Kitties, while your humans may think this photography tutorial is for them, it is really for you because the more effective your humans can be at taking photos of you, the less you have to endure. Because before I get into the technicalities of taking great sun puddle photos, I want to mention the most important Rule One.
Do not wake up the kitty!
Now onto the work that goes on behind the lens. Our humans often try to capture the joy we feel when we are napping or just relaxing in a sun puddle, but it’s hard to make the photos come out right. They are very contrasty and the pictures often wind up half washed out. But there is actually a way to fix that, by selectively using flash (otherwise known as flash fill). Since my human has already broken Rule One and rudely awakened me, I’ll show you how a properly exposed sun puddle shot might look.
You don’t need a really fancy camera to do this. You just need one that has a dial with letters on it like P, A, and M, plus a flash that you can adjust (check your manual if you don’t know where to adjust the flash, or find the manual online and look it up there). That’s right, I am going to tell you to take your camera off automatic and put it on M, meaning the manual setting. Don’t be scared! Playing around with digital cameras is way easy, and you can just delete the bad photos and try again.
This will work for most slightly advanced digital cameras. What you want to do is expose the photo for the brightly lit spots. Before you put the dial on M, set it on P to get a reading (sometimes the Automatic setting will tell you too). Point your camera right at the bright spots — the sunlit rug or floor, zoom on it to eliminate the shadows and push the shutter button halfway to see what the numbers say in the window at the back of the camera. You will see numbers like ISO, F-something, and fractions of a second. Manually adjust the ISO to 125 or 60 if you have it, because that is the number you want to use in sunlight. Put the F number to around 5.0 or 5.6 — this determines your depth of field, and it will make the subject sharp, but the background a little out of focus and less noticeable. Usually at ISO 125 and F5.6, the shutter speed for a sun puddle shot will be around 1/250 of a second. Go to the M setting and put in the ISO, F and shutter speed numbers that you saw when you had your camera set at P or Auto. Consider this a start, because you may want to change the shutter speed up or down after you take a test shot or two.
Now for the flash. If you do it right, when you are shooting in contrasty sunlight, the flash will fill in the shadows without overexposing the shot. But you don’t want to use full flash, because then the shadows will get washed out and the photo will look okay, but not that great. You still want nice, rich shadows like what you see above — but you also want to see facial details (like the annoyed expression I am displaying). So find out where you can adjust the flash on your particular camera, and reduce it at least 1 and maybe 2 stops. Again, you will want to test this out and make adjustments. I suggest using a stuffed animal as a stand-in so you don’t annoy your cat.
Note in the photo above that the sun is coming in behind me, giving me a slight halo and throwing that deep shadow in front of me. You are actually using the sun as your hairlight and the flash as your main light. In other words, you are using two lighting sources, like a pro photographer would! Its always best to have the sunlight coming in from the back or the side — having it in our faces makes us squint. Of course, if we are sleeping, this is not a big deal.
One thing you need to be careful of is hot spots! See how the hot spot by my paws in the above photo ruins the shot? Pro photographers use a histogram setting to find them, but you can pretty much just eyeball it. It shows up as a glare when you look in the window at the back of your camera.
The best way to fix hot spots is to move around the subject until the hot spot goes away. That is what my human did here. Also keep an eye out for interesting shadows. See how cool my ear shadow looks here? She cut it off in the first photo, so getting rid of the glare and re-composing the photo was a double win. Note that she did not move me, only herself. Moving the subject, if it is a cat, often results in a temper tantrum and often the model walks off the set.
Of course, you could just skip the flash altogether, and just expose for the sunlight to create a dramatic shadow shot. That is good too!
I hope this tutorial helps some of you humans! You will have to let me know if any of you try out these tips!
See all of Summer’s merch at her Designercat Shop, available on Zazzle.
You lost my Mommy at “Don’t wake up the kitteh”. MOL! xoxo
I think what we need here is a bootiful ladycat model to help us with our posing. Are you free to assist my dear?
Ha..Ha..ha.. Have to laf Prancer’s comment : )
My mom can’t adjust much, she don’t have that time, by the time she adjust, I’m gone !
so whatever she got, she have to use that but she can always adjust in Photoshop : )
But she do take your note ! Thanks
xox
Thanks for the tutorial! Now we think Scott is going to give it a try!
