Bride Effects

Posted on November 30, 2014 by marey mercy

That title will make sense in a moment. Moving on.

But for now, say hi to Simon.

Thanksgiving break is almost over, and I’m not looking forward to going back to work. But go back I must, so let’s not dwell on it. Let’s talk about my week instead – a week which started out looking so jam-packed with activity I believed I’d have no time to myself, and ended with almost all my plans getting canceled at the last minute so that I got rather bored. It wasn’t bad, just more low-key than I initially expected. In fact, when plans started changing, I was relieved to see that I was going to have a day here and there to myself – I just didn’t expect the whole week to be so quiet. I did take a few pictures though:

He really poses nicely for the camera.

I could have done more to make the week festive, but my usual cluelessness and/or laziness took over, as it often does. For example, when I learned that we were going to be spending Thanksgiving day alone with my father-in-law instead of spending it with my big ol’ family, I could have put out the effort to cook some special things so as to make the occasion feel more festive, but we opted to pick up barbecue instead. I’m not even sure why we made that decision, other than the fact that we always stop and pick up barbecue when going to visit him. That was the problem with it, really – a special meal might have made the day feel like something more than just another house visit, but I honestly didn’t think of it. And whenever I get a bit of time off from work, I start to get over-protective of my time and try not to make plans, when it might be nicer if I at least considered the possibility of using the vacation days to meet up with old friends and family members – again, to make the whole thing more special and less like just a few days off. Ah well. Christmas break is coming up in three weeks, so I’ll try to learn my lesson and do better then.

That’s a SOOC photo of Simon. Nice enough, but I played around with all my new editing tools this past week and of course I captured a few in-progress shots. So let’s see how this one looks after using my RadLab photo editor:

Ah, better – sharper and brighter, with a bit more color and light, and the dirt smudges edited off the wall! But I’m not finished yet – next comes some of my new Topaz software (I bought so many little programs that I can’t recall which ones I used here):

I honestly don’t know how anyone just uploads photo straight from the camera without at least a little editing. This one is so much better! Moving on…

The photo above was taken while standing in a parking garage in our Town Square shopping area. I decided to find an incredibly boring picture and see if I could make it interesting using all the new software I’ve purchased – I’m not sure I succeeded, but at least I made it more colorful.

The rest of the photos I’m going to share came from my new iPhone 6 Plus. Since abandoning my 365 project, I’ve fallen out of the habit of taking a DSLR anywhere, and twice this week I regretted not having at least my SL1 with me. Once was at my father-in-law’s house, because he has beautiful gardens (my mother-in-law was a master gardener, and after she died Jimmy hired someone to keep everything blooming year-round just as she liked it) and I realized I could have used some of the day to take photos of flowers; instead I popped off a few with my phone to see what I could come up with, then edited them in Snapseed – again, on my phone:

Not bad for a pic entirely shot and edited on a smartphone

The other time I really regretted not having a camera on me was Saturday, when I went to our Town Square center to get a quick massage. I know I’ve posted about this here before, but there is a large Indian community in my area, and they often hold wedding ceremonies at the Marriott hotel located inside our town square; one was happening Saturday morning and I was there to watch the whole festive procession. But all I had was my cellphone, so I did the best I could.

The ceremony involves what I believe is called a punjabi baraat, which is a procession of the bridegroom from (traditionally) his house to the area where the wedding takes place. All members of the groom’s family, as well as his invited guests, take part in the procession, which involves a lot of music and dancing (see my video below for an example, it’s so fun to watch). I say this is what I believe I’ve witnessed at the square, because some of the traditional details I turned up when researching the baraat don’t match up to what I’ve seen, so I’m not sure this is exactly what is going on; perhaps the wedding processionals I’ve seen are a more modern variation or just something similar with which I’m unfamiliar. At any rate, when these weddings occur at the hotel, the participants gather in front of it and then slowly make their way around the square, dancing and singing and laughing; they make one big circle around the area and end up back in front of the hotel where they dance some more before eventually going inside for the rest of the ceremony. It really is something to see and hear; there’s usually an SUV with speakers mounted on the back blasting music, and a DJ walking with the crowd, entreating them to keep dancing and waving their hands, and a drummer leading the crowd around with a energetic beat.

