Take Awesome Photos with Your Cats
E aí, guys! My name is Priscila Elias and, in case you do not know, I LOVE cats. I love them so much I have four of them: Cheetah, Nego, Fandango and Hunter. They’re all Brazilians but currently live in Sweden.
That’s right, family first! When we moved to Sweden, I could not leave them behind!
… and since they’re so cute and do so many funny and cute things all the time, I thought: why not make a video with a family photoshoot? A video of me shooting some portraits with my furry family on their most genuine and cute moments and — not only that — why not share the photoshoot itself, along with the making of, some tips, the settings and the equipment I used to do these photos?
Making good photos of cats is not always an easy thing. Different from dogs, they will usually only do what they want to do, so before we start and I share the making of of this photo session along with the settings and equipment I used to take these photos, please have in mind if you want to take portraits with your cats — especially if you’re doing self-portraits — you should get prepared in advance.
What time of the day do they usually play? What time or in what situation do they do that cute thing you love and that you would like to register? What do you need to have settled before you actually put your cat into the photo scene?
Because, remember, your cat is a rock star! It won’t wait in the scene until you’re ready for the photo. You’ll either have it all ready to go and you’ll shoot it for real or you won’t be able to catch one unique good photo!
So the first thing I did for this photo session was to think of all the shots I wanted to take with each one of my cats. I put all of it down in a note and, before I placed my cats into the scene, I tested and chose the best camera angles to capture what I wanted to capture, considering, of course, their time schedule.
Before I move on, I will tell you the equipment I used for this photoshoot: I shot all photos with a Canon 5D Mark IV and I used 3 different lenses throughout the session: a Canon 50mm f/1.4 which is an awesome budget lens for portraits, a Canon 85mm f/1.8, which is my absolute favourite for portraits because of its amazing bokeh and a Canon 24–70mm f/2.8 for the wider shots. I will show you which photo I did with each lens in just a minute, as we go through the photo session.
As for the light, I used the two sets of lights I have. The continuous light which is the one I also use for my videos: The Godox SL60W with a Neewer octabox as a diffuser. And a Canon 600EX2-RT speedlight mounted on a light stand with a Profoto medium sized umbrella with a white interior, as a diffuser. I usually use only my continuous light, the Godox along with the octabox for the photo sessions I do at home, but in this case, since I wanted to be more versatile and fast to be able to get some nice shots with my unstoppable family, I chose to have two sets of light ready and good to go around the house. So I would just use the one that would be best positioned for each of the scenes as they happened, without having to move them too much, which could end up making me do too much noise and scare them.
Results? You will see in a minute. Just know that I started his photo session at 10am and finished at around 6pm.
They made me work hard! While… they?
Well, you’ll see yourself!
When I’m working on the computer, Cheeta usually spends most of the day laying over my table, right behind the computer.
So I set the light, I tested the focal distance that would look good for this shot and by then I expected Cheeta to be around so I could just take the shot.
I’m usually editing and working on the computer while she’s up and down the table, either sleeping, searching for my attention or after the reflections from the sun that comes into my office during part of the day. Exactly like this…
She didn’t cooperate with me to take the second shot I had in mind, though.
So I had to ask Hunter to help me out.
Hunter is the guy that will usually be up for anything! So, if a photo does not go right with the others, he’s the one who saves me.
Well, not this time though.
I wanted to get a photo of my hand touching his paw, but he simply wouldn’t help me out.
So I decided to try taking two photos. One of my hand in the position and another photo of his paw in the position. Then later I would merge the layers in Photoshop.
This kind of ideas do not always work, so I wasn’t that hopeful this would.
I still decided to give it a shot…
I played around with a cable so that I could get some shots of him with his paw up and, even though I was not able to get the EXACT shot I had in mind, I was pretty happy with what I ended up with.
Now, the original photos before photoshop were these ones:
While I took the shot with Hunter, Cheetah did something she does every day when I’m eating breakfast and also when she’s running from the trio who insist on playing with her when she obviously isn’t up for it.
Me and my husband really tried to teach her not to lay on the kitchen’s table, but she’s a cat and it seems like she owns this house. She’s the boss!
So she always likes to have breakfast with me.
I knew that if I brought the light too close to her or if I made too much noise with the equipment, she would get scared or annoyed and would leave the spot.
So I decided to keep the light outside the kitchen because even though the light wouldn’t be as perfect as it could be, at least I would be able to take the shot. This is something I consider important in documentary photography: sometimes you just gotta go with whatever you got and take the shot! Do the best according to the available conditions.
If you’re after telling a story, you gotta remember the story is what most matters.
With all settled, why not have a cup of coffee? That’s what we do everyday anyway, isn’t Cheeta?
And here’s the final shot I got.
As I told you, Hunter is the only one of my cats that will let us hug him or carry him all around. He complains a bit, but that’s just him. He complains but if you put him down, he will still sit by you waiting for you to pick him up again. So for that reason he is the one who would do the traditional portrait photo session with me. He wouldn’t scratch me, run away from me or get too grumpy. A little grumpy, but not too much.
I planned on taking two photos with him and, hey, guess what, I know my boy, no surprises! I got to shoot them just fine!
By then it was lunchtime and there’s something that happens quite often here in this house: cats demanding MY lunch!
It’s funny how there are a couple of things that trigger them into going wild waiting for their tuna water: if one of them sees me cutting coriander, squeezing mayo and/or opening a can close to lunchtime, the alarm will be set off! One of them screams and warns everybody else it’s tuna day! They’re not always right, I eat that maybe 2 a month? But there’s always hope in their hearts! So they’re always around thinking today might be the day!
It’s always cute to see them all around waiting for their reward and today, they deserved a reward. They were working hard and would still work hard for the rest of the day!
After that I just left my lights and equipment in the living room — in the safest way as possible, because they’re like Tazmania until the beginning of the afternoon- and went to the office to edit some shots because I knew that soon enough it would be their nap time. That would be the best moment to take some shots of Nego and Fandango.
It happened! Nap time, mommy knows them!
I tried quite some shots and changed the light and angle a couple of times… and here’s the shot I like the most.
Then I quietly placed the camera and light in a way I could shoot myself with Fandango, who is usually the hardest one of all to take photos with, since even though he is a VERY VERY lovely cat, he is also very suspicious of absolutely everything that goes around him. Even though he is the only one of my four cats that never ever put his nails out to try to scratch me, he still is the fastest and slippiest one! He didn’t seem to bother much this time, though. Nap was good, blanket was warm and the cuddle was good as well. So we were able to make a very nice portrait, right, Fandango?
He likes us to cuddle him when he’s on the floor, on the sofa on his scratcher. So with him, I planned a shot where we wouldn’t need to be anywhere else. I thought of something that would be natural for him and that he would enjoy. I wanted a closeup shot of us being face to face and there would be no better place than this.
Simple shots that still took me a while to make.
That is one of the reasons I only planned one or two shots with each cat: you need patience until they do what they want in the way they’re used to and that they feel comfortable with.
You won’t want to annoy them, otherwise, no way you will get good, genuine shots.
If you have someone to shoot for you or if you’re shooting someone else with a cat and your cat knows and trusts this second person also, you bet it’s going to be much easier, since you will be much more flexible with angles and with changing the position of the light quickly. I had to do it myself though, and it took me some more work to be able to get some nice shots. Still, more than possible!
If you try this out, please tag me on Instagram so that I can see the shots you did after you’ve watched this video. I will be super happy to check out your work!
That is all for today, guys! I hope you had fun and learned some with this photoshoot… please let me know your thoughts in the comments below and…
Thanks so much for reading me!
Tchau!