That is a great tutorial. Our Mom was wondering how to get that bright spot out of the picture. She needs to figure out if our camera will do all those things. She is going to try cause we sure would like better pictures. Thanks a bunch. Take care.
Thanks for that tutorial, Sparkle! But now we need some sun so our mom can try all that. It’s raining here today. 🙁
We’ll have to get mum to look at her camera book to see what ours does – she is rather impatient and generally just sticks her finger on the button and crosses her fingers – she often deletes more than she ends up with!
Luv Hannah and Lucy xx xx
We will definitely ask our Mom to try it! Thanks for the tutorial!
Thanks for the tute, Sparkle. Our mum has been practicing in manual for a while now, but didn’t realise you could stop down the flash. She’s not the brightest of bulbs. MOL.
your ooman has some great techniques Sparkle. Now M says she just has to remember all these helpful hints.
Great tuturiol. Learned a lot even though my human mom is more of an instamatic,
throw- away camera person.
Sparkle, you take such beautiful pictures.
Thank yous Sparkle! My mommy got lots out of this tutorial! Now all she has to do is catch me sleeping in a sun puddle!
Kisses
Nellie
You are so smart Sparkle. You should come here and instruct the publicist personally because she is hopeless with the camera and with photoshop.
Hopeless!
Mommy is taking notes! Daddy is our main photographer, but sometimes he is “tired”. Whatever.
Thanks, Sparkle!
We must have an old camera. 100 is the lowest ISO we can get (and usually use 400 to get any contrast in our dark houses! No doubt your sun is far brighter in California). The Woman likes playing with her histograms though and seeing where the light meter falls just before she shoots!
we love tutorials and we’ll always read them.
Mommy is pretty good with the Cannon but has a bit on Nikonitis! She found it to be a superior camera but still is getting use to its uses…..she is gonna try your advice, thanks!=^Y^=
Wow, thanks fer all the good advice Sparkle! Now we just have ta wait ta see if our camera can do all that stuff. Thats TBT’s problem…
That really was good info Sparkle, we will print it off because we will never remember sll of that!
Thank you, thank you, thank you. Mom struggles with this all the time. Maybe she’ll finally get some good sunpuddle shots of us!
Thanks for the info Sparkle! We’ll have our mommy see if her camera can do all that so she does what she needs to do and leaves us to enjoy a sunpuddle!
Um, by the time you’ve (I’ve) done all that switching back and forth and all that math and all the test shots the sun will have gone down, it would be midnight and time for my kitties to be up and about acting like looney-tunes!
There are some fun camera tricks for the midnight crazies too!
But you are so beautiful Sparkle your human couldn’t really take a bad picture of you 🙂
Mom loves playing with natural light to attempt to get good pictures.
Great advise Sparkle.
Thank you for your sweet purrs while Momma has been recuperating from my bitey…
purrs
>^,,^<
♥Abby♥Boo♥Ping♥Jinx♥Grace♥
That was a great tutorial… but it still might be too hard for my Mommeh!
Sparkle this was good as it is a way to get the photos done earlier or else Moms keep at it until they get the picture. So good as sun puddle time is the bestest time spent resting and relaxing.
Thanks, Sparkle, these are pawsome tips! We are torn tho, between encouraging our mom with the flashy box and wanting cool pic-shers for our bloggie 😀
Pip, Smidgen, Minnie, Hollie
Pawsome tutorial! Even owr human photo lady learned somefin! It helps when da model is as stunnin’ as yoo too. 🙂 Purrs.
Since TW was also lost at “don’t wake the cat,” she’s glad that we don’t have sun puddles. We do, but only before 8 a.m. and on the walls. I’m not partial to sitting on the walls.
Thank you, Sparkle! Now I can’t wait for Hobbes or Grace to go lay in the warm sunshine so I can try these techniques!! I’m sure they are going to be VERY excited too!!! 🙂
People speak intelligently and my Human hears Blah Blah camera Blah Blah compose Blah Blah Blah and then everything goes black. That’s why YOUR pictures are so vastly superior to mine!
On another topic, Why yes I *am* peevish. Wanna make something of it, SoCal girl??
Thank you for the photo tutorial, Sparkle! My camera has those settings but I haven’t played with them much – I’ll have to give it a go.
We like this – Äiti is always looking for better ways to photograph us. We have one major problem – no more sun puddles until April!!!
Well, this is very very good advice. So, you are encouraging them to follow us around more than they do already to practice their new skills
big bonks