I took about 400 photos total, but wasn’t pleased with most of them. My iPhone takes nice pictures, it’s true, but it can’t really live up to my standards when shooting from the hip and while in motion like this. Still, I did the best I could, and snapped away like crazy figuring I’d get at least one or two decent shots out of it. All of these are, of course, heavily edited using plug-ins for Photoshop from Nik, RadLab, and Topaz.

At first I felt a little intrusive following them around, snapping so many photos and shooting so much video, but then I realized that was silly when it was obvious the entire point of this procession was to engage in public celebration. In fact, people all along the route were stopping, shooting video, talking to wedding guests who were following along but standing on the edges of the festivities. I saw a lot of people explaining to the non-Indians in the crowd what was happening, there was a lot of mixing and mingling even though the onlookers kept a respectful distance, and everywhere people were bobbing along to the music and smiling. I was struck by what an awesome and generous tradition this is, to share in the happiness of a special day with any and everyone who might be passing by outside. The joy was infectious – so if you have two minutes to spare, please watch the video at the bottom of this post, and I think you’ll see what I mean.

Anyway, here was my favorite photo from the day:

I knew when these two lined up in front of me and put their arms around each other that I had something special, and I was so pleased with how this turned out. Most of my photos were blurry and grainy and not very clear, but this one worked out perfectly. In front of them you can see the horse-drawn carriage, carrying I’m not sure who, quite honestly. In a traditional punjabi baraat it should be the groom riding a white horse, not sitting in a carriage, and he would be by himself. There is another ceremony for after the wedding which involves a bride and groom in a carriage, but this was clearly taking place before the wedding, so I’m just not sure what’s going on here. It really appeared to me to be the bride and her family in there, but I couldn’t find any information about Indian weddings where this would be the case. So, who knows. Still, picture so yay.

I am thinking I’m going to check this Marriott for future weddings, and be sure to head over there with a camera next time one occurs. I know no one will mind if I’m shooting photos, and I could have gotten some amazing stuff had I had the capability with me today to do so. I think you can see what I mean from watching this little video I put together of the event. I shot video at each stop along the route, from its beginning to when it reconvened back at the starting point – in fact, I took about nine minutes of video total so be glad I edited it down to less than two (in reality, the whole procession took about 40 minutes). And yes, I know, I still can’t remember to hold my phone correctly when shooting video so everything’s vertical again. One day I’ll get that right, dammit!

Oh, and look closely at the section of video here where the entire procession is lined up on the steps of city hall for a group picture, and you’ll see the drone they had following them around all over the square, hovering above them. Yes, a wedding photo drone! Welcome to 2014, people.

Working It Out

Posted on November 23, 2014 by marey mercy

Well first, some fun news: last Tuesday, I replied to a Flickr request on Twitter for hair photos, and on Thursday I got this notification from them:

This was a nice surprise, because it meant the photo that they chose got loads of views – 2,283 so far – and I haven’t had a photo get that much traffic since I closed my old account. When I was still using the old one, Flickr Explore would feature my photos quite often, and when it did I’d get thousands of views on that photo and several new followers. But since I’ve moved, I’ve dropped off Explore’s radar, and traffic has been steady but without those little bursts of activity that, even though I know mean basically nothing, still always made me happy. So, it was nice to get some attention again. The photo they featured, by the way, was this one:

Other than that, not a lot photography-wise has gone on since my session last weekend. Work was a bit stressful since it was the week before a holiday, and everyone is on-edge and trying to squeeze in last-minute exams and projects which makes my job a bit more difficult. Since I am basically a case manager for approximately 30 kids with learning disabilities, I end up dealing with all of their exams and projects to some extent, and at times it gets overwhelming – especially since I cover all grades 9-12 and there can be loads of different things going on between the different grade levels that I have to try and juggle.

