Photo of 'conjoined cats' wins prize but is it photoshopped?

This is a photograph taken in Japan by Kenichi Morinaga of one white cat and one ginger tabby cat who appear to be "conjoined". They are sitting on a fence. The photograph won first prize in the 2022 Comedy Pet Photo Awards.

'Conjoined cat' won a photo prize but is it photo-edited? Photo: Kenichi Morinaga.

My immediate reaction when I saw it was to ask if the photograph has been created with photo-editing because it very much looks like it. I just don't think that you can get this appearance by two cats being in close contact with their heads facing away from the camera. Anatomically it is impossible to achieve this, I would say. But it beat the judges! Perhaps they accept photo-edited images?

The news media say that the "cats are pressing their necks together to give the appearance of being conjoined". It just doesn't look right to me. And I know how to photo-edit photographs and it would not be that difficult to photo edit this image as follows.

How he did it using photo-editing

One of these cats was sitting on the fence and the photographer acquired another cat from the Internet that was in a configuration ideal to place it on the fence when the background was removed. The photographer then removed the heads of the cats and placed the two cats together. He made sure that the connecting point was roughed up a little bit so that it looks more natural.

How he'll spend the money

The prize was £2,000 plus a £5,000 donation to an animal charity of his choice.

Morinaga said that he likes to spend time travelling around Japan's islands to photograph street cats.

The photographer has a fascination for the antics of cats. He said: "When I returned to Japan, I continued to seek them out, they really cheer me up, especially after the last two years of the pandemic. They are so funny, even when they are doing something serious."

He is going to use the prize money to fund more photo trips around Japan. He said: "I would like to continue photographing many cats and bring many more smiles to people's faces. Through funny photos I hope that the world will one day become a kinder one, where cats, dogs and other animals are not abandoned or mistreated."

Photo of a Sphynx cat doing Pilates (plus a bit about the breed)

You can always bank on a Sphynx cat to look interesting in a photograph. This is one such example. It's obviously set up but done well. It caught my eye. The eye is immediately drawn to the webbing between the toes. The hairlessness of the sphynx cat shows us what is typical of all domestic cats, namely the webbing between the toes. This simply must be an adaptation for swimming. Domestic cats are pretty good swimmers which goes against the views of a lot of people that "cats don't like water". They don't mind water. Their wild cat ancestor does a lot of hunting near watercourses. These are good areas for prey animals.

Photo of a Sphynx cat doing Pilates. Photo in the public domain.

This Sphynx cat looks nice and clean. You probably know by now that Sphynx cats have a problem with becoming grimy because the sebaceous glands in their skin which would normally deliver oil to the individual hair strands, instead deliver it to the skin where it attracts dirt. That is why they say that you have to clean a Sphynx cat with a damp cloth regularly. I've also heard that they can smell a bit because of this.

RELATED: Extraordinary face of a male hairless cat.

And of course, you can't let them wander around outside so they are always going to be full-time indoor cats. Perhaps a catio would be ideal but you would have to make sure that you don't let blazing hot Californian sun shine directly into it if your Sphynx cat likes to spend time on a shelf in the catio.

Sphynx cats are known to be monkey-like. They are good climbers and intelligent and mischievous. Of all the breeds, they are in the top echelon of intelligence it is said. Although you have to take cat breed intelligence comparisons with a pinch of salt. It is impractical, if we are honest, to compare the intelligence of the cat breeds. It's impossible to compare the intelligence of an adult domestic cat with that of a four-year-old child as well. People try to do it but I disagree with the idea.

RELATED: Cat Intelligence.

Sphynx cats are a bit like Marmite. You either love them or loathe them. They are certainly eye-catching. They are the most photogenic of all cats other than the supra-large Maine Coons.

This cat is not entirely hairless. For a start, they are covered with a very short down that is almost imperceptible to the eye and can hardly be felt. There may be a small amount of hair on the tip of the tail and the extremities i.e. the points may have a soft short dense hair. Sometimes you see them with crinkly broken whiskers.

You will probably see somewhere out there in the world a hairless cat that is not a Sphynx cat and neither is the cat a purebred cat. They are still out there but of course extremely rare. They have been around for thousands of years and the spontaneous genetic mutation which causes the hairlessness sometimes pops up. You will see hairlessness in dogs, rats mice and other animals.

