Tiger Lovin' - © Copyright 2012 by William Beem

OK, this one is really stupid – even for me. This will either be a big hit or it will immediately crash & burn.  I would bet on the latter, but you never know.

The Birth of HDRCATS

Wednesday afternoon, I was watching the live webcast of Kelby TV’s show called The Grid. It’s an online talk show for photographers (though at least one Canadian cartoonist sneaks inside) on Wednesday at 4:00pm EST. If you miss the live broadcast, you can see the show as a podcast.  What you miss if you don’t attend the live show is participation in the site’s chatroom, and the chatroom is a pivotal part of the formation of HDRCATS.

Zack Arias was the guest on Wednesday’s show and – well, let’s just say that he’s not a fan of HDR.  That came up toward the end of the show as Scott Kelby was demonstrating some photo finishing techniques from his recent trip to India. Before Scott finished, Zack commented that the image had an HDR look to it.  Then, one of the folks in the chatroom – I honestly can’t remember who said it – mentioned that he had HDR pictures of his cat.  My feeble mind snapped out HDRCATS and it stuck.  Before the show was over, I registered hdrcats.tumblr.com.  It seemed like the appropriate place for such a thing.

I Need Your Cats

OK, now what?  I have two dogs and no cats. The only pictures of cats in my library are the tigers at Animal Kingdom, so there we shall begin. I have a friend with a very nice, fluffy cat and I’m going over on Saturday.  That’s right.  I’m taking HDR pictures of a cat.  Maybe more than one cat.  She also has another one that sounds somewhat bulky and has an extraordinary ability to raise its leg behind its head.  Apparently this cat is something of a trollop.

Honestly, I don’t have enough time or cats to populate this site full time, so I must ask for help from the Internet.  Send me your HDRCATS. and I’ll post them on the site. You can make a nice photo or a truly horrific, grungy HDR photo of your cat.  Variety is the spice of life and HDRCATS. I don’t care if you use a bunch of brackets or create your HDR from a single RAW file.  If you don’y have HDR software, send me a single RAW file and I’ll create it for you.

My only condition is that every photo sent to me must be under a Creative Commons license that allows usage.  I’ll be happy to support your CC license with attribution and a link back to your blog, web site, or URL of choice.

You may send your photos to hdrcats at williambeem.com and I’ll post them. I have no idea how this will end, but life is full of uncertainties.