I go back and forth about posting work observations and/or complaints here, because I swore off doing it awhile back and my tune never really changes anyway (poor me, I don’t really like my job, blah blah blah) but at times it helps me clear my head to share my thoughts about my work situation, so I’m breaking my no-work-posting vow for now. But I don’t want to get into too many details that would make this ramble on and on, so suffice it to say that while this new role at the school is definitely better than my role as counselor, and in no way do I regret making the move, this job is still far less than ideal for me. Ideally, I would have been able to get an English teaching position, but none were available at the school, and I didn’t want to put out the effort finding one elsewhere would have required, so I took this one. Plus, I figured I’d try something new and see if I liked it better. But there’s a lot about this particular job that I don’t really like, and many ways in which I am ill-suited for the position. It’s not a structured teaching job, and my role is more one of case manager than teacher, so there is really a lot of open-ended time with the students where I am basically monitoring them and getting up in their business to be sure they are keeping up with their classwork. It’s never been my nature to be a nag, and a lot of the times that is what this role requires – sure, at times I’m helping them take tests or study for exams or write papers, but a huge chunk of my time is also spent just chasing kids down and making them do their homework or forcing them to study for classes when they’d rather just play video games. I’ve had to spend way more time than I’d like emailing parents and wagging my finger at kids who aren’t motivated to do their homework, or mediating student-teacher conflicts with kids in the program who have attitude problems – not much in life is less fun than having to force a defiant eleventh-grader to go apologize to a teacher for giving them attitude, yet this has become part of my job this year. It’s so not in my nature to be this much of a parent to the kids I teach, but I’m trying to do my best, and for the most part people are happy with the program and saying great things about it, which is a bit odd since I don’t particularly feel like I’m doing anything outstanding. The school has even held fundraisers for the school that have focused on the center; I was invited to one of them and had to endure a standing ovation for the “great work” I am doing, which made me feel like a heel since I don’t feel like I’m doing anything all that great at all. It’s weird.

We’ve already gotten approval to add a second full-time employee next year, which will help immensely, and I wish we could get me some help this year but that’s not going to happen. And the director of the program has promised me I can cut back on my hours next year if that’s what I want to do, but I still have to get through this year on my own. However, we’re almost at the halfway point with the semester ending on December 19th, and it’s not like I haven’t had to grin-and-bear-it at my job before, so I guess I’ll survive. But still, I wish I were just teaching English instead of spearheading a new program that everyone has so much invested in; it’s a lot of attention on me at a point in my life where I don’t want it, and it’s unnerving.

Anyway I am off for a week, so that’s something, then back for three more weeks before I get another nice long break. Not sure how much time I’ll have for picture-taking, as the week looks to be filled with catching up on doctor visits and taking cars to auto shops and lovely errands like that, but at least I don’t have to nag a bunch of high school seniors this week to get their planners filled out and their homework turned in!

Here’s hoping everyone else who celebrates it has a lovely Thanksgiving.

Peer One Portraits

Posted on November 16, 2014 by marey mercy

Stupid title, but it’s a play on Pier 1, which is where I got all these props. Moving on.

My initial plan was to wear one of my silvery gray wigs in this getup, but it ended up getting tangled in the garland so I put a thick silver headband on my head, on top of my wig cap, and pinned the poinsettias to that instead. Ended up working out great; I forget how much more difficult long wigs make taking self-portraits. They’re a bit hot under the lights, they get in the way constantly (snagged up in the costume or in my eyes while I’m trying to see what I’m doing or set up a shot), plus they tangle a lot when I’m flinging them around. Believe it or not, having 4 poinsettias clipped to my head was actually easier than putting on one wig! And yes, the poinsettias came with clips attached – I’m sure they are meant to clip to Christmas tree limbs or something, but that’s why i snatched them up, because I knew they’d be super-easy to pin to my head. And they were, except on one of them the clip broke off after about 20 minutes – kinda chintzy for a $5 decoration if you asked me, but then again, I’ve always found Pier 1 to be overpriced. Moving on.

I was on my way to the register with some other stuff when I spied this white, sparkly garland shoved into a basket and snagged it instead. It was really fun to work with and created some very cool looks – the downside was that it was terribly itchy (then again, it wasn’t created to be worn by a human, so there you go). I loved the shots I got with these props, so much so that I’ve already edited – including the pics I shared yesterday – ten shots! That’s way more than I usually process from a shoot where I didn’t change costumes all that much. But the garland really added interest to the photos, and I found myself struggling to decide which shots to process.

