameras and celebrate pet photography on All American Pet Photo Day. For Dash Kitten this means CATS.

I am celebrating with some links to useful cat photo posts, and cat photos. The tips work for other pets too, of course! Please take a moment to explore a post to boost your cat photo skills

All American Pet Photo Day is joyfully celebrated each year on July 11. It is a day solely dedicated to appreciating our lovable pets who make life better every single day. While our pets almost always enjoy the limelight, this day encourages us to make it even more special and make them the main focus all day. 

National Today
Black and white profile shot of a tuxedo cat

Posts to boost your photo skills

Venture into Black and White

If you want to try something easy that might surprise you, try working in Black and White. Here are a few helpful tips to inspire you. You can change your photos before or after to take them. Tody is a great time, celebrate Pet Photo Day with a successful shot!

Black cat in kitty loaf position looking at the camera

Absolute Beginners Start Here

A set of shorter posts to introduce subjects like ISO and Aperture that intimidate beginners. From here you can read further with more confidence and not feel completely lost as you explore photo sites online.

black cat sat on a rug draped on a bannister

Your Smartphone and Great Cat Photos

Yes, your smartphone takes great photos. They excel in taking photos when a mirrorless or DSLR camera might falter because of poor settings. Get to know the camera settings of your own smartphone and use them to make your cat photos even better.

Never be afraid to take a photo and All American Pet Photo Day is the day to try. Editing can bring out details you don’t realise are there and filters can transform the whole image. If you don’t believe me, check out my Snapseed review.

Ginger cat with overlay of a city window reflection
You cannot copy content of this page or use it to teach AI in any way © Marjorie Dawson © Dash Kitten
Verified by ExactMetrics