This is my cat Pearl who is gray and white, so except for her pale green eyes she is pretty much gray scaled already. She is my youngest cat at nine years old and one of the most affectionate cats I know. She is a small cat but in winter her double coat grows out and makes her look enormous....sort of a cat-shaped pillow.

I took this back-lit portrait as an experiment just to see if I could do it without the cat going totally black. Still I had to lighten the cat a little to compensate for not using a fill flash. (Pearl would've been very unhappy with me had I used one) Taken with a refurbished Olympus digital camera that I bought on eBay. 2.5 megapixels, 43 mm lens, auto focus.

Because the show is for Black and White I stuck to the pureness of no color and gray scaled the photograph to insure this. I prefer and enjoy the challenge of "purist B&W."