Remember when I said yesterday how I changed the colors up in every shot? Here I went for an icy blue that’s probably more green than I inteded.

When deciding what shots to edit, I try to find pictures where either my pose or facial expression isn’t so typical, but I do just have one face, after all, and I do tend to make the same faces over and over (which I discussed in a previous post). I think this is where the props can help a lot; to add some visual interest to the photo besides my face. I had very similar expressions going on in all the shots I took with the garland (about 200, in case you wanted to know), but the garland created a lot of interesting shapes and was fairly easy to manipulate. In fact, I totally want to work with it again – it’s very sturdy, and the wires are thick and strong so I can move it into a shape and it will hold it for several poses before it starts to collapse. I could have done a lot more, but as I said, it was terribly itchy and my skin was starting to get irritated, so I had to stop playing around. Plus, there’s only so many shots I need of me in this particular look with the same garland no matter how much I can manipulate it, so I figured I’d stop while I was ahead and leave more to the imagination for a future shoot where I can look completely different.

Another favorite

As far as the technical stuff, to change things up a bit I used my 70-200 telephoto lens that I normally reserve for plane shots in this shoot. There was no real reason for this other than wanting to try something different and see how the photos turned out; it was nice to have more room to work with while I posed since I could keep the tripod pulled quite far back instead of needing to keep it closer with my 50mm or 85mm prime lenses, but I didn’t get the lovely focus and camera blur those lenses would have provided. Still, it did a good job and for the most part the auto-focus was dead-on – easier than either one of the prime lenses, in fact, but I guess that finicky focus is why they create such nice portraits in the first place. Another benefit I’d never considered was that I could stand much farther away from the black backdrop, so there was very little light from the flash reflected in it to alter the solid black effect – another thing I probably should have known by now but never did.

Because I used my Flash Bender on my Speedlite for this shoot, I got a lot of sharp, strong shadows that created some nice black and white shots as well, so there’s quite a few I converted to B&W when processing. I also kept my cheap ring light handy (and managed to knock it over and break it as well, so it’s time to buy another one of those) and for the most part had it set up behind me on a tripod to give my head and shoulders a bit of an outline against the black backdrop; occasionally I also placed it right in front of me to get some catchlights in my eyes. Unfortunately, in some of the tighter close-up shots the ring light tends to create a lot of chromatic aberration that I forgot to edit out (you can see it in the close-up shot from yesterday and the one above), and my eyes came out looking a little pink. I may go back and edit that before uploading to Flickr, but for the blog, pink eyes it is. And by the way, super-easy Photoshop technique for fixing chromatic aberration is located here – a two-minute YouTube tutorial that is simple as pie to do. Has saved my butt on many occasions when working with bright lights and getting all those purple rings around high-contrast areas.

These next few are pretty experimental and I don’t care for them quite as much as the more straightforward shots, but there was so much I wanted to work with here and I started feeling the need to change things up a bit.

When this shot was taken, the Speedlite failed to go off, so the resulting photo was really dark. This happens several times throughout any shoot, and sometimes I try to process one of the pics to see if anything interesting can come of it. Usually nothing does, and I don’t think this one is very successful either. I pulled it into Pixlr to try and generate some added interest, and honestly I can’t remember what all I did to it there, but in the end, I still don’t think I like it very much. But hey, I tried.

Mostly I just liked the way the garland was framing my face here; this is another shot I Pixlr’ed like crazy, but I think it worked better here. I used some of their graduated color filters as well as a space filter to make the costume sparkle; I just discovered that Pixlr’s desktop app can utilize masks so I was able to apply the stars without having to add them to my face, which is cool. I love textures and filtered effects, but for the most part I don’t like them to muck up faces, and it’s nice to be able to erase that out now.

