I am the Minnesota Dog Guy–but I photograph cats too!
While it is true that the great majority of the pets I photograph are dogs I do photograph cats, too. There is a whole different psychology in photographing cats. First off, the various noisemakesr and squeekies I use with dogs are generally ineffective and useless. Plus the various barking sounds and growls I use with dogs really don’t work either. Cats tend to respond to visual cues or really interesting sounds that are out of the ordinary and unique.
Patrick Nau
They tend to fall into 2 types of reactions to having a portrait made. Relentless efforts to run and hide or what I call ‘freezing up.” That is almost becoming statue like which allows me to take a variety of portraits from a lot of slightly different angles that really show off the individual beauty and grace of the cat. Of course, with the really active cat the wrangler’s job is to keep the cat on the table while I work to capture great expressions in the split-seconds when the cat is perfectly still.
In my studio I try to keep the hiding places to a minimum so a nervous cat can’t easily hide. I coach the owner or owners to be quick , active wranglers and to not give up and I will do the rest to capture with my camera those nice portraits that the owner(s) will love.
