Photographing Iris is a challenge. She’s jumpy. If you look at her for very long, she jumps up and moves around. Trying to get photos at her level is particularly challenging. And, getting close-ups has been next to impossible. She doesn’t like it when I move much at all when she is close. I’ve taken many photos of her over the years, but I’ve never really been able to capture her full beauty.
So, for this session I tried a combination of dinner, the articulated screen on my camera, and continuous shooting mode.
She’ll get close for her dinner. So close I wasn’t able to get any shots of her eating with this lens. I sat down behind the food dish and held the camera down in my lap, with the screen turned facing up. Holding the camera in my lap meant there was less noticeable movement. More importantly, it let me “look” at her, while looking down instead of looking straight at her, which means she’s far more relaxed. Setting the camera on continuous shooting mode got her to make eye contact with the camera, even if she wasn’t looking directly at the lens for the first shot. Since the camera takes several in rapid succession, the sound of the shutter gets her to look and it’s faster than I am, so I don’t miss that quick glance that I am often too slow to catch on my own.
I was able to get great close-ups with focus so sharp you can count the hairs on her nose.
The lighting is OK, but not quite what I would really like. For that I’ll need a different time of day and probably a different angle. That will require getting her comfortable with eating in a different spot with me sitting in a different spot – both of which are going to be a bit out of her comfort zone.