Well, that’s probably all I have from this shoot, although I have one or two more I’m still eyeing. But I pretty much marathon-edited this weekend, partly because I had the time, and partly because it’s been a long time since I just worked with portraits and had forgotten how much fun it is. Busy week coming up at work – the week before any vacation is always stressful, and this one is shaping up to be the same, so I may be MIA until the holiday starts next weekend. Happy Monday everyone!

Prop Shop

Posted on November 16, 2014 by marey mercy

I actually had a free day today, so I stopped by Pier 1 to get some things I could stick on my head, and otherwise use in ways for which they were not intended.

Annnnnd I found some – like this ornament, and the poinsettia leaves I pinned to my wig (you can see this shot with the pink eyes corrected here).

I had two separate looks for this shoot, and I’ll share the pics I’ve processed from the first look in this post. I didn’t edit too many from this section of the set, because it wasn’t my favorite look at first, but after looking at the ones I edited, I may go back and choose some more. I modeled my makeup after some ideas I got through Google searching, and the results were a little strange. I think I look more like a male with makeup on than a female, but whatever. For the second set I went back and put on some black shadow and liner and I looked a bit more normal. Not that looking abnormal is a bad thing:

My favorite from this set so far

As usual, I started off the shoot pretty bored and frustrated, and not feeling like I had anything new to cough up. But I started playing around with the ring light I had set up behind me to try and outline myself against the black background, and I started to get into it a little bit. It’s been a long time since I just played around with some props to see what I could come up with, and after a slow start things really got rolling once I pulled out the sparkly garland – but I’m saving those pics for next post.

A bit of yellowness under the eyes here that I couldn’t get rid of effectively. Oh well.

I messed around with the color a lot in post, because it was bright and all over the place, so no two shots looks the same in that regard – the poinsettias are actually a blueish-silver in reality, but they took on all sorts of tints as the processing proceeded. Also, while shopping around I picked up some Dermablend foundation to see if it would do a better job covering up my sun damage (as well as the cystic acne once again plaguing my chin – edited out of all the photos, of course), and it worked incredibly well. In fact, I went ahead and used the foundation all over for this shoot, and it is definitely effective if you need heavy, full-coverage.; my red and splotchy neck was completely covered, as well as the aforementioned blemish. The only downside was that I found it hard to wash off, even in the shower. I wouldn’t wear this stuff day-to-day, except for maybe on my neck where the damage is the worst. But it’s great for photos.

As I said, these are the only shots from the first look of the shoot I’ve had time to process, but I have a bunch more waiting in the wings for a later post – one I can write when I’m not so tired. It’s late and I need to hit the hay, but I wanted to share at least a little bit from today’s shoot. I dreaded it at first, but it ended up being fun and I got a ton of good shots to work with. More later.

Odds and Dead-Ends

Posted on November 9, 2014 by marey mercy

I have a few more photos from the air show to share, then some stuff I tried to pull off this weekend and failed at, for various reasons. First up, the air show:

Here’s another shot of the B-17; this is about as far away as I prefer to get when shooting planes, and I realize if I’m going to be happier with my shots next year I’ve got to get my hands on a longer zoom lens. Since even used on eBay a longer zoom sells for a thousand bucks at the least, I may say to hell with it next year and just take all my pics of the planes when they’re on the ground.

And now, more Blue Angels:

Those last two are shots of the C-130T Hercules the Angels use as a transport plane; it’s dubbed “Fat Albert.” Again, I couldn’t slow my shutter speed enough to blur the motion of the propellers here, but I tried.

And now, for my weekend fail: Saturday afternoon I decided to try some levitation, but I needed to do it quickly, so I set up, slapped on some makeup, threw on a new costume, and got to work. The results, however, were less than impressive. It took me awhile to figure out what went wrong, but in the end I realized that I need to work on my lighting for such shots. It was too bright, and it flattened me out and made me look like a cartoon. On the plus side, I’m getting better at adding shadows, and I played around with some of the new filters I now have with my Pixlr app since I signed up and became a member. But in the end, Pixlr wasn’t enough to save the shots. An example (and yes, I made it small ,because UGH):

This next one was the best of the bunch, I think:

Not bad, but nothing to write home about either (although I will blog about it, apparently). My bottom foot looks huge, but I liked the movement of the hair (I also thought that having my face covered up would help conceal the flatness my bad lighting created on my facial features). And, I used a different layering technique here than I usually do; although it took twice as long to do, I think the end results look better.