RELATED: Do Sphynx cats smell?

There are various stories about the beginnings of the Sphynx cat breed. Gloria Stephens thinks that her research has produced the best example. She says that in 1974 in Wadena, Minnesota, USA, a female cat called Jezebelle gave birth a hairless kitten called Epidermis. She was female. The following year Jezebelle gave birth to Dermis another hairless female. They were sent to Kim Mueske of the Z. Stardust cattery in Tigard, Oregon.

The classic Sphynx origin story is that in 1966 in Toronto Canada a domestic cat by the name of Elizabeth produced a hairless kitten named Prune. And in 1978, 3 hairless kittens were rescued from the streets of Toronto. These three kittens may be the foundation for the Canadian sphynx. There are other stories. I think I will stop as it is confusing. Hairless cats have popped up in Paris, France and other parts of the world. Some said they were the offspring of Siamese cats. Others said that they were stray cats.

There is one thing that is certain which is that the first Sphynx cats that became the foundation cat of this breed were non-purebred cats, simply random-bread cats from which they were selectively bred to produce this popular and interesting breed.

Cold Sphynx cat looking like an old man in a doorway

This is a picture of a cold Sphynx cat bent over in a slightly strange position with an interesting expression and an overall appearance which reminds me of an old man with a bent back walking down a street or standing in a doorway on a cold winter night. Perhaps my imagination is running riot and perhaps I am anthropomorphising this cat too much. We nearly always anthropomorphise our cats. But look at the expression on his face. At the base of the page I explain why I think he has taken up this position.

Sphynx cat huddles over warm air vent to keep warm inside the home. Photo: Reddit.

It's a peculiar position and his owner says that he always does this when he's cold. And when I read that information I questioned what she was doing. Why did she allow him to get cold and then photograph him and upload the photograph to the Internet?

Would it not have been better if she had kept him warm? The trouble with that suggestion is that if she had kept him warm he wouldn't have looked like this. And she wouldn't have been able to take an interesting photograph of her cat. In turn, that would have prevented her uploading an interesting cat photograph to the Internet. You can see what I'm getting at. A problem for Sphynx cats is that they are very photogenic. You can get a lot of very good photographs of these hairless cats.

She let him get cold so she could get a good picture for social media consumption. Personally, I don't like it. I think social media is undermining cat welfare. And I'm including YouTube. All those funny cat videos are in fact videos of cats often being stressed and anxious. People don't like to discuss it but I refuse to let it go.

RELATED: Do Sphynx cats smell?

I don't want to be curmudgeonly but there has to be a balance between animal welfare and making some money on YouTube through advertising. That is the reason why people make funny cat videos. You can make more money on YouTube advertising through Google AdSense then you can through a website i.e. the written word. YouTube can be quite a good earner.

The problem is that the YouTube administrators have gradually, over the years, added to the amount of advertising on uploaded videos. They've absolutely maxed it out to the point where it can be irritating to watch a video because it is interrupted too much by adverts. I'm digressing.

RELATED: Are Sphynx cats hypoallergenic?

Back to the cat. Despite my criticism, it is an interesting photograph. I would say that the reason why he looks like this is because he's keeping himself warm over the warm air vent which is right in front of him! The photographer knows that.

It is hardly worth saying but Sphynx cats are hairless and therefore they feel the cold. You've got to keep your home warm. That's going to cost extra money. Sphynx cats require enhanced cat caretaking (bathing for instance) which is perhaps something that people don't take fully into consideration when they adopt one.

Nice snapshot of life as a TNR volunteer in San Diego, California, USA

This is a recent Facebook post from Karenna Huangg of Feral Cat Rescue (Helping Feral and Stray Cats). At the time of posting this, Karenna had added her Facebook post about one hour ago. She published a photograph of a dark alley (a good photograph as it is evocative of what life can be like when trapping feral cats to neuter them). She is waiting in this dark alley for a grey tabby-with-white socks to walk inside her trap. She said that he had to be hungry enough to try and get the food but that she had been waiting for 20 minutes and she was finding the experience boring. Totally understandable. Very boring and it must happen a lot.

TNR volunteer photograph of a dark alley while she waits for a feral cat to be enticed by the food in her trap. Photo: Karenna Huangg.

