Along Louisiana Street, between Meade and Monroe, on July 1, 2018, my wife and I spotted the furball appropriately nicknamed Ginger. I am fairly confident this is the same cat we saw moseying up Monroe behind Royal nearly a month earlier. Then, Ginger turned down the alley behind, which is where he, or she, went through a yard not long after I snapped the Featured Image.

I am rather dissatisfied with the portrait and its companion; for now they must do until another opportunity presents—and that time could be long coming, if ever. I captured both photos using Leica Q, three minutes to sunset (7:58 p.m. PDT). Vitals for the first, aperture and shutter speed preset for dusk street shooting: f/1.7, ISO 250, 1/250 sec, 28mm. The other is the same, except for ISO 1000. 

Shooting kitty portraits after sunset—in this case 26 minutes later—presents challenges, particularly when the subject hides under a parked vehicle. The furball strutted down the sidewalk as I approached along Florida Street between Madison and Monroe, then fled beneath a Cadillac; hence the chosen nickname.

The Featured Image is the last of a half-dozen portraits, all of which were manually focused using Leica Q; such control made the impossible shot manageable; okay, barely. Vitals: f/1.7, ISO 3200, 1/60 sec, 28mm; 8:24 p.m. PDT, July 14, 2018. Understandably, the original DNG RAW was heavily edited. I applied considerable noise reduction, among other tweaks, with Adobe Lightroom Classic CC.

We follow up Georgia Twain with another pair. But the two are one less than they should be. I typically see three cats in the same apartment courtyard, on Florida between Meade and Monroe, but typically too far back for meaningful portrait. I stalked the trio for six months before capturing a shot of these, ah, Friends on July 14, 2018. They sat relatively close to the sidewalk.

The three live a few houses down from Lucy and diagonally across the way from Mew and Wonder. I will be lucky to ever get a usable portrait of the third or distinguish it from the other black. But I will try and update appropriately.