I wish these had turned out better, but not every shoot produces good results. Switching my backdrop to black probably worked against me too, since I haven’t used it in awhile and it creates harsher light than the gray one does. I probably could have just used my Speedlight and abandoned my umbrella stands entirely for this, but I couldn’t tell the light was a problem until the shoot was already over. I actually thought I’d gotten some really good stuff, too, so processing the shots was disappointing. But at least I tried.

Another busy week ahead, so not sure when I’ll have more to share. Hope you’re all wrapping up a nice weekend and getting ready for the week ahead. I know for me, Thanksgiving break can’t get here soon enough. Two weeks to go!

No Plane, No Gain

Posted on November 6, 2014 by marey mercy

I am continuing to scour the three thousand photos I took at Wings Over Houston last weekend for shots that might be unique from what other photographers captured. My Facebook and Twitter feeds are full of photos from the event that have been uploaded to various airshow and aviation websites, and yep, I’m still seeing a lot of “my” photos over and again, including several with the Blue Angels passing over the moon – although none of those look quite like the one I captured. As I see more and more shots from others, I get a better idea of which pictures I’d like to process, like this one:

This was the narrator of the Blue Angels performance; I popped this shot off real quick for no good reason but ended up liking the color and composition of it. Don’t know if I would have liked it as much had he been wearing the traditional blue flight suit, because I love the bright yellow against that rather dull background.

I didn’t so much love this next shot, but I was impressed with the aircraft so I wanted to share at least one:

The propellers on this thing were massive; when at rest they looked almost as big as the fuselage of the plane. They also swivel, so the aircraft can fly either as a plane or a helicopter. It was definitely an impressive thing to watch, but a damned ugly thing to photograph. I was so excited to see it fly but when looking at the photos I couldn’t work up much energy to process any of them; I had to force myself to do this one. Moving on.

I liked the color and composition of this one, but I admit to having been too lazy to look up exactly what planes these are. It’s been tricky for me, processing shots of planes where the subject is so small; I’m used to getting right up on a plane as it lands like I’ve done in the past with commercial jets, but these were much higher in the sky and farther away than the planes I capture at airport observation areas. So even though these felt tiny to me, I found other things to appreciate. Also, I wasn’t able to slow my shutter speed down enough to blur the motion of the propellers; I tried, but my camera was still stopping the blades. If I’d slowed down the shutter any more, though, everything would have been blurry, so I quit trying.

Ah yes, I do know what these warbirds are – a B-17 and a Mustang P-51 (a TF-51D, actually, but I prefer to call it a P-51 because it sounds better). I’m so bummed there were no clouds in the sky as that would have really helped to project a sense of flying here; it almost looks like a shot of planes set against a light blue background, like an ad in a paper or something. I tried to cheat and add some clouds as a layer but it looked awful, so plain boring blue non sky-like background it is.

At times, though, the planes made their own clouds:

Again, such a small subject but at last, some texture to the sky! That’s a A6M2 Zero, by the way, a Japanese WWII fighter plane.

And now, for a few more Blue Angels shots:

This is one of those shots that’s been replicated a thousand times over, but at least mine is nice and crisp. And holy hell, how do those pilots not die doing this sort of thing? Amazing.

Now this one is a little weird:

I actually took the shot while focusing through a chain-link fence, and if you look at it from afar you can see the fence’s diamond pattern against the shot. It’s very big and blurry, but it’s there. Because of that, I edited the hell of it, adding an HDR filter through Photoshop and intensifying the color. It’s a little odd-looking and I’m not sure I like it, but at least it’s something different from the usual.

