Mark Cassino Photography - Mark's Blog

A cat eagerly watching to see what comes next...

I shot this using a Ricoh Diacord L TLR, circa 1957. It a great camera and a I love the quality of the images that the Tessar design lens produces. This was shot wide open at f3.5 on Tri-X. (Developed in HC110 Dil B.) Unfortunately the Diacord's winding mechanism has gone wonky - sometimes spacing exposures far apart and sometimes barely leaving any room between them at all. I'm hoping that it will work itself out some how (wishful thinking probably...)

 I wanted to take some photos of birds so I pulled my car alongside my birdfeeders. I figured I'd hop in and use the car as a blind. After moving the car I grabbed my camera and 400mm lens to step outside, but my cat had already taken up watch on the roof of the car. I grabbed this snap of him with the birding setup - no doubt he's thinking "Hey, I'm watching the birds here! Quit scaring them away!"

Pentax K-3 and Tokina ATX 400mm f5.6.

One of my cats lounging away a winter afternoon:

Made with Petnax 6x7, 105mm f2.4 lens on extension tubes, Classic Pan 400 film developed in Rodinal 1:50.

And loving every minute....

I broke my Pentax 6x7 earlier in the summer, and while Peter’s Camera Repair in Grand Rapids fixed it promptly, it took me forever to get up there and pick it up, and even longer to get around to testing it. Yesterday I grabbed the only available model and ran a roll of Agfa APX 400 through it.

It works fine! The cat is no doubt contemplating the irony of an empty treat ball and a human attendant who points a black box at him that periodically makes a loud clanking sound…

Pentax 6x7, Takumar 105mm f2.4. Hand held at 1/60th and f4.5. Click on the image for a much larger view.

After a couple of days being offline due to a technical glitch, I have to post a cat photo to celebrate getting the blog up and running again!One of the more reclusive and less often photographed of the felines that prowl around here…

IR converted Pentax K10D with Ricoh XR Rikenon 28mm f2.8.

One thing about cats is that they really love looking through windows. Someone once told me that to a cat, a window is like a TV. They will sit still and peer through the glass for a long time, watching the activity on the other side. My cat is no exception - here’s a snap shot of him peering through the kitchen windows.