How to take lolcat photos

• 

  Patience and editing turn your cat photos into memes.Hardy Stewart

• 

  Step-by-step edits for a better cat photo, using PhotoCat, a free editing service available online. Left to right: Original iPhone photo, basic edits, blemish removal, filter.Leslie Meredith

Next Slide Previous Slide

The Internet, as we all know, is primarily a medium for viewing cat photos. Most recently, Grumpy Cat, who lives with her owner in Arizona and whose real name is Tardar Sauce, has become the reigning queen of Lolcat memes thanks to her signature frown.

Maybe you've got a cat with personality or amazing acrobatic skills. All you need is one great photo; but that can be tough to get. Cats are not known for their cooperative natures.

"They're not like dogs," Tonya Schabacker, the photographer behind Tonya Pet Photography, told us. She's shot for Whole Foods, TEEN magazine and Kraft Foods. "Cats don't listen."

However, Schabacker shared some tips that could help pet owners snag captivating photos of their cats. First off, prepare to take a lot of photos before you get one that's Internet-worthy.

"Most of those pictures happened by accident," she said about the best photos. "It's the thing that happened in between what was planned."

Adjust settings
Turn off the flash and get as much natural light as possible into the area where you will shoot. This is especially important when photographing black cats, which can appear gray when a flash is used. In the studio, Schabacker uses strobes, but for those shooting at home, the sun is the best light source.

'They're not like dogs. Cats don't listen.'

- Pet photographer Tonya Schabacker

If you're using a DSLR camera, set a wide aperture (f2.8 or lower) to soften or blur the background and make the foreground (your cat) sharp. You can get a similar effect when editing on your smartphone. For instance, use the blur tool in Instagram for what professionals call shallow depth of field.

Clear the set
Before you start shooting, clear the area of clutter; that means choosing a place with blank walls and little furniture (you will blur them out, anyway). And get rid of the empty Coke cans or any other objects that could distract from your cat (or distract your cat). Make the space as clean, open and simple as you can, Schabacker said.

Shoot
You'll get better photos if you get down on your cat's level. "Lay there in front of the cat and shoot into its face," Schabacker said. Cats can have a surprising variety of expressions, from Grumpy Cat's frown to Lil Bub's forever-startled look (thanks to her unusually large eyes).

Also, find the thing that you love about your cat, the one trait that makes it unique, like a crooked ear or unusual markings, and make sure you capture that feature in the photo. "Those are the little things that make a picture," she said.

To get a cat to be absolutely still, make a moderately loud sound, for example by dropping a book. Your cat will freeze for just a moment, so be ready to press that shutter button.

Play into your cat's natural inclinations. Ceiling Cat, the picture of a curious cat peeking through a cutout in the ceiling, is considered the cat that started the lolcat craze back in 2003 when the picture was first posted. It later became a meme in 2006. The trick is to create a "trap" that your cat will find irresistible and in which you can get a good shot.

If you want to take an action shot, you'll need to use a treat or toy. You could throw a ball, dangle a string or shake a bell (this is where a partner comes in handy). If you can keep the toy out of the shot, (or edit it out later), you're likely to get one of those mid-air shots that have been so popular online.

But if your cat is skittish, you may have the best results when your pet is settling down for a nap or grooming. Sleepy Shironeko, aka Basket Cat, has become Internet-famous for balancing objects on his head — while catnapping. [See also: Cats Drink with Delicate Balance (VIDEO)]

Edit
Editing is a critical step for professional photographers and one that amateurs should do as well.

"You're not done when the photos come out of the camera," Schabacker said. "Everyone has access to basic editing tools like iPhoto and should use them." She suggested people adjust the brightness, contrast and white balance.

But the most important part of editing is cropping. For most cat pictures, it's the facial expression that captures the attention of cat-loving Internet users, so you may want to crop away much of the area around its face. And clean up your cat with tools designed to erase things like dirt smudges, but don't take editing too far. An obviously Photoshopped picture will likely be spurned.

There are many online, free editors, but since we're talking about cats, you might try Photocat. It includes all the basics, plus blemish removal (an easier alternative to cloning) and more than 30 filters, 11 of which are for portraits. They work as well on cats as on humans. Photocat is available for free at photocat.com and as a $0.99 iPhone app in the App Store.