That’s all I’ve had time this week to edit, but in other news: SANDY’S BACK! She had surgery in mid-August and was not cleared to go back to massaging until October 20th, but I haven’t had time to get to her until this week. I knew I was in for an entertaining session when she told me what sort of surgery it had been: she had part of her colon removed. YEP. And as soon as I was face-down on that table she started telling me all about it. I’ll spare you the gory details, but suffice it to say that once again while my head hung over the massage table my jaw was hitting the floor. I don’t know anyone else who can literally make my mouth hang open in an odd mix of horror and hilarity like Sandy does. After sharing with me the specifics of what came out of her right after surgery (just a hint: the word “jelly” was used), she skipped ahead to her last day in the hospital, when the doctors refused to release her until she passed gas. “And no squeakers,” Sandy elaborated. “They wanted a sonic boom!” Just imagine, she mused, the one thing you spend your whole life trying to avoid doing in front of other people and one day you have to perform it for your doctors to get your ticket home. Oh Sandy, you have been missed.

Air Apparent

Posted on November 3, 2014 by marey mercy

This past Saturday was the Wings Over Houston airshow, and for the second time I went with my father. Last year, the military were not involved with the show because of the government sequester, and it being my first trip I had no idea how much that impacted the crowd – but this year, the event was twice as crowded as last. And, there were loads more planes than last year, including the Blue Angels. It was a great show, and well worth the early rise time (I got up at 5 AM to be at my dad’s house by 7) and the hour-long line we had to stand in when the show was over and we went to catch a shuttle back to the park-and-ride. Now for the fun part: I took THREE THOUSAND PICTURES. How am I ever going to sort through them all?!

The Blue Angels

The sorting has already begun, actually, because the first thing I discovered Sunday morning after processing that shot above, was that everybody with a camera at the event took the exact same pictures as me. Once I realized it, it made perfect sense, but I admit there was a moment of disappointment in comprehending that of course we all took the same pictures, since we were all watching the same show. Allow me to share the example with you that enlightened me:

Hey! No fair!

I’d searched Wikipedia to read up a bit on the Blue Angels, and yep, there it was – my photo! Only, it was taken two years ago. The only difference is that the smoke trailing from one of the planes in the Wikipedia shot is gray whereas all of mine are white – other than that, it’s exactly the same. Once I got over my disappointment at realizing it was highly likely the majority of my awesome three thousand shots were not that awesome at all, but were actually pretty damn common, it at least provided me with a starting point for culling through them. I decided to try and find more unique shots that perhaps not as many people bothered to capture, like this one:

An F-100F Super Sabre flying into a cloud of smoke during a demonstration

I’m not sure that particular shot works all that well. but certainly the dark smoky background is different than the usual. Unfortunately I didn’t quite get the back end of the plane into the frame, but that’s not always a necessity.

By the time the Angels came out to fly (they’re always the grand finale, and rightfully so) the moon was visible in the late-afternoon sky – it was a welcome appearance, since the sky this day was cloudless, and for aviation photographers clouds add so much interest to a shot, as well as giving the pictures a better effect of being airborne. I’m sure many picture-snappers got shots of the Blue Angels flying over the moon, but mine has actually gotten 5 retweets and 10 favorites on Twitter, 3 of which were from Blue Angels pilots themselves, so I’m happy. Hey, don’t laugh – 5 retweets on a photo is more than I’ve ever gotten, so I’ll take it!

Aside from the sky being cloudless, it was a gorgeous but COLD day, at least for Houston (in the mid-forties all morning, and very breezy). I was wearing Ugg boots and my long Free People sweater, but I still had to go purchase a big fugly Wings Over Houston hoodie to keep from chattering my teeth off until mid-afternoon; I was quite the sight in my oh-so-fashionable outfit, including kicky scarf, and a big gray sweatshirt stuffed over all of it, but it’s not the Wings Over Houston Air and Fashion Show, so whatever. Plus, the morning chill gave way to an afternoon that was incredibly pleasant, especially when standing in the aforementioned shuttle bus line for an hour. And if you still felt cold, there was always this to warm you up:

The Shockwave Jet Truck

Yes, that’s a jet engine strapped to the cab of a semi, so yes, at some point in someone’s life this was actually considered a good enough idea to make it happen. It’s at the show every year, and while watching it reach speeds of up to 375 miles per hour doesn’t do anything for me, seeing it taxi past the crowd with flames leaping everywhere is pretty awesome. Makes for a nice picture too.

