I am 52 years old, now happily married with no kids. I grew up in Knoxville, Tennessee. I started college in Cookeville, TN at Tennessee Tech University where I studied Mechanical Engineering. After participating in their co-op education program where I worked for NASA at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, I transferred to the University of Tennessee at Knoxville where I earned a B.S degree in Aerospace Engineering. I then went to work for NOAA's Atmospheric Turbulence and Diffusion Division in Oak Ridge in 1993 as a computer programmer and research pilot.
I live in West Knoxville, having bounced around a bit from one place to the other in the last few years. I used to own a house in West Knoxville and had an experience with possums that I wrote up because it was hilarious! Click here to read about my interesting experience with possums! K-Cat started coming around in May, 2003 and was looking for a good home and some love. He has become a great friend and companion. The collage above was made just after he first started coming around and the pictures below were made in 2005 and 2006. Notice how much fatter he has gotten in the past few years! What can I say? He's a happy kitty!
Here are a few of my best pictures of K-Cat. The one on the top left was made from my back deck early one morning in good light in September, 2005. The close-up in the top right was made on my bed one morning while "K" was just waking up. The one on the bottom left was made with K-Cat lounging in the green grass one day. The picture on the bottom right was made one night when K's pupils were dialated and he was laying on my computer desk. Isn't he cute?
Visit K-Cat's very own homepage -and- Ed's Funnies Page
Photo note: The photo
at the top left (the portrait of K-Cat's face) was shot in natural light in my
bedroom at ISO 1600, 1/8 sec, handheld, in RAW mode. Lens was the 28-105 Canon
zoom, opened up to f/4.5 and zoomed to 100 mm. This is a good example of where
shooting in RAW mode "saved" the photo because of the way the auto white balance
really screwed up K's nice white furry face. I shot eight photos in the session,
some with flash and some without, and all except the photo above at ISO 100.
The Digi Rebel flash was way too powerful and blew out K's fur in some places,
so I elected to use the natural light photos. Fortunately, I had changed the
ISO to 1600 on one "just for kicks" that allowed a high enough shutter speed to
get the details in sharp focus. All that remained was to crank the exposure up
about 1.5 stops and crank the color temperature down to about 3500K, which brought
out the nice white fur and details in K's face. And the best part: I did all
that without changing any of the original digital data collected by the CMOS
sensor! RAW is fantastic! There are a few remnants of "grain" from the high
ISO setting, but I think it adds a little character to the photo.
Another photo note: The
photo at the bottom right (again, a portrait of K-Cat's face) was shot in
natural light in my bedroom at ISO 800, 1/6 sec, handheld, in RAW mode. Lens
was the 28-105 Canon zoom, opened up to f/4.5 and zoomed to 105 mm on a Canon EOS
5D body. This is a another example of shooting in RAW and "pushing" the image
about 1/2 stop to get proper exposure and adjusting the white balance after the
picture was taken.
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