The goal of this three-part series is to capture the journey of a pet. The start of this journey begins with someone caring enough to bring this cat off the streets and into care (Photo 1), then shows love being the reason this kitty now has a family (Photo 2), and then the family giving this animal stability (Photo 3). Overall challenges of this photo-shoot were working with both a live animal and a child. The child was an amazing model and very cooperative, but the cat was not thrilled to be in a strange environment, and this called for a lot of preparation on the images (placement of props, lighting, etc.) and short bursts of time spent with the models.
Shot 1: Compassion gave me a new future where I found love
Hardware: Nikon D500
Final Settings: ISO: 200, 34mm, f/10, 1/200 sec.
In the first photo we are exploring the lives of outdoor cats in the United States. This photo shows that someone cared enough about this outdoor kitty to get them to a vet and ultimately find them a family. In this series we chose to show the kitty getting adopted, but the reality is you don’t need to be able to touch an animal and keep it as a pet in order to show compassion, as in Trap Neuter and Release Practices. The biggest challenge in this image was working with the cat and finding the best angle to capture my subject while in a confined space.
Shot 2: Love gave me family
Hardware: Nikon D500
Final Settings: ISO 200, 34mm, f/10, 1/200 seconds.
This image is reminiscent of the bond between adopter and adopted, the day the pet is adopted the family is growing by one. The child and cat pictured share such a bond, both growing up together. To achieve this final shot, multiple iterations of prop placement and lighting occurred. An instant challenge was properly lighting my subject while having the purple glow of the background be visible. The purple effect was created using a strobe head with purple gels taped to it. In my initial composition the sofa was head on facing the camera. I then chose to adjust the angle of the sofa to better capture the expressions of the boy and the cat. To light my subjects faces, I used an overhead soft box and a white reflector below the subjects.
Behind the Scenes
Shot 3: Family gave me forever
Hardware: Nikon D500
Final Settings: ISO: 200, 30mm, f/10, 1/200 sec.
This photo is praising the stability given to a pet when they are considered one of the family, the love that finds a way to keep the family together through the big life events like moving. For the final image, the subject and his cat were elevated off the ground and placed on a wooden plank between two heavy duty stands. This was needed in order to capture the lighting effect of the purple in the background. The other challenges with lighting in this image came from unwanted shadows on the right of the image. This was remedied using a reflector clamped to the table.
Behind the Scenes
