Cat portrait

I really like shooting photos of animals (one of my favourite photos from last year is a photo of jaguar) with one of my dream being going on a safari. It's something different. You get what animal want to give you and nothing more. Will it play, sit still, look into the lens... it's totally up to it. You can try influencing its behaviour but it won't always help much :) With landscapes I also get what nature wants me to give but it's easier as the landscape at least doesn't move :)

Another thing is shooting black animals. Focusing is tough (one piece of advice - always focus on the nose, if it's out of focus and even the eyes are sharp the image will look bad...), exposing correctly is tough, using flash is tough (because it might create bright reflections on fur which might result in some crazy chromatic aberration...). Still it's very nice and I often shoot them.

Here is a portrait of my cat. The background wasn't white. Don't know all the fancy colour names but I think it could be classified as beige. I used on camera flash and bounced it off the ceiling. I would prefer another setup but generally my cats are small missiles and they don't spend anywhere more than a few seconds so I was running after her trying to capture her sitting still :)

EXIF data:
Camera: Canon 5D MK II
Lens: Canon 50 f/1.8
Focal length: 50 mm
Aperture: f/3.5
Exposure time: 1/80
ISO: 100
Number of exposures: 1
E.V. Step: n/a
Flash used: yes, 580 EX II bounced off ceiling
Tripod used: no
Filters used: no
Software: Magic Lantern 2.3, Lightroom 4.2, Photoshop CS6