Day 63: Pets of any sort are a challenge for the photographer, but cats are especially difficult. They don't like to be posed. They don't like to have the camera's eye staring at them. They don't hold still. And they especially don't like to be draped in fabric. Fortunately, I have two Very Good Kitties who know that their mama isn't going to do anything mean to them, all evidence to the contrary. Tip (left) was hard to convince. If I'd given any real thought to it, I would have trimmed his toenails after the photo session, but because I hadn't really been planning the shoot, I'd done it only seconds before. It took me five minutes to convince him that the fabric wasn't some new cat-torture device, and when I was finally satisfied with his comfort level, I backed away for a zoomed-in shot. Skunk (right) presented an entirely different problem. I'd waked her up from a sound sleep. While I arranged the cloth around her, she burrowed her head down in the folds and resumed her nap. Getting her to look up wasn't easy. She's deaf, so noise-making had no effect at all. I had to toss something just lightly enough to bump the chair but not so hard that it upset her, and once I'd got her to raise her eyes, I waved a second piece of fabric to keep her attention as I triggered the shutter with my free hand. Tip's portrait was taken at 0.4 sec shutter speed, Skunk's at 1/6 sec. That's a long time to hold still when you're a cat!
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