More FromTechNewsDaily

5 Social Media Stories You Shouldn't Believe

6 Tips to Use Instagram Like a Pro

Contest Seeks Purrrfect iPad Game for Cats

View the original article here

Sandy Hook families rip Michael Moore's call to release crime scene photos

• 

• • 

    Michael Moore wants Sandy Hook pictures published

  • 

    Psychological impact of seeing Sandy Hook crime scene photos

  • 

    Fireworks on Capitol Hill over gun control

Filmmaker Michael Moore’s suggestion that showing crime scene photos of the children slain at Sandy Hook will hasten the demise of the National Rifle Association is not getting rave reviews in the shattered Connecticut community.

The left-wing social critic wrote in his blog Wednesday an item titled "America, You Must Not Look Away (How to Finish Off the NRA)," in which he recommended releasing the undoubtedly gruesome photos of the 20 children killed on Dec. 14, 2012, some of whom were shot up to 11 times. Moore said the fact that Americans have “done nothing to revise or repeal” the Second Amendment “makes us responsible.”

 “ … and that is why we must look at the pictures of the 20 dead children laying (sic) with what's left of their bodies on the classroom floor in Newtown, Connecticut.”

Moore predicted a parent of a child killed in the horrific elementary school massacre or another high-profile mass shooting would make pictures available, adding “and then nothing about guns in this country will ever be the same again.”

“For the families and the community, we just want to get back to a normal life and that would be a horrendous offense to the families."

- Dorrie Carolan, Newtown Parent Connection

Jeremy Richman, whose 6-year-old daughter Avielle was killed in the attack by gunman Adam Lanza — a 20-year-old, mentally-troubled local man who later killed himself as police responded — said Moore’s idea is off-base.

“I would be very strongly against that,” an incredulous Richman said when being informed of Moore’s idea.

Another parent of a 6-year-old boy killed in the attack, in Newtown, Conn., was upset that such an idea would be proposed.

“You can imagine what my reaction to that is,” the outraged mom said, declining any further comment.

Several other parents of young victims declined to comment when reached by FoxNews.com. Attempts to reach Veronique Pozner, who took Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy by the hand to show him her son's body at his open-casket funeral in December, were unsuccessful.

Pozner later told a reporter that she "owed it" to her son, the youngest of the Newtown victims, when asked why she wanted Malloy to see the damage to Noah Pozner's body.

"I owed it to him as his mother — the good, the bad, the ugly," Pozner told the Stamford Advocate. "It is not up to me to say I am only going to look at you and deal with you when you are alive, that I am going to block out the reality of what you look like when you are dead. And as a little boy, you have to go in the ground. If I am going to shut my eyes to that I am not his mother. I had to bear it. I had to do it."

Moore’s proposal would be a “horrendous offense” to relatives of the Sandy Hook tragedy, Dorrie Carolan, co-president of the Newtown Parent Connection, told FoxNews.com.

“For the families and the community, we just want to get back to a normal life and that would be a horrendous offense to the families,” Carolan said. “There’s no need for any of that.”

Carolan, who knows several of the victim’s families, said she could not imagine anyone connected to the mass shooting who would consider Moore’s idea to be a “positive” development.

“It’s going to be a long healing process and to dredge up pictures of the crime scene would not be a good thing,” she told FoxNews.com. “We want to remember the little angels as they were, with their happy expressions and faces and you want to think of the teachers trying to hold them safe and not to see the pictures of their bodies. I think it would be terrible.”

Most of the families in the “very, very close” community have begun participating again in activities in and around Newtown, Carolan said, but the cyclical grief process is far from over.

“When you see the families, you want to acknowledge them, you want to hug them, but you don’t want to pry,” she said. “You don’t want to bring it up to them. So nobody really knows what to do. Nobody really knows what we should be doing … But to dredge up pictures would just take us backwards.”

In the weeks following the attack, several parents spoke out on the gun debate, with many saying the shootings cried out for new gun control laws and others saying such measures were not the answer.

When Neil Heslin, whose son Jesse was among the victims, spoke at a Connecticut legislative hearing on gun control, he challenged those in attendance to explain why citizens should be allowed to own assault weapons.

“Not one person can answer that question,” he said, after beseeching the crowd to reply.

When a member of the audience answered: ”Second Amendment shall not be infringed,” several media outlets reported that the distraught father had been “heckled” by gun rights advocates, though the videotape showed that was not the case.

FoxNews.com's Perry Chiaramonte contributed to this report.

Related Stories

Connecticut gun maker stages rally against state gun control proposals

View the original article here