We paid a studio visit* to Kelly Smith Mollins’ (Dancing Cat Clayworks) house today to pick up a pair of pottery dancing cats and to visit eight live ones.

Smokey was feeling particularly photogenic:

And he looks rather different from the side…

In order to work in the very low light conditions I switched to my 50mm prime lens and opened the aperture right up. I still had to bump the ISO up to 500 to avoid needing a flash and the shutter speeds were quite slow, ranging from 1/10 to 1/45 of a second, which is quite slow for a hand-held shot of an animal prone to sudden movement or random breathing.

Some of the shots didn’t come out as well as I’d hoped due to a slight motion blur. Since both the cats and I had to breathe, there wasn’t much that I could do about it under the circumstances. The one below, of Thor, was a gorgeous shot but without a tripod or bumping up the ISO still further (it was already at 500, remember), there was bound to be a slight blur.

If I had taken a few dozen more shots I probably would have landed one that wasn’t burred, but McGyver (large, ginger and gregarious) was rather insistent that I pay attention to HIM.

Katherine got a kick out of seeing Kelly’s studio and kiln and we happily got to take two of her dancing cats home with us. While we were there, we got to see the smallest of the cats she had made. While I initially thought it seemed like one small cat against an army of giants, I now think it looks more like one small conductor controlling an army of musicians!

We’ll have to head back again soon with a couple of bottles of wine for Kelly and to take a few pictures of the cats that evaded the camera!

* so many of my friends are craftspeople and artists that going to their house becomes a studio visit by default.