[StrodePhotos1125]

Just messing around with some settings on my camera and came up with these I know the lantern is dirty but i wanted to see what you thought anyway,
ThanxSteve .

P.S. are these pictures to big, do i need to resize them ?

[Wedding Shooter]

Steve - I like the colour balance and the general shot better in the second one. However, the cat appears a little too soft for my liking - perhaps the cat moved slightly during the exposure.

I think I also find the lantern a little too dominating in the image.

Cheers,

Chris

[StrodePhotos1125]

Thank you very much Chris, I think that my shutter speed was a little slow for the shot and I may have moved a little during the shot. Thank you for taking time to check it out and letting me know.

[wulinka]

hey Steve,

I agree with Chris on the softness in the second shot. Other than that I do like your composition and appreciate the light on the backdrop, but I would again agree with Chris that the cat should get more of the attention. If you picked an angle shooting from just slightly further left, you would move the cat more into the centre and the lantern would be a bit smaller in the right hand part of the picture.

Uli

[StrodePhotos1125]

hey Steve,

I agree with Chris on the softness in the second shot. Other than that I do like your composition and appreciate the light on the backdrop, but I would again agree with Chris that the cat should get more of the attention. If you picked an angle shooting from just slightly further left, you would move the cat more into the centre and the lantern would be a bit smaller in the right hand part of the picture.

Uli

Thank you for your time and input. I really do take everything that you all say and put it into my next picture. You and Chris are more than right I will have to setup this pic again and do that cause I think it will "make the take" lol thank you again,
Steve

[Zig]

I must disagree: number 2 is a very interesting shot with perfect viewpoint: the angle suggests cosiness and intimacy, yet the lantern itself is the object of the portrait, not the cat. Thing is, the viewer "expects" it to be a Kuddly Kat pic: in my view these are choc-boxy, tawdry and overdone by the masses. The "message" would suggest, there is more intimacy with the Light than with a pet cat.(Bear with me ) I even think, therefore, that the point of focus is thus fine just where it is...but I could be swayed if it were the cat's eye: by the way, I think you've chosen exactly the right aperture for the shot, as it supplies many variations in tone. Some catch-lights(er, "cat-lights? :/ ) would have been cool in the eye.
Size is OK-ish: I gather folks generally go no larger than about 660x440(?): I resize in PS to around this figure, then save as a level 8 or 9 jpeg; sharpening tends to add to the file size but I generally get around 150-180 kb this way, as max. is 250kb as a rule.
Welcome by the way!
(Isn't "decatur" a Latin verb?)

[StrodePhotos1125]

I must disagree: number 2 is a very interesting shot with perfect viewpoint: the angle suggests cosiness and intimacy, yet the lantern itself is the object of the portrait, not the cat. Thing is, the viewer "expects" it to be a Kuddly Kat pic: in my view these are choc-boxy, tawdry and overdone by the masses. The "message" would suggest, there is more intimacy with the Light than with a pet cat.(Bear with me ) I even think, therefore, that the point of focus is thus fine just where it is...but I could be swayed if it were the cat's eye: by the way, I think you've chosen exactly the right aperture for the shot, as it supplies many variations in tone. Some catch-lights(er, "cat-lights? :/ ) would have been cool in the eye.
Size is OK-ish: I gather folks generally go no larger than about 660x440(?): I resize in PS to around this figure, then save as a level 8 or 9 jpeg; sharpening tends to add to the file size but I generally get around 150-180 kb this way, as max. is 250kb as a rule.
Welcome by the way!
(Isn't "decatur" a Latin verb?)

WOW..... it amazes me that people can look at the same picture and have such different viewpoints about it, which both make so much sense to me. Thank you very much for the time and input. To be totally honest the picture was not about the cat at first, i was taking the picture of the lantern when my mothers cat jumped up on the table and layed down like it just wanted to be in the picture so i started taking shots and the ones with the cat came out the best. all of the input that i get (Good or Bad) lol really helps cause i am brand new to this and these are my first attempts at Pro or Semi-Pro pictures. Thank you again,
Steve

And yeah i think it is but i dont really know i just live here LOL

[Pavel]

Hello,

I really like your bottom photo. I think it has a touch of gentle humour and it is compositionally strong, although I would change the cropping slightly. There is only a sliver of a lamp cover on top. I would either loose the sliver or include more of it. I would also prefer more of the foreground. The two main things that I would try to improve in the future is the sharpness and the shadows. The shadows are very deep and the cat blends into a lamp, which I think is not conventionaly considered a good composition and which does not appeal to me in this case. This problem is easily fixable in software (fill shadows in Lightroom, for example). More difficult is to fix the lack of sharpness in the cat. Your camera seemed to have focused on the lamp and in front of it. My guess is that the photo was taken at high ISO, as monochromatic noise is visible and so you did not have much room to increase ISO in order to be able to reduce aperture and get a greater depth of field. A tripod would have allowed for longer shutter speeds and smaller apperture and thus greater depth of field. I like the soft tones of the out of focus courtain at the back.

The size of the photos is fine on my monitor.

Pavel

[Pippin Says]

For my two cents worth, I like the composition of the sencond picture. If I changed anything it would be the focus. I would like to see a spot focus on the cat's eye closest to the lamp. Then I would like to see a softness radiate out from that point and let the light fall as it might.