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Okay, so that was misleading. Sunshine is the name of the newest member of my family/menagerie. Taken on a backdrop of black velvet using an 85mm F1.8 and a pair of SB800's TTL. Comments and suggestions appreciated.

Sharper Full Size image at Pixspot http://www.pixspot.com/displayimage.php?pid=3557&fullsize=1

I’m not a great cat lover but when one sees a beautiful shot like this you know that within a few minutes Sunshine is going to be very naughty

The Velvet provides PERFECT isolation..

Did you have to PP out many bits of fluff off the velvet???

I always have some bits of junk show up in the flash

MHD wrote:The Velvet provides PERFECT isolation..

Did you have to PP out many bits of fluff off the velvet???

I always have some bits of junk show up in the flash

Yep, you got that right. Lots of little stuff in the foreground. But that's where the PS healing brush comes in handy.

One of the most difficult things to do in photography is to get a perfectly black background. You need to keep your subject about 4 meteres in front of it and take care to keep the lights off it. PS is a great helper in this regard.

nicely done.
butterfly lighting?
how close was the bg to your subject btw. iam surprised there isn't much evdenice of lighting on your bg or you did heaps of pp work on it.
can we see the orginal?

Great photo, love how fuzzy the fur looks...mmmm fuzzy

Sunshine looks to be pondering in thought.

redline wrote:nicely done.
butterfly lighting?
how close was the bg to your subject btw. iam surprised there isn't much evdenice of lighting on your bg or you did heaps of pp work on it.
can we see the orginal?

One flash was on the camera and the other off to the right about 1 meter. My wife helped me keep Sunshine on the velvet.
This shot is straight from the camera raw defaults with one exception, I have added a stop and a half because of underexposure (and it exposes the backdrop a little more). The back drop is only about 1 meter long and 1/2m wide so it is only about 1/3m or less behind the kitten. Fortunately working the 4 level controls in ACR and then a little black level adjust in PS proper hid the background almost entirely for me. Sometime we get lucky. Most of the time nature and physics seem to conspire against us. The kitten came to us with scratches on her front paws and just spent two days with the vet for a full inspection. I PP'd the paws for the original post.

Nice result. PS certainly fixed up the background

great shot, but it made me sneeze

Thanks for all of the nice comments and sorry for any allergies that might have been inflamed along the way.

Looking back at the original post, I think that I rushed this one through PP a bit too fast and really should go back and give it a more careful treatment. I think I was fortunate in capturing a very cute moment.