Kitty Photo Shoot

[vschow]

It's been about a year since I purchased my very first DSLR and I can't believe I am saying this, but I would appreciate feedback on these photos. I am very much a beginner, so I expect a lot of things I will need work on. My kitties are my only real available subjects, so all my photos are of my cats. I'm still trying to figure out this post processing stuff with Photoshop. It's slow going...




I used photoshop and just messed around until I liked what I saw.....




Did the same with this photo

Well, dare I ask???? What do you think? Thank you for your time!!!

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I would also appreciate it if you would ask for permission to edit my photos! Thanks so much!!!

[gahspidy]

Welcome to the forum, vschow. Lovely cat. I have now three and one is a kitten of about 1 1/2 months old and I'm finding him to be a cool subject too.
I like your tight framing and overall compositions. they are strong and effective. The problem here is the lack of sharpness. Your focus looks to be on the eyes, which is good but I see your shutter speed was 1/3 for the top image. 1/3 is much too slow to handhold a shot. A tripod could help but is not practical when shooting cats as they are always moving from one position to another and we usually follow them around. Also, any movement from the cat would render a soft blurry image at that shutter speed and a tripod. Your iso was 1600 and lens was wide open (not a very fast lens)
You could do one or all of a few things here. You need to shoot the cats when there is more light hitting them, perhaps from a window during the day, etc. This will speed up your shutter time and get some better sharpness.A faster lens could help alot as well. You can get a 50 mm 1.8 for not alot of money and have a good low light lens. Shooting this at 1.8 or even 2.5 would have sped up the shutter significantly. Third, you may want to invest in a decent flash, such as the SB 600, or even better yet the SB 800 and bounce flash off the walls when there is not enough natural light for that great moment.
Looking forward to more photos

[Grandpaw]

Gary pretty much covered it all. I would like to suggest going to the LEARN tab near the top of the page and click on "How tos" and then the next to last subject "How to make a good JPEG image" this will help you when posting your pictures, Jeff

[vschow]

AWESOME!!! Thank you soooooooooo much for the feedback!! I really appreciate all your help! I know I have a ton of learning to do, so I do appreciate all your help!! Thanks again!!!

[Frog]

We are all learners and if you stay around and keep posting pics and reading threads, you'll learn. I know I have.