Friday, 30 August 2024
What focal length is a 35mm lens on an APS-C camera?
Tuesday, 12 March 2024
Overzealous furore over Princess of Wales's botched photo-edited picture
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Catherine, the Princess of Wales. See credit at base of page. |
Photo-editing is the norm nowadays
Mistake - apology
Pulled
Reissue the original photograph
Overzealous criticism - crazy response
Six areas of photo-editing
Saturday, 12 June 2021
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.
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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.
Thursday, 21 January 2016
What is Good Photography?

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.
Thursday, 27 October 2011
Turkish Angora Pictures
White cats with blue eyes have a high incidence of deafness caused by the same gene that makes the cat white.
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Turkish Angora - Photo copyright Helmi Flick |
This cat has startling eyes. They are a gorgeous pale green that is so well matched to the steely gray coat. He has a quizzical face.
The photos on this page are protected by copyright ©. Violations of copyright are reported to Google.com (DMCA). |
Next we have a plumed tail that is a big WOW!
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Turkish Angora - Photo copyright Helmi Flick |
This is a silver tabby Turkish Angora (TA for short). I think he or she is a mackerel tabby. The spots on the back merge to stripes on the flanks. The tail has one large band or blob at its end.
The eats are straight up which must be a requirement of the breed standard. They have slight lynx tipping which gives a sharpness to the shape. The eyes are also a pale green or is it hazel? The accepted eye colors for the TA are: copper, gold, yellow, hazel, green, blue and odd-eyes.
See a quick guide about this cat.
Balinese Cat Pictures
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Balinese Cat. This is Kareem. Photo copyright Helmi Flick |
As for Siamese cats there are traditional and modern Balinese cats. The cats on this page are what I call "modern" in conformation. The CFA would not describe them as that. For them a modern or oriental conformation is the standard. Kareem looks like a lynx point to me but I will accept being corrected in a comment! You can see some banding on the forelegs.
The photos on this page are protected by copyright ©. Violations of copyright are reported to Google.com (DMCA). |
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Balinese cat "Samson" - Photo copyright Helmi Flick |
You can see the refined elegance of the Balinese cat in the photos. Breeders have selectively bred for what they consider a more elegant appearance. This means more slender (foreign or oriental in cat fancy language). Samson has very delicate pointing. The coat is sleek and lies close to the body. The tail is fine but plumed. You can see how the tail fans out it the photo of Kareem. Samson's tail has tabby in it as you can see the banding. The modern Balinese has huge ears that I personally find unnatural. Cat breeders also like to develop large ears for some reason. It can look strange. These cats have straight long noses (no nose break). In profile it looks quite distinguished. They have high cheek bones too - quite bony faces in my view.
Associated page: Cat Anatomy.
Tuesday, 25 October 2011
Ragdoll Cat Pictures
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Ragdoll cat - seal point - Photo copyright Helmi Flick |
The photos on this page are protected by copyright © except where indicated. Violations of copyright are reported to Google.com (DMCA). |
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Ragdoll cat "Myst" - Photo copyright Dani |
The next photo is of a Ragdoll show cat at a cat show in Holland:
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Beautiful Ragdoll cat - Photo quatre mains (Flickr) |
You can read about the Ragdoll and see more photos by Helmi on this page.
Saturday, 22 October 2011
Cougar Picture
Here is a cougar picture taken in the Saguaro National Park. The photographer was SaguaroNPS (a Flickr username).
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Cougar Picture |
The map shows you where the Saguaro NP is:
View Larger Map
Monday, 22 August 2011
My 19 Year Old Lady Cat
Nothing special. It is just a photo I took today of my old lady cat. She looks like a lady but a bit confused, which she is. You can see her bent back in the photo. She has had a bent spine for a long time in fact but it is more noticeable in this picture.
Thursday, 14 July 2011
An Aspect of Cat Photography
Cat photography is often challenging if you want to create something special. Cats, particularly active cats such as the Savannah, need to be entertained with a cat tease (a feather on a stick) while photographing them. This way you can manoeuvre them into a good position. But not always. It can take two people. One on the tease and the other taking the photo. This is how Ken and Helmi Flick work.
