After uploading the shots from Saturday’s session, I noticed a few of them looked a little blah. So even though it was way past my bedtime, I pulled them into Pixlr and gave them a go. I’ll share the originals here again even though they are already loaded into the previous post, so you can see what I did.

I may have overdone this first one, but on its own I found it lacking. It had that feeling of OK fine, but why am I looking at this? that I sometimes get when there isn’t enough visual punch to the photo. Original first:

Can you tell, by the way, that I was lying down?

There was a lot of empty space in the first pic, and I feel this makes better use of it. The texture also contributes to the feeling of movement, which is what I liked about the photo originally but wanted to enhance.

The second original:

Same comments as the first Pixlr edit, really. Better use of empty space and enhanced movement.

All in all, it’s funny how rushed and one-off this shoot was but how many shots I really liked from it. As Beth pointed out the other day, photography is therapy for me. I hadn’t consciously thought of it as such until she mentioned it, but it is lovely to have an activity that I know can brighten my mood when I get into a funk – and that it can be as simple as throwing on a wig and flinging it about for the camera. I will always prefer the photo sessions where I get to construct the elaborate makeup and costumery I love, but in a pinch, all I need is a wig and a camera. So this is not only photo therapy for me, it’s wig therapy! I don’t know why, but putting on that fake hair makes me feel transformed, and synthetic wigs, at least, move better in photos than real hair does – it’s plastic, after all, and it maintains its shape and style so well.

Since many of the shots from this quick set were rather plain, I ended up spending several hours Sunday pulling more of them into Pixlr and really messing around with them. The ones I worked with that day were all wearing a different wig, so I’ll share those in tomorrow’s post.