Kitty Cat on the balcony. I actually brought out the reflector for this one, because I felt bad about not using fill light as often as I should. To tell the truth, these entries generally don't benefit all that much from fill-lights, as it kills the natural and spontaneous look I prefer for the Kity Cat Diaries. I almost don't want any of these entries to look like too much thought went into them, as for me, they are like an escape from doing more serious and complex photography. I just want to have fun and capture Elena in our daily life when I shoot these entries. Using a fill flash isn't as annoying though, because I just dial the flash exposure compensation I want, point it where I want it to bounce, and shoot away (I avoid direct flash like the plague unless I have no choice).

Kitty Cat waiting for friends to arrive for dinner. Although it's a common preference for photographers to have only similar temperature of lights as to not complicate the white balance situation, I actually like the fact that a fill flash adds a cooler light source to the otherwise very warm ambient lighting of most indoor settings. This comes from my background as an artist--as we're taught that having warm and cool colors in an image is often more interesting.

A lot of people who have only used point & shoot cameras mistakenly believe that a nice DSLR will easily give you better photos. This shot is a good example of how more advanced cameras actually make it a lot harder to capture good photos. The larger sensors on DSLR's are far less forgiving at large apertures--any slight movement or less than perfect focus will give you out of focus shots like this one. This problem is compounded by the fact that you are often shooting subjects that move--so you'd have to anticipate your subject's movement and track them with your focus. I often shoot as wide as f/1.4, so it's especially difficult to track moving subjects at that aperture.

This is Kitty Cat's equivalent of the sad puppy eyes. Guess it's the sad kitty eyes?

In Kitty Cat's paws is the inventory list for all of our packed up boxes for the upcoming move back to the States.

Shots with strands of hair falling in front of the eyes are notoriously hard to focus, because if you use autofocus, it'll most likely focus on the strands of hair instead of the eye--which is where you always focus for human subjects (unless you have a compelling reason for using a different focus point--for example, if the lips are the main point of the photo). In situations like this, you simply have to switch to manual focus and do it the old-fashioned way. The viewfinder on the Canon 1D Mark II is a lot smaller than those of film 35mm or full frame DSLR's, so manual focusing is a bit challenging.

2001-2003 -- 2004 --2005 -- 2006 -- 2007 -- 2008