Just a quick post, inspired by Bean’s post on February third about the I ♥ Faces contest themed, “the Eyes Have It.”   It is also a lesson about Seeing when you are looking through a viewfinder. And making spare copies of prints you like.

I had a particular photograph in mind to enter into that contest.  It was one I took when my sister’s silver-tipped Persian was alive. He had just been bathed, and being a small kitty under all that fur, was peering over the rim of the tub with such a look of hurt and utter betrayal;  I took his picture from bathtub-rim height and it turned out quite well.  I didn’t find out that the only print was no longer here until after the contest’s closing date. (Lesson: make extra copies to file, ya never know). I’ll need a negative scanner, a real one, soon.

While looking for that picture I brought out more slides to scan, (please forgive the dreadful resolution in these scans, it’s as good as I can get out of this scanner)  as I’m trying to digitize my photo files, and came across a series of Dare, sitting in his carrier.  He loved his carrier, an ordinary particle board, wood and hardware cloth cat carrier, to go outside and remain in, lying  on its side with the door open on a small hill overlooking the humans in the vegetable garden, supervising double-digging, hexagonal layout interplanting and so forth.  Anyway, he was in the carrier in the front hall, at night, with the carrier door swung wide open and I thought it would make a good close-up; Dare looking out through the wires.

I turned off the room light, got down on the floor, put a flash well off the camera to my right and took great pains trying to see well enough, without any modeling light, to judge if his eyes and facial fur were sharp…really concentrating on the subject.  The first shot was taken with the door mostly closed

and was rather dark, even for the “abandoned kitty in a cage” look.  I liked the possibilities and decided to use a little more film on the idea.

To reflect a little bit more light into the carrier, I opened the door widely enough to position it to bounce flash in to Dare. With the room light still off, in the dark but for ambient light from way around a corner in another room, I got back down below the rim of the carrier and carefully strained my vision, to focus on eyes and fur again (with the lens closed down to get good depth of field it was VERY dark in the viewfinder), and took the shot.

At this point I’d like to emphasize something for all the photographers out there who fall in love with the subject in the viewfinder: always…always, always check everywhere in your viewfinder when you compose a scene,  especially if you’re in darkness.  I know it’s a beginner’s concept but it bears repeating, or, in my case, tattooing inside my eyelids. I know I’m not the only one with unicorns made of a subject plus a stick, a sign, or a lamppost unnoticed in the background.  I, for example, had never paid much attention to anything but the function of the cat carrier and in the dark, thought nothing of bouncing light off the inside of the door, which I’d never really examined…it’s just particle board, after all.

Well, with this bounced-flash shot, I discovered the manufacturer’s mark for the first time. Sigh.

Check those viewfinders!  *Grin*

Is it possible that this is the first post of the Out-take blog? *laughing*

What have you found in your viewfinder, lately?

Cheers,

pete