Porgy and Bessie's page.

A few pictures for Caren at Cat Chat, some may have appeared before,

but to save scrolling -

Bess in a box

Porgy (Piggy) and Bess were sisters, and Socrates is Piggy's daughter.  Socs is a survivor.  She fell from her mother's jaws about 12 feet onto a wooden floor when a mere handful, and suffered possible brain-damage.  She was rejected by her tiny sister and Mum for a while and was given to walking in circles. She got better, started to feed again, but from then she never wanted to be touched or picked up, almost never purrs or makes eye contact, but follows me up and down the stairs whenever she is around.  A year later she lost her tail under the wheels of a car - well, it was damaged, it went black, got maggoty despite all the creams, and one day it disappeared except for the little black tuft at the end, which I found on the door step. The tail didn't fall off.

I should have been a pro. masseuse.

And I can tell you those hands went into Bessie's ample padding right up to the elbows.

Gotcher!

Head-bangers

I'm so very tired

Technical note.  Taken on an Olympus, at least 5 years old, these shots were actually in need of very little editing, and by chance little cropping. Every digital image from cameras of this vintage need sharpening, but more importantly, the ISO setting should be 400 or 800, standard, if the camera will allow, and the shutter speed should be 1000th sec. minimum if you like sharp pictures. (especially using maximum zoom).

Older and simpler cameras cannot deal with high lighting contrasts, especially in close-ups.  In the shot 'Gotcher' all detail is lost in the background, but it did not matter because lighting on the subjects was soft. A camera on auto exposure would have been dazzled by the background, and Porgy&Bess would have come out as silhouettes - editing 'levels' (brightness) later would not have worked very well.

The moral is:  Learn Manual Settings if you want to take nice pictures in other than very average conditions.  So-called 'programs' do nothing except sell cameras.  All poets learn the alphabet, and some even learn grammar.  

One to one instruction?  $7 a week?  Some of you need it.  Only joking! Probably.