She said:

"Sometimes waiting in the alley until they go inside is sooooo painstakingly boring. Hope this dark grey tabby with white socks goes inside. I saw him by the wooden pole when I first pulled into alley. He must be hungry enough … ugh it’s been 20 min already. 😣"

They do great work which is often unpraised and unrewarded except for the fact that they know they are doing something good. I like these sorts of photographs because they tell us far more than mere words about what it's like to do this kind of voluntary work. They are amazing people who do this because they've got to fit what must be unsocial work (sometimes) around their lifestyles which sometimes can't be easy.

She caught the cat at 11:50 PM and was ecstatic 😄.

ASSOCIATED: 3 volunteers sacked over hot animal shelter.

Update:

Note: This is a video from another website. Sometimes they are deleted at source which stops them working on this site. If that has happened, I apologise but I have no control over it.

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Unusual photograph of cat and caregiver

"Our tiny turtle is a papa to two cats; Pluto and Muffin. Pluto is a hyperactive furless cat and Muffin is a Scottish breed. This little family is my source of happiness.."

I like this photo. It is different. It made me look. It is a nice composition too. The words of the owner are above. He lives in an Asian country but not sure which one. The hairless cat is photogenic. Cats like to smell their owners! The scent of their caregiver is enjoyable to them. Initially it looked to me as if the cat was sniffing his eye. But no. The cat is licking his left foreleg while resting it on the man's face. Cool.

Looks odd but it's completely normal for a cat.

Unusual photograph of cat and caregiver. Photo: Twitter.

Hairless cat poses like a celebrity starlet at the Cannes Film Festival

A hairless cat, probably a Sphynx, poses like a celebrity starlet at the Cannes Film Festival. A very strange photograph. Was it posed by the photographer by positioning his/her cat and rapidly taking the photo or was it photo-edited? I have no idea. I'd go for the former because it seems highly unlikely that a cat would take up this pose without human intervention and it sure looks odd. Hairless cats are prime candidates for odd but interesting photos. Of course, this hairless cat is entirely nude. So, it is rude if I say it looks like a film starlet. This adds to the strangeness of the image.

CLICK FOR PAGES ON HAIRLESS CATS

Hairless cat poses like a celebrity starlet at the Cannes Film Festival

A beautiful relationship between grandma and her cat in Japan

This charming story is of Grandma Misao and Fukumaru, her darling, white cat in Japan. They were inseparable. Fukumaru passed away in 2015. Misao lived a simple country life with Fukumaru constantly by her side as the photos by her granddaughter Ihara Miyoko show. She published two photo books which are available on Amazon. 

A beautiful relationship between grandma and her cat. This is Grandma Misao and Fukumaru, her darling, white cat in Japan. Photo: her granddaughter: Ihara Miyoko.

Ihara Miyoko lived with her grandma and she admits to being somewhat envious of her grandmother's charming, simple life. It was a great idea to chronicle her life in photographs. They were a wonderful subject for a photo-essay. The books became bestsellers.

It was the otherworldliness of her life with appealed to many in contrast to the noisy, rush of modern life 'suffered' by the vast majority. Ihara Miyoko began her project in 2003. Three years afterwards a white male kitten was born in a barn and he was adopted by the family and become grandma's constant companion.

This is Grandma Misao and Fukumaru, her darling, white cat in Japan. Photo: her granddaughter: Ihara Miyoko.

Both Fukumaru and grandma were hard of hearing. White cats are not infrequently deaf. The deafness is caused by the gene which removes pigment from the hair strands rendering them white.

CLICK THIS FOR SOME PAGES ON WHITE CATS

They often looked into each other's eyes to communicate. Miyoko said: "Fukumaru is so happy and contented at my grandmother’s side. When I take a picture of the two of them together it's like I'm photographing myself as a little girl."

The photos were taken on the Bōsō Peninsula in Chiba Prefecture, not far east of Tokyo. The photos paint a picture of a vanishing Japanese way of life.

When I see the way my grandmother is living her life, I really feel that she has a kind of strength that my generation simply can’t match. She gets up with the sun, and goes to bed when it sets. She loves her cat and the vegetables in her field like her own children. If her vegetables come out well, she’s happy. She doesn’t have to worry about questions like ’what is the point of my work?’ Her way of life fills me with admiration and a sort of envy.

