I would like to first state that i'm new to this wonderful forum. I started my photography exploration about a year ago, and been having fun since the very beginning.
Anyways, I want some feedback/critique on a recent image of my cat. His name is cookie. Please be kind, but also point out some workable areas.
Hello. Welcome to the forum. A couple of quick little things I notice are:
1. His face is a little too centered. Pan more to the right to get his face on the left side of the frame which will fill the dead space on the left. You might be able to fix it by cropping too.
2. The backgrond, and foreground are a little distracting. He has good eye contact, but when I look into his eyes I see the very bright white foreground and then the brown top of the frame. Four seperate textures to look at besides "cookie."
I think the eye contact is good and it seems pretty sharp. Those were just a couple things I noticed.
Thanks for the positive and constructive comments. As a young photographer without a mentor, it's hard to know if you're doing good or not. This picture was not planned (thus surrounding area may be distracting); my cat barly stands still and poses for me, so i took this opportunity to capture his blank stare. Before this thread I had no idea that the area around him was so distracting, I could see now that the ground does seem eye catching. Please keep these comments coming.
Some good suggestions.
About the 2/3rds rule, it works when there's movement ( the cats moving ), but when the cats stationary, you can ignore the rule if the focus is on the cat. And rules are sometimes meant to be broken :P
Anyway, a good way to throw out the distractions of the background, use the widest f-stop ( smallest number ) your camera can handle. Like on my lens, that would be f/2.8. Causes the depth of field to be very very narrow, so it's easier to blur out the background ( and even parts of the face ).
I like the picture actually, just don't chop off the poor kitty at the midsection :P
I like the grooming Kaden gave your cat's nose and the crop that brings his eyes and face into closeup, but I would also crop on the left side like AuntiPode mentions. Regarding the ears, I would not crop them if the background didn't change color there. I like the warm cast. As far as the white goes, I would leave it or remove just a little, but make sure it touches the left edge after the AuntiPode crop.
