A lazy day

[Dominum]

Hi fellow ClubSNAP forumers. This is my first time so excuse me for any noobness. Also my first week or so with my new camera EOS 1000d with the Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM lens.

This picture was taken in my house at 3pm thereabouts.

What i hoped this picture would achieve is a feeling of being in a dream with the cat's semi closed eyes as the focus point. I think that the blurring of the background and the slight overexposure would bring across this feeling. Also i focused on the eyes of the cat as many photographers say that's the important thing in animal photography. Also no post processing was done at all as i have no money to get photoshop =X

My questions:
1) Does the picture have a lopsided view? eg. feels heavy on the left or right
2) Is the overexposure in this case good or bad? (Personally i feel that the correct exposure wouldn't have brought out the dreamy effect)
3) Should i have opened up the aperture wider to increase the blurring effect? This was taken with f/2.2

 

[noob117]

great that you got down to the same level as the cat!

i guess if u open the aperature up to 1.4 it will have a nice soft effect which will add to the dreamy effect ur talking about.

cheers!

 

[silvr]

Works for me... love the tones and colour temperature. Did you tweak it? it's very un-Canon.

Also, I think the dof is just nice. 1.4 might be a bit too much IMO.

 

[raptor84]

You did the right thing by going down all the way to the floor but i feel that the cats face is a little too centralized. What I would have personally done is to align the cats eyes more to the right and used the lines on the floor boards as leading lines to the eyes to further draw in the attention. I would have waited for a few more mins for the cat to start closing its eyes more too DOF wise i think its fine.

Exposure wise it doesn't seem overexposed yet. As the scene is backlit you should either use a fill light to balance out the background or in this case, spot meter for the cat's face to keep the ambient light. YOu can push it avout 0.5 to 1 stop more I think..


You can always use the free software included with your DLSR called DPP which can do enough of the basics (cropping, colours, curves,sharpening) so you dont really need PS for everything.

Keep practicing and shooting!

 

[ortega]

one more thing to add

when creating your composition, be aware of your background
remove any distracting things (eg. the white thing on the right)

a reflector would kick a little bit of light back onto the cat's face

 

[night86mare]

exposure is fine for me, though the picture is lacking in contrast.

why have you made the ear so tight at the top, that is the main problem with the picture here for me, it jumps out immediately