Since march of this year I have two new fluffy friends. They were dumped in the local forest along with some of their brothers and sisters. Why would someone dump animals like they’re garbage?
A few weeks after they were found and taken good care of, they were fit enough to come and demolish my furniture :) Meet Mila and Luna:
Don’t worry. This isn’t going to be a post just about cats.
The past two months I’ve taken a lot of photos of those cute faces. But I was missing some good portraits, with some beter lighting. I’m not unhappy with the results below, but I wanted to try something different.
The setup
A few years ago I bought myself a portable studio setup. Since then I’ve added two Octaboxes from Westcott. I wanted to use my flashes and soft box to get some better photos of my furry friends.
I made the scratching post the center of my images and have the cats play and climb on it. The white wall was (almost) perfect, no need to unfold the backdrop (they are a pain to fold back).
I had the main light at roughly a 45 degree angle on the right, inside an octobox. Since cats are furry and will soften the light, I figured it would be ok to shoot without the soft box diffuser.
One other flash unit was set up to the left to act as a rim light. No modifier was added. The third flash unit was put behind the scratching post to fill the background. Also without a modifier.
After tweaking some settings the fun can begin.
The photos
What are you doing?
She’s a vampire
Noooooooo!
Claws. Almost a Steven Spielberg movie.
A serious scratch
Tired now..
I took over 230 images in about an hour and had a lot of fun. Visually the scratching pole worked very well, especially with the blue 'fur’. It put some color in the overall grey/brown shots. And having a center/action point is key. Trying to shoot running cats indoors is close to impossible with artificial light.
The flashes didn’t always keep up with my shooting speed, so I missed a few shots (about 3 or 4 times). But overall I was surprised how quick I could shoot the next shot. Especially for the price I paid.
All shots were taken with the Sony A7R2 and FE 70-200/4 at f4 or f/5.6.
If you have any questions, let me know. Thanks for reading and taking the time to look at my photos!