More Blue Angels shenanigans – yep, that’s actually two planes, one right side up and one upside down. Actually, I think this is how baby airplanes are made.

A funny story: at one point during the show, a group of four people came up right in front of us, carrying two poles attached to banners. They had on orange reflective vests that said “Oracle Team Polehandler” on the back, and to us they looked like they were at some point going to parade around with the banners advertising whatever Oracle sells. They sat down on the tarmac in front of us, and I was totally amused by the one female in the group who kept turning to face the crowd and take selfie after selfie (with the tarmac as a backdrop) on her iPhone. She seemed completely unaware of the fact that we could all see her sitting there smiling at her phone camera, and I admit to thinking her a bit oblivious – especially since a pretty amazing stunt flyer was putting on one hell of a show at the time. You would think the fact that the pilot’s stunt plane had the huge word ORACLE painted on it might have clued me in to something, but nope. Then her whole group got up, picked up their poles (in accordance with the title on their orange jackets) and marched themselves with precision over to the active runway, where they proceeded to stretch the thick ribbons that were attached to each pole across it and hold each end. Not soon after that, the completely obnoxious announcer (not the announcer for the whole show; ORACLE apparently had their own) told the crowd that the pilot was now going to perform his infamous “triple ribbon cut,” wherein he flies between each of three sets of poles, cutting each set of ribbons stretched across the runway with his plane – using the left wing for the first ribbon, the right wing for the second, and cutting the third ribbon with the fin of his plane while it’s inverted. WHUT?!

Oh yes he did – see the ribbons?

That teeny tiny person in the white shirt and black pants is the female in question, and after realizing she’d volunteered to stand on a runway and hold a pole while a plane hurtled towards her upside-down to cut some ribbons in half, I conceded her participation was totally worthy of multiple selfies (in fact, I want to find out how she got the gig so I can do it next year). And speaking of the obnoxious announcer, he must have said the pilot’s name a zillion times while describing his various death-defying stunts: SEAN D. TUCKER. He said his name so much, it reminded me of late-night infomercials that use repetition to make a product stick in the viewer’s brain. He also mentioned several times what EXCELLENT PHYSICAL CONDITION the pilot SEAN D. TUCKER was in to be able to endure the G forces while he performed his stunts, and I found myself wondering aloud if this was a performance or a personal ad. Either that, or perhaps the announcer had a serious crush on him. Either way, I decided to roll with it, and since SEAN D. TUCKER was in such EXCELLENT PHYSICAL CONDITION and so obviously proud of it, when he taxied by us after his demo was over I yelled out to him: Take off your shirt, SEAN D. TUCKER!!! OK, maybe I didn’t shout it, but I did mock-shout it to my dad and his friends so we could all get a good chuckle. Still, I think it’s possible SEAN D. TUCKER heard me:

Bask in the gloriousness that is SEAN D. TUCKER!! Actually, he is rather handsome.

My Canon 7D and my used eBay 70-200 lens did me proud, but I admit to suffering lens envy at some of the humongous ones the photogs in the media box were sporting. And while the Blue Angels were performing, a military photographer out on the tarmac stopped right in front of us to pop off some shots, and I drooled at how fast his continuous shooting was compared to mine. But in the end, I got some nice sharp shots with my little “cheap” setup. I still want to get my hands on the new 7D, but I’m wondering if a better zoom lens might be a smarter investment (they cost as much, if not more, than the new 7D camera body). I definitely saw the limitations of the lens today, and would have loved to get a bit more zoom as well as some image stabilization, so we’ll see which way I decide to go. If I move up to a lens that’s much bigger than the one I have, however, I’ll no longer be able to shoot without at least a monopod, which leads to a whole new set of limitations. Plus it might be ridiculous to have a $1600 lens strapped to a old-model 7D anyway. Moving on.

These are just the first shots I’ve had time to edit, and I’m not sure how I’m going to more forward with it all. I hate to bore the crap out of everyone with shot after shot of air show photos, but in the end, if it’s where I’m at and what I’m into, why would I do anything else with my time? So love my plane photos or leave them, people. Because they’re gonna be around for awhile!