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.