This is one of Helmi Flick’s cat group specials. They are her trademark, almost. Their success is dependent on Ken Flick getting the cats into position and Helmi timing the moment when she fires the camera shutter. These are fleeting moments as you can imagine. The frozen image does not tell the story. There is a lot of action and activity by people to capture one cat moment. I have deliberately not disclosed the type of cat being discussed in the title because the history of the picture dictates that.
It is on Facebook, illegally, and Facebook members were speculating what these cats are. One person thought they were ocelots. It would be totally impossible to get 6 ocelots together in a studio and then photograph them like this. The ocelot is a very intense, small to medium sized wild cat. Even domesticated ocelots (there are some, I believe) could not be wrangled into position like these cats.
These gorgeous creatures are Bengal cats. They look as if they are high quality and they may be 3rd generation or something like that rather then 4th or 5th generation, which are called SBT cats meaning “Stud Book Tradition”. Their markings are very pure and striking and very reminiscent of the wild cat ancestor/father the Asian leopard cat.
An interesting (for me) aspect of this picture is that it is on the Facebook website in violation of Helmi’s copyright. Facebook is no better than Pinterest when it comes to almost ignoring copyright. If you want to complain to Facebook you have to be the holder of the copyright. This is very poor because it is usual for an agent acting for the holder of the intellectual property to be allowed to make an application. Facebook’s policy is restrictive. Facebook does want the bother of complaints.
They are not truly bothered about breaches of copyright it appears, despite saying things to the contrary. There are massive amounts of copyright violations on Facebook. I fear for the legal concept of copyright. I think it is being eroded (dying?) thanks to Facebook and Pinterest. And the big media sites want that as it facilitates their business.
OK I’ll send you some photos of my Beauty Queen Kiva
How can I post photos of my Beautiful Bengal Cat?
Hi Ruth. There are two ways. You can use the form on this page (scroll down) or simply email me:
mjbmeister [at] gmail.com (change the [at] to @)
Bravo for a truly fantastic photo of 6 Bengal Kittens. I know just how difficult it is to do a shot like this because I had my own photo business in NYC for 20 years & one of my clients hired me to do a Christmas Photo of her Doggie & Cat sitting side by side in front of a roaring fire. I got the perfect pic but it took a lot of creative thinking & fast action. I am the proud owner of a truly beautiful female Bengal F3 with rosettes & tiger stripes that are dark bittersweet chocolate set on a deep orange brown and her coat is overshot with Gold Glitter. Kiva has fantastic Green eyes & knows she is a Beauty Queen. When she sees me holding my camera she immediately poses. The difficult shots to get are those of her running, bouncing off walls, doing her super high jumps, etc.
So when I say Bravo, Congratulations on a Great, Fantastic, Beautiful shot it is because I know how difficult a shot like this is to take. You are an Expert to be able to get this shot of 6 active Bengal Kittens all sitting nicely posed at the same time. This is a WOW photo in every way. Your assistants did a great job of setting this up, getting all the Bengals into position using a flying toy to get then looking towards the camera and You were ready to Click, Click, Click. Bravo to all.
Excellent group photo.
It really is a perfect and amazing photo. I am amazed at how difficult it must be to achieve such a shot. This really is a particular skill and one at it’s very best no doubt. Magnificent, and they are all but one looking in the same direction. I love that just one of them is looking at the camera. Perhaps Helmi would prefer them all to be looking the same way but I must say I like the one on the left side because he is looking at the viewer/camera. That they are positioned symetrically and posed in particular and intentional looking positions must be a feat of huge proportions. I am curious to know if she sets her camera to just take continuous shots or actually aims to shoot at the right moment. With the advent of digital photography it doesn’t cost money to take a thousand pictures as it used to, so I would guess alot of moving and fast action photography benefits hugely from this fact.
Great stuff! What skilled artists Helmi and Ken truly are to acheive something like this. It almost looks photoshopped just because perfect photos such as this, in this day and age, automatically contend with the idea and possibility of manipulation. There is no more trust in what is the camera’s reality and what is that reality modified purposefully. This is art in the old fashioned sense. Great enough to put big on your wall. Before digital manipulation a photo like this will have stood out miles before the others. Well done 🙂
Helmi takes single shots so it is about timing. Ken will work with the breeder. I will guess the breeder held three kittens and Ken held three as well (or an assistant held three). They put them down on the studio table next to the prop. Ken, standing next to Helmi about 8 feet from the cats, used a cat tease (he has many) to attract the kittens’ attention. Helmi gets a picture. The kittens disperse and mess around and Ken and the breeder reposition them again and Ken uses the long tease again to get them facing the camera. That might go on for about 20 mins after which the cats are tired and humans are even more tired 😉
Sometimes when Helmi wants a large mural type picture of 20 cats she will use Photoshop to stitch the pics together. The lighting is strobe light meaning flash light. This freezes motion and the cats don’t mind.