Warning: These Cats May Be Occasionally "Enhanced" with Photoshop Going Forward

.......yeap, I just completed a Photoshop course. My original purpose in taking the class was to learn how to create a B&W photo of XX and FF with only the eyes colored (see below). The excellent 10-week class with consummate Photoshop expert and author Lou Benjamin at ICP (International Center of Photography) was a bit overwhelming at first, but then exhilarating after I started to get the hang of it. With Photoshop, you can do anything, so the only limit is knowing what you want to do (usually the hardest part) and then figuring out how to do it. And in Photoshop there are many, many different ways to reach the same result, some easier and some more frustrating and time-consuming than others. It's kind of like learning a foreign language as an adult - you can make progress, but you never really master it and it can be a life-long journey. Anyways, here are two examples, and you will see many many more here at AMACA2C in the future.

I'm especially interested in some of the manipulations that give photographs a "painterly" look. As a start, here is a "blend" of a photo of FuFu that has appeared here at AMACA2C before and a cool texture that I found here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rubyblossom/5024994007

What Do These Cats Do All Day?

So last weekend I had a rare lazy Saturday hanging out at home reading by a sunny window, but I didn't get as much reading done as I wanted because XX and FF were busy cavorting, wrestling, fighting, frolicing, you name it, they were doing it. Do they do this every day while I am at work? I can only imagine...........

The three panels would make for a progression of a steamy and tumultuous love affair - if they weren't brothers!
I also think FuFu needs to work on his combat technique - you can see in the lower left panel he keeps his haunches firmly planted on the floor, while XingXing rises up to get a height advantage.....

Flash Illuminates the Cat - Vol 3

Finally for the last installment in our flash series we have two photos where flash was (not terribly obviously) used to fill-in the natural ambient light coming from the windows.
The title of this is "The King on His Throne":


And then we have The Foreign Minister FuFu hanging out on a lower tier of the throne complex:

Flash Illuminates the Cat - Vol. 2

This post is getting out a couple of days late - I had a witty, informative post all laid out Sunday night but I don't think the new Internet Explorer version 9 that I downloaded likes Blogger (a Google - Microsoft grudge?) so when I went to post it, it was completely blank! I quickly deleted the blank post and went to bed - my apologies to my legions of email subscribers if you received an email notifying you of a post that didn't exist. And if you are not an email, RSS, etc. subscriber - go ahead and sign up on the right! Anyway, back to the latest developments in feline photography in the greater NYC area........
........continuing on with the flash theme, I have this series of photos. Let me share a little secret - if you want some clues about the lighting set-up a photographer used, look to the reflections ("catchlight") in the eyes. As you can clearly see in this first one, there are huge white squares in Fufu's eyes, which tells you that he is just a couple of feet away from a softbox (with flash inside). I also bounced a flash off the ceiling as a second source of light to shine where the softbox wouldn't.

Doesn't this next photo look like a campaign photograph for Fufu? That's right, Fufu for president! I guess he'll have to run as a Republican since Obama has the Democratic nomination wrapped up. Look at the grim determination and resolve in his expression, this is a cat that is willing to lead the nation to solve its most intractable problems.....including fighting the feline obesity epidemic with better labeling for cat food that clearly shows the carbohydrate content.......

Finally here is XingXing, I hope he learns to tolerate the flash but as you can see here he was looking to escape after I turned his favorite (illegal) scratching chair into a makeshift studio.