Camera Nostalgia

Posted on November 23, 2015 by marey mercy

This is a picture dump post for the most part – but it’s also one long ramble, so I think the title will make sense in a minute.

I’m one day into the Thanksgiving break, and I am going to try and take portrait photos tomorrow. I have not done so since school started, because things at work are very busy and very strange. I won’t discuss it here, but suffice it to say that it’s taken a lot of time and mental energy, and I haven’t been up much for full-on photoshoot sessions in quite awhile. While I babble on here, though, I’ll go ahead and upload some older portraits I’ve edited over the past few months since I’ve had nothing new to work with, as well as some flower macros I shot quickly yesterday. Let’s get to it.

I actually have a jumping/movement/levitation session planned out in my head, but I have to put it off since a shipping snafu means I am not going to get the outfit in time to work with it this week (tomorrow is pretty much the only full day I have to myself). I bought this dress off eBay and it ships from China; I ordered it in plenty of time but the company forgot to ship it for several days which means I won’t get it until the end of the week, when family visits will prevent me from taking any photos. This is the dress in question:

I’m not even sure it’s going to work; it may not be as flowy as I’d like it to be, but I love the drape-y simplicity of it and that neckline is aces in my opinion. I pictured wearing it with this short, spiky red wig I have and shooting against my gray backdrop, but once I realized it was not going to arrive in time I decided to hang my black backdrop instead, so I could do tomorrow’s shoot with another dress I ordered recently that’s gray (I don’t want to shoot against a gray backdrop while wearing a gray dress). Then I tried on the gray dress and it didn’t fit at all, which made me wish I’d stuck with my original plan and hung the gray one, but it was too late as I’d put the black up already – and hanging backdrops is one of my least favorite things ever, so no way I’m taking it down anytime soon.

I generally leave a backdrop hanging against my photoshoot wall at all times, but every once in awhile I get the desire to have an office that actually looks like an office and take it down – something I regret doing almost immediately. I forget how often I actually use them until I remove them – as I did a few months ago, which is why you’ve seen so many jumping photos and Stitch Fix shots of me lately set against a bare white wall and my oh-so-unfashionable carpeted floor. I’m glad to get something back up there, even though hanging it was a pain, as always (first you gotta wash and dry it and then yank it out of the dryer when it’s done RIGHT AWAY or else the dreaded wrinkles set in, then you have to get a ladder, a bunch of push pins, and a hammer, and tack that thing up there by first mashing the push pins enough to get them to stick while you grab the hammer – which is hell on your fingers – and then you have to hope the stupid thing stays up with just one pushpin while you move the ladder to the other corner, then hammer the pins in about 30 times to get enough in there to be sure it stays up…but I digress), but I do wish I’d tried the stupid dress on before deciding to hang the black one as I’d much rather have the gray up there. Moving on.

I admit the new pool has also cut into my photo-time, since I sit in the spa every day for at least 30 minutes to an hour every evening after work. We just had our first cold front come through a few days ago, and it was heavenly to slip into the 102-degree water with steam wafting up all around, feeling toasty warm while the faint smell of chimney smoke is in the air.

I haven’t been very active on the blog lately for the same reasons I’m not shooting a lot of photos – work takes a lot out of me mentally this year, and life takes up more of my weekends than it used to. My father-in-law needs at least twice-weekly visits, and I go with my husband when I can; my mother has also had two surgeries lately (to replace a knee and then a hip) so I’ve been driving out to visit her as well. My father also just got forced into an early retirement (early for him, anyway – he’s already 71 but had planned to work a few more years) so it is strange having such milestones pass and finally realize that one’s parents truly are getting old. Hearing my perpetually busy father – who always worked at least two jobs when I was growing up and even after I left home, not because he had to, but because he wanted to – and my fairly materialistic mother (not in a bad way, she just always wanted nice things) discussing cutting back and figuring out how to live on their reduced income makes me feel less secure about my own future, for some reason. Ultimately it makes me feel old as well, which is scary, but still a blessing, if I consider all the people I’ve known who died young and did not get the privilege.

I guess I’ve been a bit melancholy lately in general; I’ve cut myself loose from some negative people and have been trying to make a better stand for myself when I need to do so (both at home and at work); while speaking up for myself is a good thing, it’s also a little frightening when one is not used to it. I get very paranoid after the fact, thinking that speaking up is ultimately going to lead to loneliness and rejection. In some cases having a voice has led to the end of friendships or work partnerships, but each time the relationships in question were not serving me in a positive way anyway and probably needed to end. It’s all a bit uncomfortable and unfamiliar, but ultimately worthwhile, as I become more accustomed to standing up and speaking out when the situation requires it. All part of getting older, I guess.

One thing I’d started to notice about my friendships in the past year or so was how much younger most of my close friends were – a good 10 to 15 years younger, in fact – and just wondering why that was the case. Now, I’m not talking about my dear internet friends who might be of any age, but my In Real Life friends I’d go shopping with or talk to on the phone. When the school year started, my program was able to hire two more teachers, both of whom are within a few years of me age-wise, and I immediately found their company so fulfilling and validating in all the ways my younger friends were not. Primarily, there was a lot less drama and a much calmer atmosphere around them as opposed to the fairly competitive, perpetually dissatisfied, and socially hyper-active others I’d associated with for many years.

Don’t get me wrong – I’ve been as competitive, hyper-active, and dissatisfied as they are in my time. I don’t mean that as judgment of them, or as in any way a generalization of women in their thirties overall – it is more a reflection of who I’ve become in the past year than it is of who they still are. I came to realize that even with the women whom I believed I had a sort of “best friend” connection I was not all that close; my friendships were more about convenience and the safety of staying at surface-level with other people rather than establishing a true connection, if that makes sense. We all kept each other busy and amused and entertained, but we never really got too deep, and in a way, we never really knew each other. I hope none of them read this, though, because it’s not something I ever shared with any of them (and unless you’re at least 15 years younger and live in the same city as me, you’re not one of them).

On another note, sometimes I wonder if my passion for photography is waning, and if that is part of the reason I’ve not been shooting as much lately. But then I look back at my blog or my Flickr page and realize that even during this period I’m describing as a “not shooting much” sort of time I’ve taken hundreds upon hundreds of photos and realize that is probably not the case. I just don’t have full days to spend hours putting on makeup and getting into costume and doing the sort of shoots that used to be a weekly occurrence for me, and that’s ultimately okay. There’s only so many ways I can apply my face and pose for photos, so the longer breaks from that are probably a good thing; when doing it all the time I would find myself getting bored every once in awhile anyway.

