A Texas White Christmas!!!

I know that snow is pretty normal in other parts of the country but to us, in Texas, it's a once-a-year thing, if we're lucky. And usually, not this much snow! I used a flash to catch the snowflakes and then layered the image to decrease the overexposure in the foreground. It's a magical thing and I've never experienced a White Christmas in Texas since coming here in 1992!

Merry Christmas, Everyone!



P.S. I heard on the weather channel here that the last time it snowed for Christmas in Dallas was 1926!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

The Flick Cats, left to right:

CH Earendil Nox "Nox," Solid Black British Shorthair Neuter;

Coonalley Eggzaklee Mr Happy Tail "Zak," Blue and White Maine Coon Neuter;

Coonalley Quintus Magnus Gravitas "Quin," Black Smoke Maine Coon Neuter; and

RW SGCA & GP Earendil Sky "Sky," Solid Blue British Shorthair Spay.

This image was created in 2004 for our New Year's Card (we didn't make it in time for Christmas that year). The Brits were 7 years old and the Coons were 3 years old. Not telling you all how old Ken and I were!

Whatever your family celebrates this holiday season, we wish for all of you a healthy 2010, that your dreams are in the process of coming true, and that you are surrounded by those you love.

Ken and Helmi
Nox, Sky, Zak & Quin

Background for this shot: Paprika

High Key Christmas Card Attempt

This is a high key image of a white Persian on a white background, used for the cover of KOT magazine, a cat magazine in Poland, for their April issue in 2008.

I first heard about "high key" from other photographers ... loosely meaning that the image's midtones are high on the exposure scale, or bright and white. To me, high key images look very elegant. Therefore, I wanted to make a Christmas Card in 2002 that used whites, pale blues, silvers and lilacs to showcase our cats. Unfortunately, I didn't realize that having two essentially black cats would not be in keeping with "high key" ... live and learn. So the above was the result.

After Ken and I shot this (it took days to create the set and then shoot, with a tripod, the cats, two by two), I decided to stick to the more saturated and low key looks that we're known for.

Background: we used white background paper for this shot.

Congratulations to Bengals Illustrated

Congratulations to Brigitte McMinn, Editor of Bengals Illustrated, for winning two awards from the Cat Writers Association (CWA) recently! I am thoroughly impressed with Brigitte's work as the graphic design and reproduction quality of her magazine won out over many mainstream magazines from the CWA. You can read more about this at http://www.catwriters.org/

And thanks to Jan Harrell for bringing me Induna, above, to photograph for her 2008 Christmas Card at the Waxahachie Show last November. Jan brought the "wild" Christmas ornaments and I placed the ribbon on Induna, who was such a good boy and held the pose while I walked back from the shooting table to my area with my camera and took the shot.

Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas and Seasons Greetings to all our friends and Gentle Readers out there!

Background used for Induna in this shot: Claret.

Christmas Card Cats

Back in late 2001, Ken and I thought it would be a great idea to photograph our own cats and send the image out as a Christmas card that year. We created a "set" with colorful wrapped packages filled with sand (to keep them from shifting around), and then inserted one cat at a time. Little did we know how time-consuming this Christmas card would be!

First we "built" the set (keeping the cats out of the room - a difficult proposition), then put the camera on a tripod (using the Olympus C3000Z, I think) and brought in one cat at a time. We started with Sky, our Blue British Shorthair, since we thought she'd be the easiest. She was. We removed her and brought in Quin, our Black Smoke Maine Coon at the center top, who was a dream to photograph; then Nox, our Black Brit who has almost disappeared on the right side of the image. And lastly, Zak, our Blue and White Maine Coon who is the smartest one of all of them, loves to play (read Christmas ribbon) and the one who I thought might give us the hardest time. But the cats were the easiest part of all! The ribbon on the boxes lost its crispness (especially the pink one between Sky and Quin) so I found another, separated it from the background and pasted it in. I had to take parts of Nox and lighten them up as a separate layer, fuzz around the outsides and paste it back. Otherwise, Nox would look like a black blob. The tissue paper and green ribbon were put in post processing.

My main disappointment with all the work that we put into this image is that this was photographed with a 3 megapixel camera. I will never be able to enlarge this to the size I'd like it to be -- just not enough pixels.

We've been thinking about doing this again, especially since the cats are all eight years older now, but I'm not sure I want an image so close in appearance to this one -- even though it's my favorite!