pets magazine: august 2014
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In this edition: exclusive photography tips by renowned photographer David Fairman; Karl Lagerfeld's Choupette reviewed; insights into MRSA in dogs, and much more!TRANSCRIPT
News & views, expert advice + top product picks!
August 2014
MRSA IN DOGS: One woman’s fight
Choupette, the private life of a high-flying fashion cat
Pets in motion: photography tips by David Fairman
In our continuing focus on pet and animal photography, top photographer and film director David Fairman exclusively shares his insider tips for capturing moving targets.
1. Decide what you want to capture. This includes all
sport, dance, motoring and performance photography. You could be shooting a fast moving ballet, a football match or a
lively rock band. Whatever the subject matter work out the kind
of feeling or narrative you are after.
2. Find your best position.This is the first and most important decision once you arrive on your set, as you might
not be able to move later. Seek out a position that is good for
the light. In daylight, will the light be good for the whole
session, or would another position be better? What is the best
position to capture the event in the best way?
3. Look for interesting angles. While you are choosing this
position check that it offers the very best angle. Would it be
better to be much higher? How could you get yourself in a
higher shooting position? Would it be more interesting to shoot even lower, perhaps say through the grass at a polo match?
4. Long lenses are a must: Without a long lens, moving
targets are often difficult to shoot, as you are usually some
distance from your subject and a long lens can give you some excellent focus differential. Try a 300mm – 400mm for sports
and a 70mm – 200mm for dance or performance.
How to photograph moving targets
Photograph by/© David Fairman
www.petsmag.co.uk
5. Using fast shutter speeds well: Most moving subjects
need to have their action
frozen. This is simply done by
using a fast or short shutter speed, anything form 1/250
seconds to 1/1000 seconds. The
chosen shutter speed required
will depend on how fast the
subject is moving across the camera plane.
A person at the same actual
speed coming straight
towards you will be travelling slower relative to
your camera than it would
be if it travelled straight
across the frame. Try
experimenting and check the results to find the best
shutter speed to stop any
movement. If in a hurry
then use 1/1000th second to
be safe.
6. Prepare to up your ISO: With a very fast shutter speed
and an ISO setting of say 200,
you might find that your f stop is wide open at F2. But this will
give you very little latitude of
focus. In other words, at F2
your subject might not be still
in focus as your subject moves in and out of focus. This is
especially difficult in a moving
target. The best strategy is to
up your ISO or sensitivity of
your camera. If you change your ISO to 800, this would
give you an extra two stops.
You would now be shooting at
F5.6 which will give you more
depth of focus and enable you
to keep your subject sharp.
7. Learn anticipation by getting it wrong: The best
way to learn anticipation is to
get it wrong. Say you are trying
to shoot a horse jumping over a
fence in an arena. You keep
trying to shoot it but keep
missing. Keep missing and keep
shooting these missed shots until you train your
anticipation subconsciously.
Once mastered, your brain will
tell you how to anticipate this action every time. Do not ever
be afraid to fail as you will learn
from all of these failures and
produce that great shot that
you have had the patience for.
8. Manual or auto focus? Auto-focus can be useful, but
for most moving pictures I
would recommend a manual
focus mode. This is because often you have to wait for your
subject to enter the focused
area of your frame. This makes
shooting in auto focus mode
very difficult. Use manual focus and set it at a point
where you want to shoot
your subject.
This will be a focused
position in which the subject will often have to move in to.
9. Concentrating attention: In sports and
action photography is often very effective to concentrate
attention on your subject.
The easiest way to do this is
to ensure that the
background is out of focus while your subject is sharp. Use
a long focus lens of 100mm to
200 mm and an f stop from F2
to F4 and you will then have a
nicely out of focus background which will concentrate
attention on your sharp subject.
10. Blurring the background: A blurred background is quite different to
an out-of-focus one. The best
way to do this is to pan your
camera following your subject
using a much slower shutter speed than normal for an action
shot.