Kathrin Stucki, owner with her husband, Martin, of A1 Savannahs, does her own cat photography - on her own. That is tricky. It is high class photography of high class cats.
Below she describes how she managed to get Jazz, the cat you see above, to cooperate
"Jazz:Well, Jazz’s pictures are deceiving. He isn’t the mellow couch potato that he appears to be. The images are a result of hard work and a lot of sweat, well, at least for me.
Jazz is very active, curious and fast moving. When I first started taking pictures of him, I had either only a part of the tail or nothing at all on the picture. Teasing a cat with a feather stick during a photo shoot usually gives the photographer some control over the movements of the cat. Not so, if the cat is a Savannah and thinks that it can never let go of the feathery thing in its mouth no matter what happens around him.
I ended up going in the yard to exercise Jazz with the red feather ball on a string. He jumped like a rabbit, higher and faster and full of energy. Chasing his toy, grass hoppers and his own tail at the same time until he crashed in the tall grass, panting and with his broken off feather stick trophy right beside him.
That was my time. Now I could pick him up and put him back on the “cat walk”. He wouldn’t get back up again but at least he laid there for me, proud and with his head up high like a male lion that has just brought home dinner for the whole pride. The photo shoot went smooth and the pictures came out quite nice, I think......"
I think they came out better than nice - they are great!
Tuesday, 28 April 2009
Flip Camera Problem
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photo by photine |
This is the problem in more detail:
You buy the camera. You make a video. You store the video on your computer and delete the videos on the Flip camcorder to allow more videos to be made and stored on camera. The maximum amount of recording time is 60 mins. You expect to see 60 minutes of record time available after all the files have been deleted from the Flip camcorder. But on some occasions this isn't the case. The problem seems to be dependent on how the video files are saved to the hard drive from the camera.
Update late March 2011: At the date of this post (see date above), there was and perhaps still is a problem. It may have been fixed. If that is the case, great.
Note: In discussing this "problem" (and I am not completely sure that it is a problem) does not mean that I don't like the camcorder. I would highly recommended this video camera. It is very easy to use, the quality it very good, it is very tolerant of poor or color cast lighting and is extremely portable. Portability is very important as it means you can capture those shots that would otherwise have passed you by. It is also inexpensive. Mine cost £147 at Heathrow.
There are two ways to save the video files:
- In my case, when I first used the camera, I saved all the videos on the camcorder in one go using the icon within the Flip software (bottom left of screen) and I then deleted the videos on the camcorder. The files are saved in a new folder created by the Flip software. The manufacturer says that the files are saved deep within the hard drive for security. When the files are saved and deleted this way the camera doesn't seem to recognize the fact that all the files have been deleted and only allows less than the full 60 minute recording time. In my case this was about 30 mins. This seemed weird. For some reason there were files left in the camcorder.
- The next time I saved the files I did it this way. When the videos show up in the Flip software I click on the video (or a large number of them by clicking on the first one and then clicking on the last one while holding down the "shift" or capitals key). This puts a blue frame around the video. I then right click and a menu comes up. I select the "export" function in this menu. Click on this. I then save the selected videos to a folder that I have opened on the desktop. Once saved (you can see progress on a bar that is bottom left of the screen) I deleted the files using the same menu referred to above (there is a delete function on it).
If the problem does come up however, for what ever reason, I have found that the simplest way to solve it is as follows (using MS Windows):
- Make sure there are no videos in the camera..
- Connect the camera to your computer.
- Go to "Computer" and you will see the hard drives including the Flip storage drive (a flash card I believe). It might be labelled, "FLIPVIDEO (G:)".
- Right click on the FLIPVIDEO and select "format" from the menu.
- A small window comes up. At the bottom of the window click on the check box labelled, "Quick format" and then click on "Start".
- It takes about 3 seconds to format.
- Then disconnect the camera in the usual way.
From Flip Camera Problem to Home Page
Photo: published under a Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs creative commons License -- this site is for charitable purposes in funding cat rescue.
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