My passion for wigs and filming reviews died just as suddenly as it came to life last summer; I’ve been so into buying Lagenlook clothes that I’ve not been able to justify spending money on wigs that I’m really not wearing anyway, plus there’s obviously no time to make reviews. Who knows if I’ll go through another wig phase this summer or not – I can say that with the prices for synthetics going sky-high lately I’m less inclined to go there again, plus by the end of things this summer I found myself reverting to my old Rene of Paris standbys again anyway (Laine, Robin, Angelica). I just cannot with those Jon Renau prices right now, as pretty as some of their new styles are.

And anyway, blog and Pinterest follower Betzie introduced me to another Lagenlook label that I’m totally focused on right now, just as my Oh My Gauze fixation was calming down (but only because they’ve not introduced any new pieces lately, not because I’m bored with their clothes, which are still fabulous). So I’m sure I’ll be spending more and talking about that in the future – it’s the place from China where I bought the red dress in the photo above, and that outfit is a good representation of what they offer. But unlike OMG they also have SHOES! So far I’ve only bought two pair, but they are amazing. But more about that later.

To close this out, allow me to share a photo that goes WAY into the past – when I was 12 years old, in fact. The blog I follow that documents the history of the neighborhood where I grew up has slowly been working its way into the years when I and my friends might have appeared in the local newspaper (that is still in business) that regularly reported on the goings-on in our neck of the woods. As such, I knew this next photo was coming soon, and one morning in my email there it was:

As progress on the blog neared the end of 1982 I knew this photo would show up; in case you can’t tell, I’m the one on the left there with the trendy striped Izod and what appear to be Jordache jeans. Yes, I was a cheerleader, for one year, and I was pretty much awful. I was not popular, or athletic, or into sports at all, and in fact I only made the team because I definitely could yell, and as it may not surprise you to hear, I was a pretty good jumper. I was no acrobat, though, and never could even pull off a decent cartwheel, and every single boy on our eighth grade football team terrified me as I was horribly shy, so while it was a real thrill to hear my name called over the afternoon announcements as one of the winners (we had try out in front of the whole school, a process I somehow survived but to this day I have no idea how) the actual experience of being a cheerleader was pretty unpleasant. It was just not for me – I only tried out in the first place because as a seventh-grader I befriended one of that year’s cheerleaders, and she insisted I do it and then spent two solid months training me. But I was never one to go to football games as a spectator in the first place, much less stand in front of people on the field and cheer, so as a cheerleading role model I was pretty much a bust. And no, those were not our uniforms. I think they took that picture the same day we got nominated, so we didn’t have anything else to wear.

I don’t know any of those women now, although one of them tried recently to friend me on Facebook; as with most of my old school pals, her FB page consisted mostly of Fox News-type political posts and video links to country-western songs, so I declined. But she was a pretty good gal, back in the day. I guess we all were.

Wigs Over Houston

Posted on November 16, 2015 by marey mercy

OK, not really – it’s WINGS Over Houston, but I figured, with the wigs on the site and all…you get the idea.

B-25 – The Yellow Rose

Going back to October, this year’s Wings Over Houston Airshow was Oct. 17th, and I went with my dad (as usual) and my boss/friend from work. She’s a former employee of US Airways (now part of another airline, can’t remember the name right now) and loves airplanes, too, so it was fun to share the experience with someone else.

MK959 Spitfire

I told myself that since I wasn’t very satisfied with my aerial pics last time, I’d focus on shooting the planes during the viewing hours of the show, when you can get up close with them before they take off. However, once the planes got in the air I couldn’t help myself, and since I knew a bit more this time about what settings to use on the camera for decent shots, I managed to get some really nice ones this year. I also made sure to try for shots that would be more unique or interesting than the typical stuff everyone else snaps – the two above were taken during a war simulation, and I particularly liked the effect the smoke from the faux-bombs created.

The Breitling Jet Team – from France

The Thunderbirds were there this year (instead of the Blue Angels who performed in 2014) but my friend and I were wise enough to leave before the final show; my father and I spent over an hour in the shuttle line the year before since we left with everyone else, and since there were two performance jet teams this year, I still got to see some high flyers before we took off. It was a good idea, since it meant we walked right onto a shuttle instead of waiting in line forever.

In 2014 I saved my camera strictly for photos of planes in the air and didn’t even take it out when we were wandering around viewing the planes, but since this year I wasn’t planning to take any aerial stuff anyway I took my camera with me to the touring area earlier in the day, and got some nice shots there too:

Standing beneath the wing of a C-17; one of my favorite shots of the day

I took my telephoto lens again this year, but am considering taking the wide-angle next year; it was hard to get all of the planes in my shots while we were walking around with the zoom lens, and it wasn’t the most convenient lens for these types of shots. We stood in line to tour the inside of the C-17 and my lens was pretty much useless inside it; I could not even get a shot of the cockpit once we got in there because it was so small – and we stood in line for over an hour to get up there! I did get a shot of the stairs leading up to it, though:

I also got a few shots of one of the servicemen standing in the cockpit and looking out the little round window that overlooks the huge cargo area where we were all waiting in line, but with the lack of indoor light and my inability to get my settings right, all the shots of him looking through it were crappy and blurry. I processed one of the shots, though, and just edited the hell out of it to disguise the fact that it’s a bad photo – I had to process it, because the dude was looking right at me in the shot.

There was also a nice big United 737 that I took some snaps of; I tried to keep all the crowds of people out of these shots so it might appear that I was actually just getting super-close access to a plane on a runway instead of at an exhibition; for the most part I think I pulled it off:

Another thing I wanted to try this year was taking pictures of interesting people, as well. There certainly are a lot of them:

Yes, “interesting” is one way to describe these guys

I love it when I get to piggyback off someone else’s staged shot; this veteran was posing for someone else so I snuck up behind them and snapped the same photo:

That’s actually a composite of two shots I took of him; in one, a woman walked into the frame right as I snapped the shot, and her body covered up half the flag. In the other, she wasn’t in the frame, but his features were not as clear and the shot wasn’t quite as focused, so I layered that less-focused shot over the better one and erased the woman’s body out of the frame. And there you go.

Last shot for now – I snapped this one quickly while we were waiting in that hour-long line for the cockpit of the C-17; I snapped a bunch of one-offs through the open cargo doors since there wasn’t much else to do and nothing I could get decent photos of inside, and right after I took this one I looked at it on my LCD screen and realized it was a nice one. How much more alike could these two look anyway?

Yep, definitely related

I processed this one in black and white because the color just didn’t add anything to it. I especially like the young guy’s shadow on his dad’s (I assume) shirt. They were probably looking up into the cargo hold at all the people standing in line inside and thinking to themselves, why on earth would those idiots stand in line so long just to spend two minutes inside a stuffy cockpit? Well, because we can, dude. That’s why.