Photograph by/© David Fairman
www.petsmag.co.uk
Try panning your camera with
your subject at say 1/15 second
for most speeds; this works
best with subjects moving
directly across your frame. A lens of shorter focal length can
be used to pan. You will be
surprised at how good these
pictures can be.
11. Panning with a tripod: Though panning hand held can
work well, it will be that much
better if you employ a normal
tripod with a good pan-and-tilt head. Your experimentation
will be repeatable and the pan
will be much smoother and
straighter. With a good tripod
and some smooth panning you could easily get some great
pictures here.
12. Differential Blur: Blurring part of your subject or even your entire subject can
create a great sense of
movement. Say you are
shooting a group of military
drummers marching towards
you.
You have estimates that because they are moving
towards the camera a shutter
speed of 1/125th second should
stop their body movements but
their hands beating the drums are moving much faster. So you
shoot the picture at 1/125th
second. The result is a sharp
picture of the drummers with
their hands slightly blurred giving a wonderful sense of
movement. These kinds of
shots, where one part of the
subject is moving faster than
the other gives us the opportunity to shoot
differential blur that can be so
effective.
13. Will built in flash work? I never like to say no but this is
an absolute no-go. Do not use
any built in flash on your
camera for the main light on
action pictures. It will stop the
action but will make your
picture too flat. The only time
you should use it is for a fill in light. If you have access to
separate external flash
lighting not built in to the
camera, then you can really
stop action very well in a tiny fraction of the second when
the flash goes off. Then, light
your subject in the same way
you would any other subject.
14. Sports mode on your camera: Some cameras have a
sports mode on them. It can be
useful to set up your camera in
this way. Alternatively, you could put your camera on
shutter priority to stop
movement or for panning.
Be careful that you have enough f stops to cope with the
exposure. Your camera should
tell you if you are about to be
under-exposed. If it does tell
you, then increase the ISO or sensitivity levels. Be careful and
check your results. Beware of
the camera taking too many
decisions for itself.
These strategies are taken from David Fairman’s best selling book Take Great
Digital Pictures in 24
Hours. Available from Amazon.
Photograph by/© David Fairman
www.petsmag.co.uk
Choupette, The Private Life of a High-Flying Fashion Cat
Photograph by/© Karl Lagerfeld
Choupette is a beautiful book
about a beautiful cat. The
photography is by owner Karl
Lagerfeld and the compilation
is by Patrick Mauriès and Jean-Christophe Napias.
As celebrities go, Choupette is
lovely. She is a beautiful
Birman cat, a breed known for
their affection and loyalty. The blueness of her eyes has been
incorporated in much of
Lagerfeld`s recent design and
indeed Choupette’s face has
been the inspiration for clothing, accessories and
advertising icons.
Indeed Karl Lagerfeld produced
a whole range of designs
around “Choupette blue”.
In all of this, Choupette is a
globetrotting feline with a
minder and cordon bleu tastes.
Sophisticated menus of food
are prepared for her and feature in the book. In later
sections, the obsession with
Choupette gives way to gently
philosophical musings on the
nature of cats and there is a particularly fascinating gallery
of cats with their either
celebrity owners or appearing
in iconic contexts such as “Cat”
in Breakfast at Tiffany’s with Audrey Hepburn.
As the book quotes,
Collette :“there is no such thing
as an ordinary cat”, nor would
Choupette ever feature as being anything other than
extraordinary with her fabulous
looks and famous owner…
The book has within it a tacit
nature of our acceptance of cat
habits and the nature of the unconditionality that they
generate in us. It is this very
feature that redeems it from
being otherwise the whim of a
well to do internationally known designer and
businessman displaying his
obsession to the world.
Actually, cats make most of us
display our neurosis publically. Anybody who known me and
my relationship with Lola, the
small “half price” moggie that
came to us for sanctuary and
Choupette the fashionata: with top model Laetitia Casta
Photograph by/© Karl Lagerfeld
www.petsmag.co.uk
never left four
years ago will
know that a fair
old few quaint
behaviours have developed in me
as a result!
