eyes that tell stories

You look to the eyes for a story, right?  From time to time, we take in an animal for foster care through our local vet clinic.  This is Mona.  We were supposed to have her for two weeks, but it's stretching to almost three.  Not to worry.  We think we may have found a good home for her.  I think her eyes tell us that she is content.  She has a sweet disposition.  She's gentle and mild, plus, she does not bark much.  In fact, I think my dog taught her that she's supposed to bark when she hears someone at the door.

Her eyes tell another story, too.  The reflection from her eye is in sharp focus, so that if you look carefully, you will see the lighting that I used for this picture.  I took some non-functioning relics that used to be a wireless flash transmitter and receiver, stripped the guts, and hardwired it to make an extension cable from my camera's hot shoe to an external flash.  I mounted the flash on a tripod, and aimed it straight up to the ceiling, and one or two feet to my left.  Since I was blocking some of the light from the windows behind me, the result was that the front lights came from my left and right for a soft fill.  The key light was what the flash bounced off the ceiling.  Black fur absorbs so much light, that I usually find it impossible to see this much detail.  That, plus her eyes are almost always hiding in the shadows.

Oh, and guess what... I did not realize that I had my camera set to "continuous auto-focus."  Last week's zone focusing was a type of manual focusing; this was auto-focused.  So anyway, when I was focusing, then repositioning, a lot of my pics were coming out blurry.  Grrr...  I can't believe it took me so long to find out!!!  That only presented a problem in one of the focusing methods I used.  Maybe I'll talk more about those, later.