I edited most of these shots over the past two days; that’s how busy I’ve been and have just now gotten around to really editing these photos. I’ve decided I need to start dedicating myself to editing at least one photo a night since I’ve got such a backlog of stuff and what I’m really craving is a good old portrait-and-jumping photo session. I don’t want all this other stuff to get completely forgotten, though, so I’m trying to work through it all now. Still lots I’d like to edit from this set, as well as my trip out to IAH back in September, so more planes to come.

Next week – vacation! I can’t believe it’s Thanksgiving already. A whole week off, and I’m going to try and take my portrait shots then.

Too Cool for Pool

Posted on November 8, 2015 by marey mercy

Well, folks, we’re almost there:

Pardon the canopy swing sitting awkwardly next to the house, and the pool floats piled on a chair. We’re still getting things tidied up a bit, and we have some more work to do on our new covered patio (staining, mostly) but for the most part, things are done. It’s gotten a touch too cool to swim regularly, but I do fire up the spa every evening and sit in it for at about an hour.

All in all, we started this project right around August 1st, and finally got the grass replaced (which is what finally made things feel ‘done’) the first week of November. It took WAY longer than I thought it would to get from start to finish, but I must say it has been worth it.

A lot of people have seen photos and commented on the relative lack of landscaping we now have in the backyard; we took out all the beds that run along the back fence and just left a single small one in the far right corner, so we could keep out bottlebrush tree that the hummingbirds love so much. I guess it does look a little bare back there now, but we needed to create enough space for our dogs to roam around in and do their business, lest they end up having too small space that was too close to the pool for them to relieve themselves. See, when I put it that way, it doesn’t seem like a bad idea at all to keep things sparse in the backyard.

Besides, I rather like the lack of foliage back there; our yard was a decent size before the pool, but not huge, and it definitely felt a little cramped once the pool was put in and before those overgrown beds were taken out. We had one sago palm that we really liked back there that we did save and move to the flowerbed we kept that’s up against the house, but aside from that and the bottlebrush tree in the corner we yanked the rest of it out. There are plants added to that corner bed that will eventually fill out and eliminate some of the sparse feeling, but overall I like the changes.

This new pergola was built for us last week; it still needs to be stained and will be much darker, and we’re having a gutter company come out to move that drainpipe over to the end of the garage. We’ve also ordered some lovely new furniture that should be in by the end of the week, and believe it or not my husband wants to get an outdoor flat-screen television to hang on the garage wall – but I kinda doubt that will happen. I believe those things are ridiculously expensive.

So, to sum up:

We are finally, basically done! Who’s coming over?

Plane of Pools

Posted on September 19, 2015 by marey mercy

Stupid title, I know. I was just trying to think of something to incorporate the two completely unconnected subjects of this post. Because last week, this happened:

I’ve never been so happy to see concrete in my life. The next step is to clean the interior of the pool and prepare it for the plaster, which will happen today – I’ve been envisioning some really crazy self-portraits in the empty pool wherein I don a ball gown and a snorkel, but unfortunately I’ve caught the first round of crud that circulated around the school last week (in my case, it’s an upper respiratory infection, but I know others who came down with strep throat) and I feel lousy. I’m not sure I’m going to be up for taking photos for the day or two that the option is available to me, so it may be a sorely missed opportunity, but one I’ll have to let go if I’m still sick. Boo.

I stayed home from work today and went to the doctor for meds, and when that was done I processed more airplane pictures. At first I wasn’t to thrilled with the shots I got last Sunday at the new location; they definitely don’t allow me the super-close proximity the official observation spot provides, but they do allow for a lot more variety, due to my ability to shoot the planes coming all the way up the runway:

I’m farther away, but getting to snap the planes taking off over buildings or just lifting off the runway is pretty cool, and means I get bored less quickly while processing the shots:

Of course, I did have to hang out in what appeared at first to be a fairly suspect location to get them:

Looking back from the dead-end where I parked

For most of the time I was there, I was the only person at this spot:

My car at the bottom of a hill that provides a nice vantage point to see the planes

But occasionally other plane-spotters stopped by, although I was the only one who went to the top of the hill:

So overall, it was a fine place to hang out, although I was pretty nervous at first, thinking it had to be a bad idea to spend time alone at the end of a fairly deserted road behind an airport. I felt plenty safe soon enough, once I realized it really wasn’t as deserted as I thought it was, and appeared in fact to be a little plane-viewing spot for a lot of people with kids who were trying to entertain them and out of ideas, I guess? Moving on. Next time I’ll bring a blanket or something to sit on up there, though, since the grass was pretty high and brushy and it wasn’t too pleasant the times I tried to sit down.

Severed head in a bag, or discarded Carl’s Jr.? You decide.

I got to this spot around 11:30, I think, and while I mostly shot United planes, I managed to snap a few others before I was done:

I also had a chance to snap some planes landing on farther runways, and although they were too far away for the shots to be great ones, I did want to capture how close some of them fly over before they land, since it gives me a nice sense of scale:

And I managed to snap this little bright-yellow Spirit Airlines budget plane (I definitely was able to get better shots of planes landing farther away from me than I can at the Lee Road location, too) :

And then, of course, were all the United planes:

That last one really took me by surprise; the little hill I stood on overlooked two runways running parallel to each other, and for the most part they were all taking off from the runway farthest from my location. But this one used the closer of the two, and when it roared up overhead I was actually focused on a different plane and didn’t see this one coming. It’s positioning really gave me a nice shot of it’s underbelly passing over; with the landing gear already retracted. I guess it took off a longer runway, or something. Moving on.

SECURITY!

I planned to head for home no later than 1:00, since these runways were fairly busy and by then I’d already taken plenty, but at one on the dot it was as if United opened the floodgates (or plane gates, if you will) and sent an onslaught of airlines taxiing over to take off, and well, it was just too good to walk away from at the time. They must have been taking off two or three minutes behind each other, at the most, so I kept snapping until my 32G CF card filled up. That’s right – 2600 shots of airplanes, people. And many of them are worthy of processing this time! How will I ever get through them all…?

I mean JUST LOOK AT ALL OF THEM

Of course I’ve got more to share later, but for now this is all I’ve got. Time to go lie down and let that Nyquil I slugged about 20 minutes ago work it’s magic Until next time, y’all!

Sunday Shots

Posted on September 13, 2015 by marey mercy

I’ve not taken any self-portraits in quite awhile, but I have been taking photos here and there when I’ve had the chance.

In fact, now that I look back over what I’ve processed the past few weeks, it’s quite a few shots. A few weeks ago, while out buying groceries for the week, I stopped by the floral department and picked up some flowers to shoot, then spent the rest of Saturday taking photos of them. In the shot above, I was mainly trying to catch the reflection of the petals when the flower was lying on top of a plastic handbag liner I yanked out of one of my purses (it’s a piece of plastic you can insert into a handbag that lacks shape to give it some across the bottom – #themoreyouknow!). It was a challenge to get a whole lot of the reflection into the shot without getting into some really weird framing, but I guess it came out OK.

