Drinking Cat

Drinking Cat, originally uploaded by Wesley Oostvogels.

A cute little cat I found in Ghent. I followed it all around the garden to shoot photos. Eventually this photo I liked best. It was drinking from this ceramic pot filled with rainwater. Personally I like the DOF which makes the foreground look so touchable and intimite. It fits the look in his eyes.

Camera: Nikon D200
Focal Length: 50mm
Exposure: 1/250
Aperture: f/2.5
ISO: 320
Because the cat was running around all the time I used aperture priority so I could make sure the DOF was the way I wanted it. I used Continuous-Servo AF settings to keep up with him.

Because I only had a 50mm objective on my Nikon, and I had no others with me I was forced to use this one. Normally it would be my first one to use when shooting cats, but this little critter ran around all the time and didn't seem to like my camera too much. So I wished I had a short telezoom lens with me to make the job easier.
However after a few minutes playing around he got used to me and came to me to play. That made it a lot easier. I followed this little guy around the garden and it seemed to like it more and more.
When he got tired (at last) I got to take this shot of him drinking from the bowl. You can see he was still careful when people were walking near us but his look made the image look much better!