Happy Birthday to..........AMACA2Cs! Raiding the Kitten Archives to Celebrate

One year and 63 posts later, still going strong! Today is the "paper" anniversary of AMACA2Cs, which started a year ago with this post To commemorate this occasion, I have decided to raid the kitten archives to show this quartet of sleeping kitten photos. Who doesn't love a photo (or 4) of sleeping kittens? By the time this blog was started, XX and FF were already 1+ years old and no longer kittens, so there exists a veritable "treasure trove" of unposted kitten photos to trickle out in the future - consider this an appetizer. As I browsed through the kitten archives this evening it gave me an opportunity to reflect on how I have grown as a photographer in tandem with the growth of these kitties. It is not an exaggeration to say that my cats were almost singlehandedly responsible for rekindling a long dormant interest in photography (which first burned strong in the 90s with my first dear, and decidedly non-digital Canon Rebel). The kittens arrived, photos were taken, I wasn't 100% satisfied and wanted to improve, gear was bought, classes were taken at the International Center of Photography, more gear was bought, an increasingly large number of non-cat photos were taken, and the journey on a virtuous cycle of photography and feline appreciation has continued apace......thanks for joining on the ride!

Merry Christmas from AMACA2C!

Alas, it was time for their Christmas photos, and with their powerful feline intuition the cats knew it. This was an especially troubling prospect for FuFu, who was all but certain that he would be forced to wear the same Santa cat hat & beard as last year (here is the link). XingXing was much less agitated, as he confidently knew that there was no way a human would be able to put a cat hat on him and not live to regret it. FuFu, on the other hand, was hiding from me behind a branch. But I must tell you, it is quite hard to find a place to hide behind a "Charlie Brown" Christmas tree!

So I pulled him out to have a chat with him.

Abandoning his plan to simply hide and hope for the best, FuFu decided to instead rely on his quick wit and fast talking to avoid the hat. "Please, he said, don't make me wear the hat. If I don't have to, I will stand REALLY tall in front of the tree and make a beautiful portrait for you". True to his word, that is what he did, and since I was pleased with this photo, I didn't have to resort to the gimmicky cat hat. Ahhh, a happy Christmas for all involved! Merry Christmas to all of our faithful feline & human fans!

Christmas Tree Shadow Falls on FuFu

FuFu was perched in just the right place to catch the sunlight shining through our "Charlie Brown" X-mas tree for this pic. Yes, our Christmas tree is that tiny! This next pic looks like it might have had a complicated light setup (flash, reflectors, etc.), but was taken in the same light just before or after the shadow pic.

Baby Beware! A Cat is Stalking You!

Although XingXing most of the time has more of a "macho hunter" persona, when it comes to encountering strangers and strange phenomena (such as human infants), he is quite a scaredy cat! FuFu, on the other hand, is more curious (or doesn't know any better?). So when our friends A&A visited us (J&J) this past weekend and brought their infant "a", FuFu was the one brave enough to get close enough to snap a photo. Although in these pics FuFu looks like a menacing stalking cat, I think he was quite scared himself!

Sunlight Illuminates the Content Feline

At its essence, photography is simply about light and composition. Yes, the power of digital processing is *amazing*, and you can (and I do) spend a lot of money on cameras, lenses, etc., but if you don't have interesting light and composition, gear and digitally wizardry can only compensate so much. Not only is light important to photographers, but it is also important to cats! Especially when the weather turns chilly, I can often predict where the cats are at any time of day by following the sunlight. This often leads to the happy confluence of contented, warm cat & interesting light, especially in the winter when the light is more oblique.

Cats Frolic Among the Skyscrapers of Manhattan

The other day, as I was walking to the subway on my way to work, I looked up and was startled to see this amazing scene, and not toting my DSLR at 7:30am, I was able to capture it with my new iPhone 4s:

Of course, I had to dodge the Occupy Wall Street protestors, many of whom looked as sleep deprived as I:

And then in the middle of the day at work, I looked out the window and was astounded to see all this feline activity atop the Time Warner Center, especially since cats are famously nocturnal and usually don't scale skyscrapers in broad daylight:

Finally, as I was admiring a nice sunset I noticed that a few cats were still at it:

****************************************************************************************** Huh? Well, I did take all of these photos with my new (and first, historically being a Palm loyalist) iPhone, which, I must say, I am enjoying quite a bit. As you may have guessed by now, they have been enhanced. Not with Photoshop, but a fun app called "Cat Effects". What a perfect app to highlight here at AMACA2C, since it is both a cat and photography app, and, well, this is a cat photography blog. This app lets you add a number of pre-loaded cats to any of your photos on your iPhone, and there you go! Of course, this can lead to all sorts of situations where you can place cats on your friends and family members. For example, here I have placed a slew of kittens on Ben (face blurred to protect this innocent), and yes, this is the same Ben who took the "rabbity FuFoto" several posts back.

Definitely stay tuned for more discussions and displays of iPhoneography here at AMACA2C..........