Simon ended up in a lot of the shots because, well, that’s how he rolls:

Sprocket and Penny got into the mix for a bit too:

I also saw some flowers that were wrapped in netting to keep their shape (no, I don’t know what kind of flowers they were) and I really liked the pink and purple color combination that created, so I took photos of them without taking off the wrapping, although that may actually look stupid. Still, I liked them:

I unwrapped them eventually, and took some super-macros of the petals:

Then eventually I ended up putting all sorts of crap on them, just to see how it would look:

That’s baby powder on the rose above, which I was hoping would look like snow. I also threw some glitter on the pink flowers, but I haven’t processed any of those shots yet. I took about 600 pictures of flowers, then got distracted by work and pool drama and ended up not processing nearly enough of them. For about a week there I didn’t process any shots at all, although lately I’ve had time to work with about one each night. This is the last flower shot I’ve had a chance to edit so far, but I know there will be more to come from this set later:

Then, at one point during all the pool construction drama, I looked in the back yard and this tipped-over, mud-covered wheelbarrow caught my eye; I thought it’d make a good picture, so although it was already dusk I grabbed my camera and braved a trip into the muck to get a few shots. My husband almost had a cow when he looked out the window and saw me crawling around back there, because he knows what a klutz I am and how easily I can hurt myself just walking into a room, much less wandering around a construction area with a camera. But, I survived, and got a few cool shots out of the deal:

I have a few more, of course, to process from this set (don’t I always?) but I have yet to get to them, either.

Now, if I thought Doug would have a cow about me scavenging around in our backyard with a half-constructed pool in the vicinity, he would have really flipped his lid if he’d seen where I was hanging out this past Sunday:

I drove out to my usual planespotting location at IAH Sunday morning, but when I got there I realized I’d mis-read my flightradar24 app in thinking the airport was utilizing that runway for arrivals, and in fact there were no planes at all flying in that direction. Since it was early and I was already out there, I decided to be a little brave and try to find a second planespotting location I’d read about – I’d always been wary to try it out before because I’d heard you had to call airport security to let them know when you were there, and that alone sounded sketchy enough to me to discourage the trip. Plus, it’s not uncommon for the areas around an airport to be less than ideal locations to start with, and since I’m always by myself when I take plane pics I’d been a bit chicken to give it a try. But I was feeling up for it this time, plus I’d driven all that way and didn’t want the drive to be a total bust, so I found the dead-end road that stopped right up against two runway fences, made the airport security call, and got to work.

These two runways are used mainly for departures, and they were pretty busy, although mostly with United planes – I didn’t get very many unusual planes this time. I did get some new angles than what I can get from the official observation lot, but the planes are farther away, so I was once again feeling the limitations of the 70-200 lens. It did the job, but I would have been happier had I been able to get closer. And the clarity isn’t the greatest either; I think I had the ISO setting too low this time. Still, the weather was nice, and it ended up being a fine place to shoot although, as I said, my husband probably would have freaked out had he known I’d driven to a dead-end road, parked the car, and hiked up a hill all alone to take plane photos! Actually, while I was up there I saw a lot of cars come and go; mostly people with kids taking a moment or two to watch some planes take off, but still. When I really stopped to think about it, it probably wasn’t the wisest decision. Not to say I won’t go back, of course.

I say this so much you can probably all say it along with me by now, but once again: this is all I’ve had time to process from this set so far, so there will be more to come. Although I haven’t been able to get dolled up lately for a selfie shoot, at least I do have a lot of photos to work with when I get a spare minute here or there.

Okay, tomorrow’s Monday, so let’s get back to it.

Batting an Eye(lash)

Posted on August 12, 2015 by marey mercy

Well, we can add a new chapter to my never-ending quest for frivolous, over-priced beauty enhancements. But this time, the results were less than impressive; in fact, they were almost disastrous. Because this time, I decided to try out getting eyelash extensions.

Pretty much the only way I’ll wear extensions again

Usually I have good luck with these sorts of procedures, but of course, I usually do my homework and read up on the possible complications ahead of time so I can make an informed decision. When I finally decided to perm my hair last summer, it was with full awareness that I might fry it to hell and back, or end up looking like a deranged poodle; I’d weighed my options long enough to feel comfortable with whatever outcome I might encounter. I’d also researched the steps needed to provide me with the best chance of success – don’t go cheap, ask questions of the hairstylist and be sure he or she did perms regularly, have a consultation first, etc. I did the same amount of research before getting Botox, or fillers (only did that once and didn’t care for it), or hell, even highlighting my hair a month ago. I know the risks, and I know what to expect when I sit down in a stylist’s chair or doctor’s table. So, while I may not get the results I’m hoping for, at least I’m not surprised by what transpires.

However – about a week ago I read an account from someone I know who’d gotten eyelash extensions, and although I’d heard of them I’d never considered them before. But hers looked so wonderful, and I’d never been able to make glue-on falsies work on me, that it gave me the itch to try them. Remember that word itch, ’cause it’s important later on.

I did do some Googling about them, and mostly read pro-and-con type blog posts about how great they looked, but also how time-consuming and expensive they can be to maintain. Well hell, maintenance isn’t such a big hassle to me if it’s something I really want, so after a few hours of reading I decided to book an appointment at my regular salon to give them a go. My nail salon is a pretty upscale place, so I felt confident that I’d be getting a qualified technician to do the job. The price also indicated professionalism – $200 for a full set, and about $75 for each refill.

The technician was incredibly booked, so I snagged the only upcoming appointment I could get, which was a Tuesday at 5 PM. This just so happened to be two days before school started up for the fall semester, so I knew I’d be really busy, but the thought of having lovely, fabulous lashes for my first day of teaching (the day we also take photos for the yearbook and our staff IDs) was appealing enough for me to set that time aside.

I met with the nail tech, and we discussed maintaining the lashes and what to expect during the procedure. I mentioned to her that my eyes could be sensitive, but usually weren’t, and she told me it was normal to feel a little burn from the glue while the lashes were being applied, but if the burn turned into real pain I needed to let her know. I agreed to do so, then laid down on the table under a bright light, so she could get to work.

Now – here comes the first part of this process that I had not anticipated: in order to ensure that none of my lower lashes accidentally got stuck to the upper ones, they had to be covered with a pad. After mashing the lower lashes under the pad, which is done by pushing it right up against the waterline, I was to close my eyes so the technician was working with only my upper lashes, which would be resting on top of the white eyepad. However, we had to try six times to get the pad to fit under my eye in a manner that didn’t cause me great discomfort and irritation, as well as making my eyelids flutter and water instead of staying closed.

