Rat Cat

One of my favorites. The basic image for this montage was a shot I'd taken of our kitten, OJ, on the earth filled flower pot.

The rat was killed by another cat who dragged it into our house, and on a hunch that I might one day use it, I decided to take it’s picture before giving it a proper burial. Used the same Elinchrom studio flash as with the kitten shot, hanging the rat by it’s tail from a tripod.

Of course, this particular shoot, as well as the subsequent burial in the garden under pouring rain, was done after everyone else had gone to bed :-)

As the idea for the end image began to evolve, I felt some flowers were needed in the pot with the kitten... so I bought a pot of petunias (think that's what they were), and weighed them down with my light meter to simulate the kitten sitting on them. I then isolated the flowers from their original background and the light meter so I could drag them into the image of OJ on the pot.

The rat was also isolated from the original background of its portrait... not easy as I needed to keep the edges of the fur in tact, and was also dragged onto the image. The tail was edited so it fit convincingly in OJ's chops.

All 3 elements - OJ in pot, crushed flowers and rat were put together in Photoshop. Direction of lighting and shadow effects were important to make the collage look realistic.

Only editing aside from merging the selected elements in layers was the shadowing. This was done by selection and feathering of the shadow shapes and dropping the levels and contrast in separate layers.

All elements shot on Fuji Reala 100 ISO color print film with a Canon EOS 100 SLR and EF 100mm fixed focal lens. Individual shots scanned to digital with Canon FS 2710 negative scanner, processing in Photoshop 6.0.