Cats connect with
us in a way that
perhaps other animals do not.
They are loving,
attention-seeking,
playful and
dependant yet at the same time are
their own selves,
sometimes aloof,
distant, with their
own internal process.
Just as the ancient
Egyptians saw
cats touching the
spirit, it becomes very obvious that Choupette
has touched something very
fundamental in Mr Lagerfeld in
the very way that cats connect
with us all. The manifestation however is a glory of fabulous
photographs and musings that
make any cat lover smile and
connect rather than question
the particular attachment that one cat owner has manifested
and made public.
One gains the impression that
Mr Lagerfeld wanted to share
Choupette with the world rather than profit from the
publication of the book. She is a
beauty, but the truth is so are
all cats and they touch our
hearts in ways that we often
want to make large.
I completely relate to Karl Lagerfeld’s and the
contributors’ attempts to bring
to public awareness the sheer
joy of having a cat companion
in your life, a pleasure which many people deny themselves
and all the human
idiosyncrasies they trigger as a
result of their species common
traits yet nonetheless unique personalities.
This is not a
cheap book and
it’s an
indulgence,
much the same as sitting in a
restaurant
pondering
though an
expensive sweet menu deciding
to pick one for
luxuries sake
alone. For me,
I'm up for second helpings.
One slight
cautionary note,
when one
overcomes the reconciliation of
different
lifestyles and
thinks of
Choupette sidling up to the pilot of
Largerfeld’s private plane,
perhaps the Civil Aviation
Authority should also read this
publication!
‘Choupette The Private Life
of a High-Flying Fashion
Cat’ By Patrick Mauriès
and Jean-Christophe
Napias Photographs by Karl Lagerfeld is
published by Thames &
Hudson on September 22
2014 & priced at £12.95.
Review by David Cliff, MD of Gedanken.
Choupette with Madame Horn © Karl Lagerfeld
www.petsmag.co.uk
By Jill Moss, The Bella Moss Foundation
Last month, the long-running topic of antimicrobial
resistance (AMR) made
national headlines when David
Cameron announced a review
of the UK antibiotics market.
While the news was broadly
welcomed by those working in
human and animal medicine,
many were also keen to point out the bigger picture on AMR,
how bacteria will constantly
evolve to be resistant and how
the real solution lay in a joint
fightback by all healthcare professionals – whatever
species they treat.
Yet only one pet-centric
organisation dared to raise this point in the national media –
my charity, The Bella Moss
Foundation.
The origins of BMF The death of a cherished pet is
often an occasion of sadness,
but in my case it was a catalyst
for action. My ten-year-old
Samoyed Bella died in August 2004 of a misdiagnosed MRSA
infection.
Today, the charity I set up in
her memory helps hundreds of
animals survive MRSA and
other serious infections, thanks to better education and early
detection.
BMF asks pet owners whose
pets are sick to get their vets to contact our veterinary experts
who then intervene with
treatment and often turn cases
around. Its board of clinical
advisors give up their time
freely to help fight the spread of
unwanted infections and to educate on preventing the
transfer of diseases between
humans and animals.
BMF is unique; we are the only charity helping to bridge the
gap between human and
MRSA in dogs: Fighting for dogs like Bella
Happier times: Jill Moss with Bella.
www.petsmag.co.uk
animal health with regards
to resistant infections. Our
message is clear: we see a
world where AMR
infections are a rarity, rather than grabbing
headlines.
What we doSince its inception, the charity has worked
tirelessly to support pet
owners whose pets are at
risk and to galvanize the
vet profession to take better precautions in
preventing the spread of
infections. BMF has hosted
international conferences and
educational seminars for doctors, vets and nurses all
over the world.
The charity’s website hosts a
variety of information and
videos for reference and download, which browsing
owners and industry
professionals find useful.
However, people often get in
touch with us over the phone or via email with immediate
concerns about their pet’s
health and cross infection risks
in the home.