It was at this point I realized that hey, I really did kinda jump into this without doing my research, because I never get surprised by a part of the process when I try out cosmetic enhancements like this. And this time, I just didn’t bother to do good homework, because I never even saw this coming. How anyone can keep their eyes closed while mashed down on what felt like a piece of paper pushed up against the waterline is beyond me, but the technician said most women don’t have a problem with it. I really was thinking that if I’d known I’d be lying on my back for two hours with pads shoved into my eyes I would have re-thought the entire procedure, but there I was, so I decided to soldier on.

My eyes never did stop watering, not once during the two hours I was getting each individual synthetic lash attached to a real one. I also noticed that I was far less relaxed, and much more chatty in nonsensical, nervous kind of way, than I usually am. I was also wiggly, and uncomfortable, and very nervous – again, not my usual demeanor when doing stuff like this. And the eyes watered on, and yes, they did burn, but that tingly little burn you sometimes get when you apply regular lash glue, the kind that irritates a little but stops when the glue dries, and isn’t that big of a deal.

The last 45 minutes, though, were pure torture. I was thinking things like, OMG I am going to have to insist that she stop now, and asking her repeatedly how much longer we had to go. I was even apologizing constantly for being one of “those” clients who spent the entite time on the table whining and nattering on. It was just…weird, and I kept visualizing the woman sneezing or something and sticking me right in the eye with her little needle. In short, I was freaking out.

When she was finally done and showed me the results in the mirror, I was awestruck. The lashes were gorgeous. I was so pleased I managed to convince myself that my red-ringed eyes would calm down, just as she told me they would, and that the fact these gorgeous lashes felt a bit like pine needles scratching my lids would subside, but once again, I was really doubtful, and nervous, in a manner I am usually not. several times I asked her if they were supposed to feel this way, and she reassured me once again that different people experience different level of discomfort at first, but that in an hour or so it should be fine. She did tell me to be sure and come back in if I wanted them removed, and not to do so at home.

I must admit, they were gorgeous. For about an hour.

To make this already too-long story shorter: I was uncomfortable all evening, and even swallowed a few Benadryl to try and relieve the swollen lids and itchy eyes; but when it came time for bed I found it too uncomfortable to close my eyes. I could just feel those suckers poking at me and scratching my skin. Then I made what may or may not have been the worst mistake of the night: I Googled “lash extensions irritation” and was bombarded immediately with images of women sporting puffy, swollen-shut eyes, and reading horror story after horror story about the dangers of the procedure.

Normally, even when something doesn’t go the way I would have liked, I accept that and move on in whatever way I must do; this time, I went into a complete panic. My heart was racing, I hyperventilated, I got dizzy and terrified. I calmed myself down by making plans: OK, in the morning if you’re really swollen, you can call in sick and get to a doctor or back to the salon right away, if you’re just still feeling a bit off you can make it through the day and then decide, or maybe you’ll just wake up with these gorgeous lashes and the irritation will have gone away. By running through the options in my mind, I finally calmed myself down enough to fall asleep around 12:30. But then, at 1 AM, I leapt up out of the bed with distinct feeling that my throat was closing up. It was so intense that without even fully waking I ran out of the bedroom into the den where my husband was still up watching TV, panting at him with what little breath I had left that…well, that nothing, because by the time I made it into the den the sensation had stopped, and while I could breathe again, I was panting like a madwoman and clawing at my own chest like I still thought I might die.

I muttered something to Doug about a bad dream, and some mascara I couldn’t wash off (I didn’t tell him about getting the extensions for no real reason except that it didn’t come up, and in hindsight I am so glad I didn’t because he would have given me hell for weeks if he’d known, in light of what happened). I remembered that the technician had said not to get the lashes wet for 48 hours, so I figured that meant it would break down the glue and the lashes might come off; straight to the bathroom sink I went to stick my face in handful after handful of cold water and slowly rub those suckers off. In my Googling before falling asleep I’d read that anything oil-based might also cause them to fall off, so I used both some oil-based makeup remover AND olive oil from the kitchen to weaken the glue further (Doug did not even ask why I dashed into the kitchen for a bottle of olive oil to take with me into the bathroom, which leads me to believe he thought I was experiencing some sort of bizarre sleepwalking episode he didn’t want to interrupt).

It only took about ten minutes, but I managed to snap off every single one of those $200 worth of false lashes – along with most of my natural ones. My eyes were red, puffy, itchy, and ugly as hell all the next day, but honestly I did not even care. The five hours I had those lashes glued on were the most beautiful and excruciating hours of the life of my damn eyes, and I would have done anything after that horrid panic attack to get them off. I managed to get back to sleep around 2:30, then had to get up at 6 AM for work – let me tell you, I looked a hot damn mess that day, but again, I did not even care, because I have never been so relieved to get rid of false eyelashes in my life. I kid you not when I say that I thought those things were going to kill me.

So, it’s off to bed I go again, so I can get up for the first day of school tomorrow. Hopefully I’ll be able to put some makeup on my eyes tomorrow to conceal the lack of lashes, but if not, I’ll just show them the picture of how great I looked for about an hour before it all came crashing down. Let me be a warning to you people – don’t get lazy about doing your research before getting anything done, no matter how simple and harmless it might appear to be. And trust your instincts, not your technician! If it doesn’t feel right, just get on up and tell them no thanks. Your eyelashes will thank you for it later.

PS: I typed this up really fast, so I apologize for typos and lack of clarity or eloquence. I think I’m still shaking off the effects of my brush with death. I also realize the pictures are cheesy, but again, I was in a hurry.

Photo Finish

Posted on August 8, 2015 by marey mercy

Work started back up last Tuesday, and quite honestly it was a welcome change. I actually started getting bored that last week off, so I wasn’t bummed out about having to go back. The first month of school is always a crazy one, so posts may be sparse for awhile, and I’ve not taken a lot of photos lately either – but I do have a few new ones to share. So let’s get to it.

This macro is from an older set – I believe I shot these back in February, or something.Yep, I’ve been digging into the older stuff again, since new photos are scarce at the moment. Still, it’s nice to go back through older sets and find a few more gems to edit. I take thousands of photos a year, so it’s good to let some older ones get some love.

The wig is Miranda by Amore, if you’re interested

I bought the mustache back in May, and just never got around to using it before now. I had ideas for using it that didn’t work out; so I basically just threw on different wigs and necklaces and made goony faces. It was a quick shoot – well, aside from the almost two hours it took me to apply makeup, that is. Speaking of which, I was pretty disappointed with my makeup in this shoot. For two hours of work, I sure didn’t turn out to look a lot different than I do in most of my photos. The goal is always to transform myself, but lately my makeup skills have plateaued, and no matter what I start out trying to achieve, the end result is coming out pretty much the same every time. Not that I’m displeased with how I look in general, but when I first started using drag makeup it was always thrilling to see how I turned out in the final shots. Now, not so much, because I pretty much know what I’m going to look like before I even start. If I were more skilled I could really use makeup to create completely different looks each time, but as I said, I think I’ve reached the limit of my skills in this area.

