The Eyes Have It: 2010
Posted: March 4, 2012 Filed under: black cats, cat photographs, cats, daily photo, giuseppe, mewsette, photographs | Tags: black cats, cat photographs, feline photographs, photographs, photography 1 CommentMewsette and Giueseppe open their eyes briefly to be photographed, otherwise don’t move a whisker, then go back to sleep.
Just as it was on this day in 2010, this is (one of) today’s feature photo on Today, my daily photo blog. But you won’t have to go there to see what I wrote about them on that day! This was a while before I began posting daily photos of my cats in August 2010 (seems like longer than that for some reason, not out of photos yet), and I often posted more there than here on The Creative Cat.
So here is what I had to say:
Eyes are striking no matter the species, and cats’ eyes especially because they are usually very bright colors. In a black cat’s fur, they look like gems and are often quite large in proportion to their facial features. Here they look like crescent moons in a deep night sky.
Mewsette and Giuseppe are brother and sister, two siblings of a litter of four I fostered and who still live with me. It’s a long story, but in the end they became such excellent art subjects for photography, sketches, painting and block prints. Even as adults, they are still close and tend to hang out in pairs or threes, and they sleep in a heap like kittens do, though they average 12 pounds each (that was two-and-a-half years ago).
While they look identical at first glance, I have always been able to see the differences in their features. Part of the fun of working with their images is to show those differences, and their eyes are one feature unique among each of them in color, shape and angle.
The light in this photo is somewhat cool coming from a north window with a lot of reflection from snow, so their eye colors are a little muted, but Mewsette, on the left, has very light, bright green eyes, the greenest of the litter, with very little yellow. Giueseppe’s, on the other hand, are a warm yellow amber, just enough orange so the yellow doesn’t appear lemon. Mewsette’s eyes are round like all her other features—face, head, paws, rounded ears, blunt nose. Giuseppe has wide oval eyes that are pointed at the corners, and he also has an elongated face with a prominent nose, large ears and a long body, as everything seems to be stretched.
I photograph them all the time and often use their images in my own designs as well as selling their images as stock photography. This litter is only the most recent in my household—I have about 30 years of cat photos and have the last ten years of my digitals on my website. You can see them in action in almost every entry on my blog The Creative Cat, and on my Marketplace blog you can see them in my Animal Sympathy Cards. I have eight galleries of them in the photo section on my website.
Black cats can be difficult to photograph, especially if you don’t like to use a flash, as I do not; it tends to reflect off of black fur a little harshly, creating a photo that has too much contrast, highlights flashed out and missing detail, shadows saturated with black, and very little in between. A good bit of bright ambient light from more than one direction helps to capture the details without flashing highlights. My camera is a digital SLR, but I still use many of the same lenses and photo techniques I used with my film SLR in opening up the F-stop as far as I could while reducing shutter speed to avoid motion blur and ensure a sharp clarity of all those details I had worked to preserve.
So there you have it, one of the entries that led me to consider posting daily photos of my cats along with daily photos of other subjects, which I had begun in June 2009. I was concerned I wouldn’t be able to find a good photo of my cats every day, or that people would get bored with them. I’m glad I gave it a try.
______________________________
To see more daily photos go to “Daily Images” in the menu and choose “All Photos” or any other category.
All images used on this site are copyrighted to Bernadette E. Kazmarski unless otherwise noted and may not be used without my written permission. Please ask if you are interested in purchasing one as a print, or to use in a print or internet publication.
Pretty Pleeeeze…? From A Year Ago
Posted: January 17, 2012 Filed under: bathroom, black cats, cat photographs, cats, daily photo, jelly bean, mr. sunshine, my household of felines | Tags: cat photographs, pet photography, photographs, two black cats, two cats in sink 6 Comments
Mr. Sunshine turns on the charm
Mr. Sunshine will try every charming approach to get what he wants, and right now he wants a drink of water from the bathroom faucet. Who could resist? He has the most classically beautiful face of all four of his siblings, the nice wedge shape from his chin to his ears, exotic slanted yellow eyes and long, long straight whiskers and he’s the most curvy, and he knows if he catches me just right I’ll have a hard time turning away.
Jelly Bean is in the background, taking a break from his charming routine while Mr. Sunshine works. After all, you can’t go wrong if you just sit in the sink and keep your nose right under the faucet.
I do turn the faucet on for them every day, though I make sure they also drink from the water bowls around the house. Still, a stainless fountain may be in their future.
Pretty Pleeeeze…?
Posted: January 17, 2011 Filed under: bathroom, black cats, cat photographs, cats, jelly bean, mr. sunshine, my household of felines | Tags: cat photographs, pet photography, photographs, two black cats, two cats in sink 4 Comments
Mr. Sunshine turns on the charm
Mr. Sunshine will try every charming approach to get what he wants, and right now he wants a drink of water from the bathroom faucet. Who could resist? He has the most classically beautiful face of all four of his siblings, the nice wedge shape from his chin to his ears, exotic slanted yellow eyes and long, long straight whiskers and he’s the most curvy, and he knows if he catches me just right I’ll have a hard time turning away.
Jelly Bean is in the background, taking a break from his charming routine while Mr. Sunshine works. After all, you can’t go wrong if you just sit in the sink and keep your nose right under the faucet.
I do turn the faucet on for them every day, though I make sure they also drink from the water bowls around the house. Still, a stainless fountain may be in their future.
Welcome Home
Posted: December 15, 2010 Filed under: black cats, cat photographs, cats, mewsette, my household of felines, photographs | Tags: black cat at window, black cat with candelabra, cat photographs, pet photography, photographs 4 Comments
Welcome Home
“I’ve been waiting up for you.”