A rare aspect of the photo-essay is the long period of time over which it was compiled. It gives it a timeless quality. The photo-essay will become more precious as this way of life becomes ever rarer.

The following is the Amazon synopsis:

Miyoko Ihara graduated from the Nippon Photography Institute in 2002. Around that time, she began photographing her grandmother, Misao, in order to document her life together with her stalwart companion, an odd-eyed white cat named Fukumaru. This touching and beautiful photo book captures the everyday life of elderly Misao and her steadfast feline friend following the passing of her husband one summer. The black-and-white images reflect both the grief of loss but also the hope offered by new life, in the form of a litter of small white kittens. It is a touching portrayal of an elderly woman living a quiet and solitary life of work and enjoyment of nature, though always with her cats.

Rescued dog parents and nurtures rescued kittens and it's beautiful

This is a great picture taken, I believe, by Rachel a nurse at Battersea Dogs & Cats Home who also fosters rescued animals at the shelter. She volunteered to foster some very young kittens who had been cruelly abandoned by the roadside. It's a hard job looking after kittens at that age and parenting them. 

Bertie a rescued Lab retriever parenting rescued kittens abandoned at 2-weeks-of-age at the roadside. Photo: Rachel of Battersea Dogs & Cats Home.

Bertie, her ex-Battersea rescued Labrador retriever stepped up to the plate and volunteered to help. He's done a great job and entertained Rachel at the same time. Rachel made the point that I want to make which is that it is wonderful to see a rescued dog looking after rescued kittens. 

It is a beautiful interspecies relationship which is in stark contrast to the relationship between the former owner of the abandoned kittens. It must have been incredibly poor for a person to throw away kittens on the roadside like that. 

It always bemuses me how people can do this. They must have abnormal brain function. A part of their brain is obviously missing because nobody can do something as cruel as that without something fundamental lacking in their mentality. Often it is down to poor education due to poor parenting but I don't know the background to the abandonment. What is clear though is that no one should ever throw away kittens at the roadside or in woods. There are rescue centers for these unwanted animals. Have the courage and decency to use them, please.

We see quite a lot of pictures of dogs parenting cats and kittens and vice versa. But rarely do we see a photograph this good in terms of its composition and the expressions on the faces of the animals. The lighting is pretty good too despite being artificial. I have to commend Rachel for the photograph if indeed she did take it. I expect she did because she was fostering the kittens and I believe still is.

Picture of a cat on the shoulders of a young man

This is the kind of cat picture that I like which is why I have published it here. Regrettably, I have forgotten the name of the man and I don't know the name of the cat. That's my fault for delaying in publishing it. But whenever I see a photograph where there is obviously a lot of love between a cat and a person, I warm to it and want to spread the word by republishing it provided I'm allowed to under copyright laws. 

But copyright laws have been trashed by the Internet, particularly websites such as Pinterest and Google Images. They publish billions of photographs all the time and they are all, strictly speaking, copyright protected but nobody does anything about it because copyright is over in respect of images on the Internet in my honest and considered opinion. That's boring. But the affection between cat and person is not. It is delightful and emotionally warming photo.

Picture of a cat and a young man. I don't know the name of the photographer. Sorry. It's a good cat pic though.

How do you take a good cat photograph? Well, firstly, you have to have a camera at the ready because these moments to capture photographically are fleeting (no problem with smartphones). They are called 'decisive moments' in the photographic genre. You have to have a good eye to spot them and be ready to capture them. And it goes without saying that you need some grasp of photography but this has become dramatically less important nowadays because smartphone cameras have become so sophisticated that even on automatic mode, they cope admirably with difficult lighting conditions. 

There is one issue which needs to be taken care of and that is the shutter speed. If you are taking photographs indoors, as is often the case with domestic cats, it is likely that the automatically set shutter speed will be quite slow at about 1/30 of a second which is too slow to capture fast-moving objects like domestic cats.

Therefore, you should be prepared to manually override the shutter speed and crank it up to about 1/200 at least and adjust the aperture accordingly. You may have to adjust the sensitivity of the sensor because indoor lighting is naturally much darker and therefore what photographers used to call the ASA speed needs to be increased to around 1500 to even 5000 which is possible in smart phones and modern digital cameras with only a marginal loss in image quality.

