Photography tip #1: eyes are the pathway to the heart or in this case, a good photo.

I'm becoming a cat lady. Too bad I'm allergic to them, else I'd seriously consider dying alone with cats in my possession.

Cats aside, I've always been taught to focus on the eyes because even if the rest of the photo is out of focus, it still looks good. That's why when you take portraits, it's always best to focus on the eyes. I mean, theoretically, you should be able to focus on anything and make a photo turn out well but it always seems to be the eyes which make or break the photo. Just a tip for portrait photography. I'll give you a few examples with a cat I was trying to photograph yesterday.

The cat had a really unique patch of brown fur on the white surrounding its mouth. Check it out. It was beautiful. I must say though, on the way home I was suffering a major hayfever attack and it was annoying me. It chose to rub itself on my leg continuously and seriously, it wouldn't stop; you wouldn't believe how hard it was to get some actual decent shots of it.

I'M ALLERGIC TO CATS, WHAT OF IT.

There are only a few photos which turned out nicely. This one didn't turn out tooooooo badly, but I guess it's because you can't see the face of the cat, just the top of the head.

See, with these two here, the photos look quite odd because the face isn't in focus. In particular, the eyes aren't focused and I've focused on the fur in the background. Mind you, it wasn't intentional; the damned cat wouldn't stop moving and it kept rubbing its fur onto my jeans.

Let's contrast them with these. The first one is my favourite; it's framed really nicely and I had to be quick because the cat was in a rush to move for some reason.

Exposure: 1/90

ISO: 100

Aperture: f/4.0

Exposure bias: 0

Exposure: 1/90

ISO: 100

Aperture: f/4.0

Exposure bias: 0

Eventually, the cat went into the sun so I had to change the evaluative metring on the camera to partial metring. I quite like how the photos came out, even though you couldn't see the cat's eyes. The fur was a much richer, stronger brown; quite striking on camera but it couldn't compare with when it was magnified on the screen.

Exposure: 1/180

ISO: 100

Aperture: f/5.6

Exposure bias: 0

Exposure: 1/180

ISO: 100

Aperture: f/4.5

Exposure bias: 0

Exposure: 1/180

ISO: 100

Aperture: f/4.5

Exposure bias: 0

Exposure: 1/350

ISO: 100

Aperture: f/8.0

Exposure bias: 0

I miraculously managed to maintain focus on the face. After this lot of photos, I realised that I'd been chasing a stupid cat for about 30 minutes, waiting for a few moments to photograph.

So, a few take home tips for animal/close up shooting: make sure your subject DOESN'T MOVE AROUND TOO MUCH, and make it so that your animal or whatever is not on your allergy list. Not very pleasant at all.

Make sure your lighting is favourable. Most of the time, the camera will automatically adjust its ISO (a measure of light sensitivity) to match the background lighting, provided you leave the automatic settings and you're using a digital camera. The next thing you want to make sure of is that you're not too close to the subject; a lot of the time, people overestimate the "macro" ability of their lenses, particularly if it's quite a wide angled lens with not much capability for zoom.

Adjust the lighting if you must; either overexpose or underexpose, depending on the background light. In addition, focus on a point where you want to set the standard for lighting. For example, if you set your focus to something completely black, your camera will adjust itself so that the dark thing will be illuminated because the camera interprets your focus as a "lack of light" and subsequently, your background will be completely overexposed - bright, almost blinding. Alternatively, if you focus on something really bright, the background will be dark because your camera will try to compensate. I think it's mainly when your settings are on "spot focus" rather than evaluative metring or partial, or even centre-weighted average.

Anyway kiddos, I'd better sleep. Mum just came down and had a little hissy fit at me because I was up at 2:30am... which is the time right now. I'm going out tomorrow anyway so I'd best be getting some rest. All photos that I take with a DSLR are with a Canon EOS 5D Mk II and currently the only decent lens I have is a 24-105mm f/4.0L lens. You'll notice some details and numbers with a few of the photos - if you understand what it means, then great. If not, I'll make a post about it later. You don't really need to worry about the terms; just putting the details there for interest.

Farewell from the cat lady.