New member of the family!

I havent posted anything in a while so here is a picture of my new friend Oliver. Ill take any cc If you want to help check out my flickr and give me some cc on those too Thanks in advance!

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Cute kitten with blue eyes. Kittens are always hard to get a good shot because they don't sit still for very long so I think that yo did a good job of capturing it in a cute pose with good lighting. The only gig that I would have for the image is the background could be improved to something less distracting. However, since I have also attempted to photograph kittens recently, I know that is a tall order and easier to say than do.

Personally I'd crop this one down to a vertical portrait. I don't think all the back ground on the left side of the image adds anything at all. With that cute little face, you could even go in real tight and just do a square crop around his face and I think it would work.

Other than that, it looks like he has a little bit of "eye gunk" there by his left eye (right side on the image) and there's a little extra "moisture" around his nose...makes it look like he has a cold or something...I'd clean that stuff up a bit in pp.

Here's a couple of general suggestions for shooting kittens...

#1. Patience! And then more patience!!! As I'm sure you've discovered already, kittens of this age have only two positions on their power switches...stop and go. What I usually do if follow them around while they're playing and usually after an hour or two, they'll start to "sputter out" and (usually) you have a short window of a couple of minutes where they'll slow down a bit before they crash out completely. That's usually the best time to catch them.

#2. Toys, toys, toys! Kittens and puppies are even worse than most human children when it comes to their attention span...have something on hand and ready to distract them for a moment...but make sure you also have the camera focused and ready to fire when you do!

#3. -LOTS- of light so that you can keep a fast shutter speed...you're going to need it! Get the little one playing near a large, north facing window and maybe even use some flash too so you can keep your shutter speed as fast as possible.

#4. Shoot -LOTS OF PICTURES-. While this is usually true of digital photography in general, it's especially true of kittens...the more you shoot, the better your chances of getting good keepers.

Last but not least...have fun. I was shooting a litter of 8 kittens for a human society last fall and it took me about 3 hours (or two full nap cycles depending on how you look at it! LOL). At least 3 different times I actually had to put the camera down because I was laughing so hard that I had tears in my eyes!

Good luck and I can't wait to see more!
Peace,
Jim

Walczak Photo wrote in post #5498161
... kittens of this age have only two positions on their power switches...stop and go.

Having just recently raised a litter of kittens I can vouch for all of your recommendations.

HOWEVER, I think that the positions on their power switch might be "GO" and "GO EVEN FASTER".

Walczak thanks so much for the advice and everyone else. He did have a cold lol. Poor thing.