memorial caturday

Luke and his patented over-the-shoulder look

This has been a bad week for me, primarily because of what happened in Uvalde, Texas. I’ve been wanting to write something about the event, but it’s tough. It will come out, perhaps tomorrow. In the mean time I offer these three photos of two of the kindest and sweetest creatures on God’s green earth to help counter the horror of 24 May.

The opportunities for these photos just happened to present themselves at the same time. The late afternoon light coming into the kitchen seemed to add a special magic to everything.

Beau likes to sit under the kitchen table close to Luke
Luke contemplating if he should go get more Temptations or another can of his food

All the photos are JPEGs straight out of an original OM-D EM-5 using an m.Zuiko 1.8/45mm at f/2. The whole package was, and still is, a compact, quiet, and capable little photography package. Not bad for a camera announced in February 2012 and given a gold award by DPReview that April.

cats, lighting and micro four thirds

I’ve noted many times before on this blog that Luke has many favorite resting spots around the house. An almost infinite number, one might say. When he gets bored he goes hunting for never-before-used spots, like here. This clean spot on the kitchen table had a pair of folded towels that Luke immediately took an interest in. Luke does love his soft spots. He settled down with his fore paws stretched out in the sunbeam coming through the kitchen window. For added dramatic effect he crossed his paws, settling down with his eyes closed to enjoy the afternoon warmth on his paws.

This photo is a JPEG straight out of the GH4. I have the color and exposure tuned to provide less luminance and color contrast in-camera. The GH4 has an exposure curve just like the one in the Olympus E-M5 and Pen F, and it’s set to the same values as in both Olympus cameras.

Now the nit-noids are going to complain that the shadows are too dark and the highlights too overexposed. I don’t care. This is how I saw the scene. I’ll be damned if I’m going to sit in front of a computer screen playing with Lightroom trying to “balance” the highlight and shadow areas. I’m happy with the way it came out of the camera.

Now another straight-out-of-the-GH4 JPEG. I showed this in one of the last posts, King of the House, but I’d broken down and actually edited the RAW file in Lightroom and published the result.

I wish now I’d published this version instead of the edited one. The eyes in particular are well emphasized. The overall tones are lighter and brighter, an effect that the GH4 produced. When they talk about color science in a camera, it’s true science developed by scientists and engineers who are well versed in the art. Me, I’m just an amateur who knows just enough to be dangerous.