Hair = Angelica by Noriko

I don’t really care for this one all that much; the focus wasn’t as crisp as I would have liked and I over-softened my skin so it looks a bit phony. Plus the mustache didn’t look nearly as good as I’d hoped it would; for starters I spent so long on makeup that ended up disappointing me that I just was NOT in the mood to mess with spirit gum and take the time to apply the mustache properly, so it’s just stuck on my face with double-stick tape, which means it fell off a lot and in all my re-applying it went crooked in a lot of the shots. Aside from that, it just looks more fake than I wanted it to – too dark and those weird blunt ends look really lame. This one is a little better:

Another Angelica wig

But…it’s kinda too serious for the mustache to work. I was hoping to seriously emulate some of the lovely bearded drag queens I’ve seen, but meh. It just didn’t really work. I think if I edit any more of these, I’ll stick to the sillier ones, like the first one I shared. So far, that one’s my favorite. Oh, and I was playing around with my new pop-up backdrop I got in a few weeks ago; so now I can have a black or white background in a snap instead of having to hang something on my wall. I already had a gray one and I quite love it, so the black and white one was a good addition to my arsenal. Thinking of getting some of the mottled pop-ups, too, since they’re not terribly expensive, do not wrinkle, and are so easy to use. Not big enough to use in full-body shots, but great for portrait work!

I did go a little processing-happy with this one, but it seemed to work:

I was thinking a bit of Terry Gilliam-esque cartoonery with this shot; not sure I achieved that but it does look more like animation than a real-life shot anyway. And yeah, there’s the crooked mustache again.

I’ve been way into portraits for quite a few months now and have not done much full-body work or movement shots, but my photography pendulum is swinging back in that direction. Spending so much time on prep work for these portraits has become tiresome, and I’m running out of stuff to do when posing again. No worries, though, it’s just may be time for me to find some other way to get inspired. I’m sure something will come to me soon enough. In fact, today I decided to head out to IAH for more planespotting, since that is always a fun photography diversion for me, but in the end it was too damn hot (we did, in fact, have a heat advisory today) so I blew it off.

The kids come back this coming Thursday, then it’s off to the races for the rest of August. I’ll get back to uploading wig reviews soon enough, though, so until then, take care everyone!

Hair-itage

Posted on July 31, 2015 by marey mercy

Ugh, terrible title, sorry. I’ve written so many posts with hair-pun titles, it’s either start to repeat them or just go for awful. I think you can see which route I chose.

And now you can also see that I finally got my hair cut and colored into some sort of STYLE. With the exception of the roughly 4-6 months I enjoyed having a perm, I’ve not had hair I actually liked for almost 5 years now. My initial goal was to keep growing until it was at least mid-way down my back; but as it grew I began to realize that my baby-fine hair was never going to look on me like one of my Angelicas or Brandis, and that going beyond shoulder-length was not the best use of what I’ve got. Then, once I decided to bob it off, I also decided I didn’t need to keep worrying about damaging my hair with a dye job, because it’s short enough that any damaged ends can just get trimmed off without too much trouble. Getting this effect took two tries, though; because the first time the dye didn’t take and the stylist left too much length (not her fault, I originally chose a style that was a bit too long). I went back two days after the initial cut and color and we tried again – and I have been thrilled with the results so far.

Finally I eliminated that awful shoulder-length hair-flip I had going on, and my hair actually looks like a real style. Chopping off a few inches really gave my hair the little bit of bounce it needs (and the dye helps as it makes my hair a little more coarse) and the color, I think, is going to satisfy all my wig-friends who are constantly reminding me that even though my bio hair really is that dark, when I choose wigs that closely match it the effect isn’t the best. In other words, your natural hair color may be dark brown, but natural just doesn’t look that good on you. It was really miss Robin by Noriko that sealed the deal for me – I loved those highlights in the Chocolate Swirl so much that it was the day I got that wig when I decided to color my hair again for certain. Moving on.

I have a few more edited photos to share, but not many – it seems that in the last full week of my summer vacation, I finally decided to get out of the house and venture out into the world, so I’ve spent this week meeting up with friends all over town and even doing a little shopping. This seriously has not happened all summer – for the most part, I’ve stayed up super-late (4 AM at most) and slept in late (getting up around 9:30) then sat around in my pajamas all day catching up on documentaries and editing photos or videos. Seriously. I’ve never done so much nothing for so long in my life, but I guess I really needed that sort of rest, because it hasn’t bothered me at all. Obviously I also filmed a TON of videos and took lots of pictures, but still – both of those things can be done in at least half of my pajamas (I may be wearing a lovely top in my wig vids, but below the waist it’s strictly sweatpants, trust me. And bare feet. With a rock plopped down on the floor between said feet, so I don’t start shifting while I’m talking and turning around to show the wig, which would move me out of focus because my camera has no autofocus. Ah, the glamour of the wig reviewer).

I did film reviews for my new Angelica, Seville, May, and Code Mono, so those will be uploaded soon. And I still have a Stevie by Amore that I got in the mail Monday and have not even taken out of the box – which proves I’ve been busy because usually, I will rip into those boxes as soon as they arrive. I think being happy with my real hair now is part of the reason, too, since I’m less consistently inclined to cover it up right now.

How short my hair was when I started

My birthday came and went without much fanfare, as usual, except as I pointed out to Lana I’ve been basically buying wigs with abandon all month and claiming “birthday present” with each purchase, as well as putting yet another Fendi Spy bag on layaway. And in case I forgot to mention it, another Stitch Fix came and went without so much as an iPhone photo, because I decided not to keep anything and I didn’t think I’d have enough time to take decent photos before my three-day window to ship them back passed. It was a nice enough fix with only one thing I didn’t like (a mini-dress), but with all the wig-shopping I’ve done this month I decided to just let the whole thing go. I do kind of regret the olive-green lace biker jacket I sent back though; it was really cute.

Modified version of an above photo – not sure why I like this weird edit, but I do

I’ll be honest, I don’t have too much more to add here and am just throwing in words as filler between photos. Thank you for reading.

This was not a leap – just Photoshop levitation trickery

Drag Days of Summer, Part Two

Posted on July 19, 2015 by marey mercy

OK, here we go with the actual photos! The ones I’ve had a chance to edit, at least, from Wednesday’s shoot. But first:

I actually have some shots to share from June that I never posted. First up is a few more with this fab striped skirt I got from The Gap – it really photographs well!