Press photographers surround Socks, the Clinton family cat, in Little Rock, Ark., in 1992

This sort of photograph always amuses me. I used to be a photographer back in the 1970s. The main part of my business was photographing actors for promotional, handout portraits for casting purposes. Although I did variety of work including press photography and portraits of other celebrities which were published in magazines. So I know a bit about professional photography. It was harder in those days because digital cameras were unheard of. They had not been invented. I found it very hard to make a living out of it which is why I eventually became a solicitor. More stable work.

Press photographers surround Socks, the Clinton family cat, in Little Rock, Ark., in 1992. Photo: Mike Nelson - AFP via Getty Images. I claim fair use! 

Digital cameras became pretty common in the 1990s and the photograph on this page was taken in 1992 by Mike Nelson. I suspect that this is a film photograph i.e. was taken with 35mm film rather than digitally. It has that quality and there is some grain. I will also presume that all the guys you see in the photograph were using 35mm film cameras. Perhaps professional photographers were slow to take up digital cameras. As they weren't that good in the early years, perhaps there was good reason.

The man lying down, getting dirty, at cat height on the sidewalk is the press photographer getting the best photograph, by far. All the other press photographers are photographing Socks' back! Of course, they are waiting for that moment when Socks turns around and looked up at them.

ASSOCIATED: US PRESIDENTS WHO LIVED WITH A CAT

But you get a much better cat photograph if you get down and dirty to the level of the domestic cat. It is uncomfortable. And cats are hard to photograph even when cooperative. Although some positively hate being photographed. You point the camera at them and they think you are taking their soul from them like the secretive and isolated Amazonian tribes. It helps to have a second person 'wraggling' the cat or cats. Or even a third!

Perhaps the best photograph taken that day is the one we see on this page: of photographers taking a photograph! The Bidens are about to introduce their new cat to the White House. Will there be problems with their German Shepherd Major?

Kitten to cat super fast time lapse

Don't need to add words to this because it works all by itself but I will!  I think it is great and so do thousands of others. The music works nicely with the visuals. It was a big project. Warren must have had the discipline to take photos over a couple of years or something like that. I suspect that the cat lives with him. He probably has a studio in his home. He would have plonked his tabby cat on the studio background every so often and taken a photo with the same lighting each time. Then he created a time lapse short movie using software. He then uploaded it to YouTube and 18 months later it has 15 million views. Magic.

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Picture of ebony Oriental Shorthair show cat

This is a Flickr photograph by Terje Sund of a black (ebony) Oriental Shorthair (OSH) at, I believe, a cat show. The photographer describes the cat as a "world winner". I believe that this cat is female. The cat looks fierce but that's just chance and misleading which can happen sometimes in photography. The cat is simply opening their mouth at the same time as the photographer took the photograph. 

Black Oriental Shorthair show cat looking aggressive. Photo: Sund

It gives an impression of aggression but I don't think this is true at all. Although the ears are flat which sorta gives the impression that the cat is trying to protect them, a precursor to aggression. However, I think this too is misleading because often Oriental Shorthair cats are bred with ears that come out of the side of the head rather than are positioned on top of the head. 

This is selective breeding and it looks odd to me and I wondered why it should happen. It should be in the breed standard but it appears not to be. The ears are meant to be "very large with a broad base and pointed. They are set so that the outer edges continue the sides of the wedge". 

There's nothing in there which indicates that they should be horizontal! I'm referring, by the way, to the World Cat Federation breed standard. I have referred to that standard because I believe that this cat is in Europe and has been bred by European breeder.

I recently wrote a short article about black Oriental Shorthair cats. This is another one and I think black goes very well with this breed because it helps to outline the body shape which is very particular for this breed being very slender. The head, too, has a particular profile with a very straight line between the forehead and the nose.

The photographer describes the picture as: Black (ebony) oriental shorthair, OSH n. World Winner, females, 2010 (St. Etienne France) and 2011 (Poland). Coco Chanel's V for Vendetta.

What is Good Photography?

Good photography is not just recording what is in front you. It is seeing merit in what is front of you and then transforming that into an image which speaks to all about life so that it touches the emotions of viewers.



To see merit in the subject is itself a skill. To then enhance and transform the record/image to something which powerfully speaks to viewers is creating art (sometimes). Not many people can do this. Those who can are good photographers.