Mewsette patiently waits in the front window for my return. She really knows how to use light to her best advantage as in these photos from near Halloween!
Since I’ve lived with cats I’ve always had at least one waiting cat, a silhouette I could see even as I came down the street toward my house. Now that I work at home I’m not gone nearly as much, but I still have at least one feline silhouette in the window whenever I return, often Mewsette, but also Cookie or Jelly Bean; prior to October, it was often Peaches. Sometimes when I’ve been gone all day at a festival or something, I have nearly all of them. Their silhouettes and faces are always a welcome sight.
The Eyes Have It
Posted: March 4, 2010 Filed under: black cats, cat photographs, cats, my household of felines, photographs | Tags: black cats, cat photographs, feline photographs, giuseppe, mewsette, photographs, photography 4 Comments
The Eyes Have It
Mewsette and Giueseppe open their eyes briefly to be photographed, otherwise don’t move a whisker.
This is today’s feature photo on Today, my daily photo blog. Click over there to see a larger version and read the text I wrote about these two, about this particular family of cats and about photographing black cats in particular.
I have photographed my cats for years, actually carrying a camera around the house with me to be sure I catch the moment. I often use their images in my own designs as well as selling their images as stock photography. I have about 30 years of cat photos and have the last ten years of my digitals on my website. You can see them in action in almost every entry on my blog The Creative Cat, and on my Marketplace blog you can see them in my Animal Sympathy Cards. I have eight galleries of them in the photo section on my website.
…but they found a good place to sleep…
Posted: December 6, 2009 Filed under: black cats, cat photographs, mimi's children | Tags: black cats, cat photographs, feline photographs, mimi's children, photographs Leave a comment
A 3-D Five-Cat Puzzle
…so we’re not moving. All FIVE of the family, including mom this time, took a nap while I was trying to figure out the new blog system and lost interest in moving. They just can’t understand why mom spend so much time staring at the computer and saying bad words—just when they’ve completely cuddled and dropped back to sleep, she makes some loud remark that wakes everyone up and they all have to mill around and settle down again. It takes time to fit five cats together like that! Stay tuned.
WordPress added a widget to make signing up to receive postings so much more easily than the old sign-up procedure. Stop by and say hello!
Mewsette Has Been Pestering Me…
Posted: March 28, 2009 Filed under: bathroom, bathtub, black cats, feline artwork, mewsette, mewsette's 10 best uses for the bathtub, photographs | Tags: bathtub, black cats, cats in bathroom, cats in bathtub, mewsette, mewsette's 10 best uses for the bathtub, photographs 1 Comment
No More Pictures!
“Stop taking pictures of me and type my messages!” she insists. I admit, I’ve been distracted by their antics in the new bathroom and otherwise, plus there’s plain old everyday life…
Yes, yes, Mewsette, and I have plenty of other messages to send out, too! Actually, I have been taking photos of them to post and to use for my own selfish artistic purposes—see my post about “new photo galleries”, just below this one, that features two new collections.
Because she has no thumbs, she says, she cannot type her own messages and is at the mercy of my whims to disseminate her information to other felines about her tips about using the tub. In the next few days, Mewsette and I will post #2 in her best uses for the tub.
Also, I’ve been tweaking my website for easier browsing, kind of like tinkering with an old car to keep it running smoothly…soon enough it will be completely indexed and databased, but really, I’d rather blog. I’ll be posting frequently enough in the next few days to catch up with a variety of things I’d like to make sure you are aware of—Top Ten Cat Cities, the plight of pets in this economy, a crochet project, various news articles, and I’d like to introduce you to a group of friends who’ve written about cats for years and the books they’ve written.
Until then, enjoy the photos!
New Photo Galleries
Posted: March 28, 2009 Filed under: bathroom, bathtub, black cats, giuseppe, heart cats, mewsette, mimi's children, mr. sunshine, photographs, the stinkbug | Tags: bathtub, black cats, cat photographs, cats in bathroom, cats in bathtub, feline photographs, Jelly Bean, mewsette, mimi's children, mr. sunshine, photographs Leave a comment
God, I'm Cute.
Welcome to “In the Bathroom” and “The Stinkbug: A Feline Drama in Eleven Acts“, just two of the fun activities we share in this exciting household!
The photos of Mimi’s Children (and Mimi) in the bathroom were so popular that I’ve posted a gallery of the black cats and their antics in the new mint-and-white bathroom—hanging out in the tub, wrestling on the floor, rolled up in the rug, sitting in the sink waiting for the faucet to drip (the new one doesn’t drip any more, to their great disappointment…).
In an effort to have all the photos be consistent in color and lighting and style, I’ve been washing and using the same towels and bath rug for the past month, and have delayed finishing the bathroom decorating so that other items wouldn’t be distracting in the background. I’ll be glad to put up my new towels and put away all my stuff! It’s always worth it to capture that moment, though, and the opportunity to find images of two or three or four or even five cats as a matched set all engaged in the same activity is really a beautiful thing that needs to be shared. Visit “In the Bathroom“.
“The Stinkbug: A Drama in Eleven Acts” was just a lucky moment catching the fab four in a group effort, along with a clear wash of winter sunlight on the landing at the top of the stairs. Stinkbugs are harmless vegetarian plant plant pests that emit a foul smell when threatened or injured, and end up in my house when I take plants in for the winter; confused, they move around sluggishly looking for their natural habitat which does often include predators…it took all four of Mimi’s Children all thinking together to figure out what to do about the bug, which emitted its smell and played dead, and eventually they left it alone. Visit “The Stinkbug“.

Observing the Stinkbug
I hope you enjoy the photos! I’ll also be publishing greeting cards featuring some of these images, and any of them is available as a print in various sizes.