That was actually what I call an “unjump,” meaning an attempted jump shot that I timed wrong and did not capture properly. Both the unjump above and the next one are also composites – the top half of me is from one shot while the bottom half is from another:

In both cases, I just didn’t like something that was going on in the top half (I think in one my hair was completely covering my face and in the other I just didn’t look too graceful) so I did my best to layer two different shots together. Took a long time, but I think I pulled it off OK.

Also, not gonna lie – in the shot directly above, the shadows were hitting my face in an unflattering manner, causing my nose to look unnaturally big. So, I used Photoshop to make it thinner. Then, I realized my eyes looked wonky with the thinner nose, so I worked some more magic to move them a leeeeetle father apart from each other, and thus balancing them with the nose. Have you ever heard how if you try to get plastic surgery on one part of your face, you often have to alter another to make it look right? Well, that’s kinda what happened here, only, not permanent. Still, in the end I look a bit less like myself than normal, but whatevs. I already had a torso from one shot and the legs of a different one, so why stop there, right? Moving on.

Here’s another shot I took of Robin when I was messing around with her after making my video review:

As in the last shot I shared, this one is also two different pics of the wig combined to give it more interesting movement. And lately I’ve been experimenting with some softer light filters than I’ve ever used before; I’m in a phase of feeling less insistent on absolute clarity and trying out softer looks. Who knows why. Always something to change up.

This is a shot I took of Brandi during the same shoot where I took the Robin pics (obviously, since the clothing is the same). Brandi is much more full, so I didn’t need to layer two photos together to get that much movement. One more from this set, this time ridiculously Pixlr‘ed:

The original pic was out of focus, but I really liked how it looked in spite of that; there was a really nice shape to the flowing hair, so I chose to work with it anyway. I think I may have over-done the Pixlr overlays, but they have added so many cool ones lately I kind of can’t stop tinkering (I love the ‘mermaid’ and ‘candyminimal’ ones in particular). Speaking of overdoing it with Pixlr:

I’d really started to get bored with June’s shots by this time, and dug back into the ol’ archives to find something else to edit. In the end it felt a bit boring, so I ran it through the Pixlr grinder also. Another old one I worked with that I did NOT Pixlr-fy was this one:

That’s one of my favorite photo wigs, even though I tried to trim the bangs myself and really jacked them up. Not too noticeable when I’m throwing the wig around, fortunately.

Okay, so now on to the most recent stuff:

I already mentioned the makeup process I went through for this shoot, so can we talk about this sweater now? I got this from my favorite online store for vintage costume-like goodies, The Kissing Tree. Whenever I’m feeling a little bored with my current stash of costumes I go check them out (usually at their eBay store), and when I came across this thing I knew I’d found my next purchase. It is perfect for portraits because there’s so much going on, it can be used in many different ways even within the same shoot without it really looking like it’s the same sweater every time. It has a great feathery collar, and I love love LOVE clothing with texture; the sleeves are not only striped BUT they have little fabric balls AND beads AND rhinestones – fabulous! Just moving my arms around in interesting ways make very unique pictures – like this:

Then, for added fun, it also has that huge heart right in the middle. I didn’t actually use this sweater in nearly as many ways as I could have in this set, but I love any article of clothing that lends itself to a lot of different looks just by positioning the body in different ways. And at $34 it was a steal. The only downside is that it’s a sweater, and a heavy one at that, so for taking photos under bright lights in July in a small studio with tons of windows, it can get pretty hot, but I just stuck on some shorts and did the best I could – most of the shots I took were portraits; I spent two hours on that makeup and I was determined to get the most out of it! So for most of the shots wearing shorts that in no way matched the top was fine.

To maximize the shoot, I also made as many wig changes as possible:

See what I mean about that sweater? This photo doesn’t even look like it’s from the same shoot! And there’s that softer lighting again. One thing I did differently this time was really neutralize a lot of the color in the RAW files so that I didn’t get some of the blown-out brightness and discoloration I tend to get when processing, but I think that resulted in my face looking too white later. That, and the fact that I used too much highlighting on my face when applying the makeup. Anyway, that led to me having to add some detail into the shots using shadows and filters, and I think I leaned towards softer light effects to help soften the face overall. If any of that makes sense. Also, my blending wasn’t great so I spent a lot of time smoothing out that eyeshadow, and I messed around with my nose a lot in most of the shots. I found that enlarging my nostrils just a bit really changed how I looked, so I did a lot of little tweaking like that here and there just to accentuate the drag-effect I was going for. Kind of the same technique I used for this one:

My face came out REALLY white in this one so again, the softer light helped to add some dimension and detail back to my face. And who knew that Rene of Paris Caitlyn would make such a great photography wig? I almost sold it, but in the end I decided against it because t was inexpensive and I thought it MIGHT be good for photos – that sure was a good call, because I LOVE how it looked in this set. I’ve been gravitating towards short wigs lately for photoshoots anyway, especially when I’ve just spent two hours on my makeup; they are so much easier to work with when posing, and they stay out of the face. I can’t get all that good flowy motion I love, so there’s always a tradeoff, but especially with the summer heat the shorties are definitely a good option to have.

They don’t look as good for jumping, though,but it was pretty hot in the sweater already so I stuck with Caitlyn for my leaps – which really weren’t leaps but levitations:

For this one I was leaning over a stool, then I layered that over a blank shot I took of the background so I could erase the stool out of the shot. This was mainly tricky because of the hand I was leaning on in the original:

That hand was a real giveaway; it did not look at all natural when I was “floating” and made it obvious I’d been leaning on something, so I went back to my other shots from this point in the set, and found a hand I thought I could layer over the original one. However, THAT hand had all my fingers spread apart, and it was an absolute bitch to essentially cut and paste properly without the edges of the fingers looking really unnatural and obvious. I am not sure why it took me so long to give up on that hand and just go find another one; I think I spent something like four hours working on this photo and a good two of those hours were dealing with that stupid hand! In fact I gave up for the night eventually and returned to it the next day – at which point the solution became obvious, which was, duh, go find another hand.

Funnily enough, the hand I used ended up being the original hand from the next shot I processed; I didn’t notice that until I was editing this shot and working to erase the stool and had to maneuver around the hand again and thought, hey, this is as easy as it was working with that hand in my other shot – oh hey! It’s the same hand! Hi, Hand!

So now you can scroll up to the first levitation shot and see the same exact hand in that one as is here. Isn’t that completely uninteresting? And aren’t you glad I spent an entire paragraph and half talking about it? Of course you are. And in this shot, I was once again posing on a stool in the original, and used the same blank backdrop shot to layer over. My lips were also wonky in the shot, and in trying to fix the wonkiness I made them huge, then decided I kinda liked how they looked and kept them. Oh, and shadows. They’ve been a bitch for me ever since I started trying to edit them into levitation shots to make them look real, and I finally figured out a strategy that works for me. Instead of using the burn tool with a fairly small brush and drawing an outline around myself, I just make the thing HUGE and slap it over the entire subject several times, then erase the shadows from my body and reduce the opacity, and BAM. A nice shadow every time!