Photography is about communication. It is about touching the sensibility of viewers whereby they learn more about themselves and the world they live in.

In creating "art" there is usually a lot of thought. It does not come easy.

Note: the photo is by me of my cat. I don't profess to say that it is good photography. Just fun.

Photo Websites Are Spoilt by "Gaming the System"

I realise that this is not directly about cats but I want to get it off my chest. There are many photo websites where genuinely good photographers can publish their photographs.

One of the sites is the well-known Flickr. The trouble with Flickr is this: the most viewed photographs are not always the best ones. The photographs which are viewed the most are the ones which are heavily publicised the most.

The way photographers publicise their photographs is to "game the system" which means they join hundreds of groups and promote their photographs there or they follow thousands of other photographers and in doing so the photographer who they follow feels an obligation to return the favour and/or they favourite lots of other photographs so once again that photographer often returns the favour.



You can see, therefore, that photographers game the system and in effect through their efforts "buy" views and favourites and suchlike. On these photo website you can't just put your photograph up on the site no matter how good it is and expect it to receive lots of views unless a Flickr editor picks it whereby it is then promoted by Flickr itself. But that is relatively rare and they don't always pick the best photographs.

500px is a more professional photo website with a higher standard than Flickr and there is less gaming the system in order to obtain views on this website but it still exists to a certain extent. I would expect that all photo websites to have this deep flaw, which is disappointing because only the best photographs should receive the most views and that certainly isn't the case.

For the record this is not a personal moan because my photographs have been picked by editors before and they have received thousands of views. I'm just making the point that I don't think these photo sites should allow users to game the system so flagrantly and so frequently as it undermines the integrity of the website and the quality of the photographs presented to the public.

Blind deaf and brain damage cat looks much older than her age

This is a picture of  Bonnie.  She is 4 to 5 years of age, we are told.  She looks very much like a geriatric cat.  We are told also that she has brain damage because the car ran over her head.  This has left her blind, deaf and with a poor sense of smell apparently.  She's very well cared for.  She likes to purr.  She walks in circles which is indicative of brain damage.

On the website Reddit, participants send to her presents, and so on, to help.  She has become quite a little celebrity in her own way.  Should a blind, deaf and brain damaged cat become a little bit of a celebrity?  Well, if it makes her life better and improves her care and welfare then the answer must be yes.

Bonnie, brain damaged, deaf and blind but has a decent life.

Bonnie's life once again reminds us that disabled cats can have decent lives in the right household and with the appropriate care.  Disabled cats are very good at getting on and making the best of the disability.

Source: http://redd.it/2t4owk

Photographs of Japanese Cats in Japan by Japanese photographers

I think that photographs of Japanese cats by Japanese photographers have a certain quality about them. There are a lot of good Japanese photographers and the street cats are distinguishable from the stray cats of other countries. Here is a small selection. If you click on the photographs you are linked back to the photographer's photostream on Flickr.  These are all Flickr photographs.

The photographer says the following about the above photograph:

Get along very good two cats living in the cabin of the field work of Tomei Yokohama Aoba Inter nearby. Tiger cat big male, Goriza. Tortoiseshell cat small female, Holmes. Goriza in contact gently to Holmes, Holmes is a yearning Goriza.

This cat seems to be polydactyl looking at the left forepaw.

Below is an extraordinary looking cat - big boss cat:

A visitor comments: WOW! Is this perhaps a man in a catsuit? The color balance is wrong but as is on Flickr. I altered it here.

Mysterious Black Big Cats Are As Unconvincing As Flying Saucers

There's never been a single photograph of a mysterious black panther, in a country where black panthers don't exist, which is convincing, even remotely convincing. There have been hundreds of sightings of big cats in places where they don't exist and hundreds of sightings of black panthers which are meant to be the size of leopards and jaguars but when we see a photograph taken of the cat we end up with an image like the one below taken by Lynn Lacy, 56, who took the photograph in a field in Essex which is in the UK.

Lynn took the photograph on her iPhone after she spotted the animal on the edge of Hatfield Forest on March 11, 2014. She says that it had a long swishing tale, was jet black and prowling. She said she looked out and saw a black cat. It looked too big to be a dog or a cat but too small to be a horse. What she means is it was too big to be a domestic cat.

