In photography—and especially portrait photography—lighting and focal length (more specifically, the right lens at the right distance/positioning) can have a dramatic impact on the end result. Even the same person can look quite different depending on where the light source is and what lens/distance the photographer is shooting from.

While those are easy statements to agree with, seeing this demonstrated visually can be quite compelling. In the 4 gifs below we can truly see the power of lighting and focal length.

And to further clarify and expand on ‘focal length’ the examples seen here use different lenses/focal lengths but maintain the same framing of the image, which behind the scenes would require the photographer to reposition the camera. If the camera was in a fixed position and lenses of different focal lengths were simply swapped out, the shots would just be parts of cat at different magnifications.

Anyway, on to the gifs!