Asides

If you are a beginner cat photographer and looking for fun projects to improve your skills, you are in the right place. I have created a fun photography project collection that you can try. I began them a couple of years ago but they have been helpfully revised for you to enjoy in one place today.

These projects are designed to inspire you to explore new or different techniques while capturing your cat’s looks and peersonality. It doesn’t matter if you are using a professional DSLR or Mirrorless canera, or your favourite smartphone, I know that these projects will help you boost your photography confidence to create fantastic and artistic cat portraits.

You do not need to be a professional to succeed in taking great cat photographs with this photography project collection

The choice of project, and the time you take is up to you. Your cat will be the perfect model whichever project you start with. I am a cat photographer and you can be one too!

How to Create a Fun Cat Photo

A fun challenge for beginners using their cameras. How to create your own cat portrait and do it well. There are lots of easy photo suggestions and tips bundled together to make a fun challenge for you and your cat.

Nothing says ‘I am a Cat and Proud’ more than a cool portrait you took yourself. I help you find a good place to start, tell you how I took my own cat photographs (it might help) and how to try out taking an abstract cat photo. This works really well if you have an uncooperative meowdel you are trying to capture in a successful portrait.

Creative Fantasy Filters Photos With Cats

You will have some fun with your cats and your camera and you don’t need expensive new equipment to do it. Compacts and DSLRs are welcome in this camera projectm and I spotlight some great ideas for smartphones too. You may need to download your photos to a computer or tablet via a cable, card or wifi to work at a bigger scale, if you want to, but this is also a fun smartphone project with inspiring ideas.

• Filters in smartphone apps get better and better all the time, so explore some fun apps after you check out this post.

Create Stunning Bokeh

What is bokeh? It is the lovely softness or blur that you can create, or add with a filter, to allow your cat’s face and figure to stand out from the background. It is one of the favourite photography effects every DSLR user enjoys. The effect is different from ‘soft focus’ which gives the whole photo a hazy blur. Wikipedia describes bokeh as “the quality of the blur produced in out-of-focus parts of an image”.

The effect can be replicated by a compact or smartphone camera so it is within the grasp of every camera user. Enjoy the photo tips!

Create A Fun Free Collage

One of the favourites in the photography project collection! There are lots of versatile apps that can help you create a collage so I went with the free version on Canva which will allow you to make something the size of a greetings card or a poster with just one template. This is aimed at the absolute beginner with few ideas about what to do and where to start, so give it a try.

My theme was Christmas for this post but the free backgrounds and decorations give you lots of scope to be creative. I included a short how-to video too.

I hope you find a project you will try in this week’s post. If you have sany questions email me at thecrew AT dashkitten DOT com or comment below the post.

I think I just melted from the sheer adorableness of these Feral Nation kittens! Can you handle the second-picture bonus?

Kitten Photo Shoot

Full disclosure. I took literally hundreds of photographs and many of them are so blurry you can’t even see a kitten!

This would have dented my confidence but I did manage to capture enough images to edit into shape for showcasing the sweet kittens for their adoption appeals on Facebook and adoptathons! It is always an honour to help kittens find homes.

I present my absolute and most favourite shot of the day…….

If you want tips of photographing foster kittens check this post; fosters are epic photographers.

Taking the Best Kitten Photos

For this photo shoot (remember I am not the world best or most experienced cat and kitten photographer!) I used Aperture Priority (Nikon A) all of the time on my Canon, with Continuous Focus.

Because the kittens are so fast and I worked around people playing and cuddling the kittens I knew I would have a lot of cat photos that wouldn’t work out!

I tried to balance my success rate by switching between using camera raw (which gives more opportunities to adjust and sharpen later) and shooting in JPEG format – for kitten supersonic speed.

This worked because a couple of really good photos looked so dark but I was able to adjust them in Affinity Photo’s raw editor and they looked lovely, like this one.

I hope I have taken enough good photos to help with the adoption of the kittens. Will you join me in wishing these little kittens lots of luck?

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• How to Film Your Cat: The Do’s and Don’ts of Cat Video Production
• Create Your Best Cat Adoption Video
• Three Quick Tips To Capture the Perfect Cat Portrait

If you can’t get to the ground, bring it up to you with eye level cat portraits!

Today’s Portraits – On Bannisters!

Our back deck has a wooden railing that is a popular lounging and strolling spot and even senior Sienna makes the leap, as you can see. There is there is a platform that gives the cats a helping paw up, if they need it, but the cats are often happy to make the jump.

I discovered that resting my camera on the railing to take photographs will give a unique and fun perspective on cats. I always tell folks to ‘get low’ to help you get a great cat photo but how about if your bring the ‘low’ up to your level? This could be a railing, the edge of a stair or a wall of some kind.

• Look for a location your cat enjoys, a window ledge, a wall or halfway up the stairs.

Settings: I used my DSLR Aperture Priority (Nikon A) and an ISO of 200. This gave me an f-stop of f4.5. If your background is a bit darker you can try ISO 400. This will give you a bit more light or you can try to add or remove a bit of exposure compensation.

For a smartphone shot, it pays to know how to use your Burst mode. This will allow you to take lots of photos and delete the ones you don’t need once you find the shot you like best.

Exposure compensation in a bit more detail

I especially like this capture of Toulouse walking towards the camera. The original was shot in camera raw mode and I pushed the settings quite a bit so the effect is more textured.

Have you taken taken portraits at eye level. Do you think it is a fun way to show off your cats? Or do they prefer that you capture them when they snooze?

A Crossword Birthday

It’s Dash Kitten Dad’s birthday! Paul runs his own blog on the theme of cryptic crosswords. He is a renowned professional ‘crossword setter’ in his spare time and you will find his crosswords in the BBC Music Magazine (classical music with a little jazz) and British national newspapers under the pseudonym Phi.

Paul’s photo is one I took that features in his bio at The Guardian newspaper. Our tortie Sienna does her best to help him by sitting on his lap as he works!