Looking at the photograph, which by the way is a very poor quality for an iPhone, I conclude it must be a heavily cropped photograph but even that is unlikely because when you do that you create a telephoto affect and this photograph does not have a telephoto affect of the kind you would expect if you cropped a photograph heavily.  So something is rather peculiar about the quality of the photograph.

Based on the clumps of grass amongst which the animal is walking, about 9 inches tall, this could be largish dog or a fake photo.

We've never seen a convincing photograph of a flying saucer or any UFO for that matter.  The obvious truth is that after all these years and all the sightings of mysterious big black cats you would have thought with the plethora of cameras around today there would at least be one photograph of decent quality which is convincing or irrefutable in its support of a big cat sighting in a place where the cat is not meant to be, but no.

Andean Mountain Cat Camera Trap Photographs

This is a video of camera trap photographs of the elusive Andean Mountain cat. This is the most endangered wild cat species in the Americas. Almost the only way to photograph this cat is through camera traps although Jim Sanderson has photographed this cat with a regular camera as far as I am aware. Nearly all the photographs that one sees of this cat species on the Internet are by Jim Sanderson. You see the same photographs over and over again because there are so few photographs of this cat. Jim Sanderson PhD is the world's foremost small wild cat species expert.

This cat is about the same size as a regular sized domestic cat. However, you would not mistake this cat for a domestic cat.  The wild look and the thick tail are notable differences. The Andean mountain cat tail is thicker and more functional. The tail of this cat is used for balance negotiating rocky slopes etc. in the Andes. The coat is pretty much a regular tabby coat so this is a tabby cat but a rather special one as there are only about 2000 of them on the planet. Thank God they occupy remote places because if they didn't there would be none left already.

Cat Photography For All

Good cat photography is not limited to gorgeous show cats and tons of high end equipment.  They do help if you know what you are doing but you can get a very decent shot with average equipment and your moggie. What you can't do without is your photographic eye.

When you have your camera in your hand, the trick is to look at the world photographically. By that I mean you need to really look with an open mind at the shape, form, composition and color of what is before you. In fact you should be able to switch to this mode of looking at short notice as it allows you to spot the unexpected photograph that quickly develops in front of you.

Most of the time our minds are closed to what is in front of us. Alternatively, our mind filters what our eyes see. It is a modified and personalized world.

Open your mind and eyes and you might see a good photograph. About 15 minutes ago I saw this:



I am not saying that it is a world better. It is not. But it both gives pleasure to the photographer, captures a scene from day to day life for the photo album and you can bung it up to Flickr for others to share and discuss.

This is a picture of Charlie. He has three legs. He was coming in from the garden and I walked past him. I had no camera but saw the potential. I quickly got the camera and just before he moved, I captured the image. It was a matter of a spit second. I captured a single image. I knew that I would be lucky to get something because cats move when you don't want them to. They aren't the most cooperative subject.

As it happens I have a decent camera (Canon 7D). Your camera should assist you in capturing a fleeting moment. And good photographs are often fleeting.

The framing for the photograph was created using Picasa on my computer. This is free Google software (Note: the drop shadow around the dark frame is Google Blogger. I am not sure that I like it in this instance).

Here is another picture of a Maine Coon purebred cat that I took in America. His name is Zak:



The key to good casual photography is to (a) have a camera to hand and (b) to use your eyes and be open and ready for the fleeting image that will present itself to you from time to time.

Picture of Cat Hissing

This is a picture of a cat hissing. It has to be, judging from the demeanor of the cat. The photographer does not say that the cat is hissing, however. This is probably one of the best photographs of a cat taking up an aggressive stance that I have seen.

Photo by Hannibal Poenaru

We know that hissing is intended to deter or see off an aggressor and it is a defensive measure. It is intended to mimic the snake's hiss. This has evolved over eons. It appears that animals recognise that the snake is dangerous otherwise there would be no point in mimicking the snake. You can see the ears starting to flatten too. This is to protect them in an ensuing fight. Cats ears get damaged in fights.

This particular cat could be a purebred. She looks a bit Burmese or Burmilla and she looks clean and cared for indicating a house cat rather than a feral or stray cat.

The teeth and gums are in good condition. She is probably quite young. The eyes sparkle. The picture was taken in France near Paris. The photo is published here under a creative commons license.