Every case is different and this means we want to provide
personal support for people
and their pets. Having a pet
with a resistant infection can be
isolating, people do not want to
approach you, family members
and other pets may be at risk,
hygiene in the home has to be
increased, and BMF advises
people on caring for sick pets, often when their own vets do
not have the time to go into
detail.
Most importantly, we strive to
educate owners and vets so that these infections are prevented
in the first place.
I am proud to say that Bella’s
suffering was not in vain, as we
have helped so many pets survive. I have become a lay
authority on government
committees and I represent the
pet owner voice in the press.
I am clear with every pet carer
on the simple steps that can
take to protect their pets from
infections:
- avoid long term antibiotics
use;
- ensure your chosen vet has good hygiene protocols in
place, and;
- keep pets healthy and away
from long-term hospitalisation
if possible.
Nobody gets paid at BMF; we
do this altruistically and rely on
volunteers and donations to
help others. Out biggest challenge is to present quite
complicated scientific material
to people in a way they will
understand. Currently, we try
to reach pet owners through our educational events and at
animal shows and soon we will
be developing e-learning
modules.
Suffering: Cashew the dog has MRSA
www.petsmag.co.uk
For vets and nurses we have a
website where best practice is
an example and we also
produce free industry-
endorsed infection control guidelines for practice staff.
The role of vets
With no enforceable standards
of cleanliness for the veterinary
profession, vets can choose whether to practice good
infection control but there is
no mandatory requirement for
them to do so. Is your vet doing
all they can to protect your pet from unwanted infections and
how would you know if they're
not?
A recent BMF pet owner survey
revealed 84 per cent of pet owners do not question use of
pet antibiotics and trust their
vets – but we can’t be
complacent. We must take
responsibility for our pet’s health and just like we research
other areas of our lives we must
carefully choose our veterinary
practice.
The fight goes on – will you help us?
BMF arose from a personal
experience and was initially
focused on MRSA. However,
with the development of so many other resistant bugs –
include e. coli and MRSP – it is
now having to constantly
update and expand our
resources, all with limited
funds and a dedicated skeleton
staff of volunteers.
I run the charity in my spare
time and I will never give up
because every animal we save is
a testimonial to Bella.
In October BMF is hosting its
first-ever one health
conference, aimed at vets,
doctors, pet owners and
Government policy makers.
The charity has come a long
way in such a short time but the
fight against AMR continues.
To find out more about the BMF story and the charity's work, or to make a donation, please visit our website. Any donations or support, however small, will go towards saving more pets in need.
Beautiful Bella: In happier times
www.petsmag.co.uk
Product PicksROBERTS ROVER: His master’s voice gets a makeover
The iconic Roberts Revival DAB radio gets a cute canine makeover courtesy of Clarke and Clarke's Rover design.
The Robert Revival has been decorated in many different ways in the past, but this retro dog and polka dot pattern really plays up on the 1950s look of the radio. It comes courtesy of textile designers Clarke and Clarke.
We can really recommend this wonderfully stylish and quirky radio - not only does it look great, but it sounds great too!
The radio has all the features you would expect - including rotary tuning and volume controls, station name display and a headphone socket.
The Roberts Rover is priced at £200. For stockist details please visit www.robertsradio.co.uk
The perfect travel guide for dog lovers
We love Phileas Dogg’s Guide to Dog-Friendly Holidays in
Britain. The travel guide is packed full of dog-friendly places
to stay and stop off throughout the UK. It’s a great gift for anyone who really doesn’t want to leave their pooch at home
or in kennels while they go off on holiday.
Writer Jane Common and her dog Attlee travelled the country
to find the best dog-friendly digs for their book which has leapt to the top of the Amazon charts since its release.
Anyone thinking about taking their dog on holiday anytime
soon should read this book first, and make sure to pack it in
the suitcase. It’s wonderfully browsable too.
Priced at £12.99 and available from Amazon.
www.petsmag.co.uk