In yesterday’s post, I mentioned that I was playing around with lighting throughout this set, too (remember, I spent two hours on that makeup and was determined to get as many different looks as I could out of this shoot!). In most of the shots I had my Speedlight attached to the camera and bounced off the ceiling for some nice soft light, but occasionally I’d attach a light bender to it and aim bright light directly at my face for a different look:

Much harsher shadows behind me, and a lot less shadows on my face with a much brighter light. It’s a harsher look, and overall I don’t care for this effect as much as I do the softer ones, but for something different it’ll do.

And to sum up for now (who knows how many more of these I’ll edit – I have a few wigs and looks I haven’t even processed yet) here’s one last wig change:

That wig is called “Sava” and I think it was made by Vanessa Wigs. I’ve gotten more photographic use out of that $20 wig than many of my costlier ones; it’s interesting, it’s easy to wear, and it works with so many different looks, believe it or not. Great wig. And those are some older Zenni Optical glasses I got and kept even though they are no longer the right prescription, because they’re awesome.

Whoo I am all out of words! Which is great, because I’m also all out of photos for now. More to come though, as well as some new wig reviews: Camille by TressAllure (which is really Shilo by Noriko, but with a lace front); Miranda by Amore; Stevie by Amore; Kenzie by Noriko; an updated Code Mono by Ellen Wille; a Seville in Macadamia-LR by Noriko; a May by Noriko; and another Noriko Angelica (also in Macadamia-LR). Sheesh, did I really just admit to buying all of those?! As I may have said before, it’s my birthday this month, so I partied it up a little early with my purchasing. School starts in two weeks anyway, and I know my wig reviewing will either calm WAY down or possibly grind to a complete halt, so I’m getting it all in while I still can! Never fear though – I still have oodles of old vids to upload, so that should continue to either annoy or entertain you through the first semester, at least.

Oh and also – my July Stitch Fix will be here Wednesday, so that’s happening too. What can I say, folks – stay tuned!

Drag Days of Summer, Part One

Posted on July 18, 2015 by marey mercy

My makeup routine for photos has gotten so elaborate that I rarely have time to do a shoot in what I like to call “full drag” (even though I’m not the proper gender to be a drag queen). But I do follow makeup tutorials by drag queens when I have the approximately two hours required to prepare my face, so last Wednesday I saw the opportunity to spend an entire day on photos, as long as I didn’t get distracted by other things and lose time. So, I made myself stick to my commitment, and got up fairly early (by my summer standards, which is about 8 AM – as someone who can easily stay up until 4 AM and sleep until 10, eight o’clock is early for me) Wednesday and set to work.

I’d already picked out the makeup tutorial I wanted to try – there are many queens who’ve made tutorials painting their faces like my RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 7 fave, Pearl, but I like this one the best (partly because I love listening to Fendi’s beautiful accent):

Fendi and I also share an inability to cover up our eyebrows all that well; I’d only tried once before to do this and it was a disaster the first time, so this time I made sure to be patient and not rush the process as well as to be more precise. The first time I tried it I was quite sloppy about things, and the end result was a goopy mess. I watched several different tutorials for this, but this is the latest one I watched while i was actually doing it:

As I work on my face, I stop after each big step and go take a picture so I can make sure when I start taking photos that everything looks like I want. I learned the hard way that what looks fine in the mirror does not necessarily look great in front of the camera under the bright lights; the biggest problem is thinking I’ve got enough paint on only to find out after the shoot that my blush didn’t even show, or my eyebrows weren’t on dark enough and disappeared. I’ve gotten MUCH better at using Photoshop to correct makeup mistakes (and it’s true I always end up having to correct at least one thing, usually the nose contouring which I still fail at way more often than I succeed) but it is always better to get things, if not perfect, then at least as right as possible during the shoot so there’s less work to do later.

So, here’s a little collage of the makeup transformation process. These are just goony shots I was taking quickly to test out my makeup steps, and I was also experimenting with lighting while doing this, so you can see that each photo looks quite different lighting and color-wise. But still, it gives you an idea of how much of a big process the makeup is.

In the first, I’ve no makeup on but the eyebrow cover, so yeah. Yay for makeup you guys! So much sun damage, but what can I do – when I was growing up a tan was considered healthy, and I was ALWAYS tan. Moving on.

In the second shot, I think you can see the tape I have stuck to the outside of both my eyes. This is actually another YouTube trick I learned that I use every day; it keep me from extending my shadow too far out and keeps it even on both eyes, as well as making blending a snap because I can just slop that dark color on and I don’t have to worry about blending the edges. I just yank the tape off and bam – a really nice upward slant to the shadow.

The trick with covering the brows for drag is that you’re SUPPOSED to then create a faux crease above your natural crease to make the eyes look unusually large. Turns out this is much easier to do when you have a young face, like Miss Fendi up there in her video. My eyelids have some sag and ‘extra’ skin, so when i drew on my faux crease while holding things up a bit they looked fine, but when I let go, well, they disappeared. I’m OK with it since overall for my first attempt at creating true ‘drag’ eyes I did better than I expected, but I guess next time I’ll have to use some tape or something to yank my eyelids up a little. Maybe one of those instant-facelift bands I’ve seen advertised might work…

I’d never use this IRL but I bet I could really get some freaky effects out of one of those things! I may have to get one.

Overall you can see that my final effect really wasn’t close at all to what Fendi accomplished, and that happens everytime. The tutorial is a guideline for me to transform myself, but I never look much like the queen in the video when I’m done. Ah well, it is what it is. I was pleased with my little attempt to draw on some non-ridiculous looking eyebrows, and the rest of the makeup was fine since I’m used to all the highlighting and contouring by now – although I did overdo it on the highlighting and came out a bit too white in the photos. Also, I’ve gotten much better at applying false lashes, and actually had a full set on here instead of cutting each lash in half as I usually do and just applying it to the outside corner of the eyes, but I found that with all that dark liner on you can hardly even tell they’re there. Now I see why drag queens use 2 full sets of really huge lashes! Not sure I can go there yet myself, though.

I took about 400 shots this day, and have edited a few so far, but I’ll save those for another post. I’ll just leave you with this one, since I almost always find one makeup test shot that I like enough to process:

Mainly I used Photoshop here to better contour my nose, and I enlarged my nostrils for an extra-creepy look. Obviously I also distorted the lens shape so things would look a little off. There are lots of quite lovely photos to come, though, never fear – this is the only freaky-looking one I’ve done so far. You all know I’m generally NOT going to make myself look bad in my photos! But this one needed something kinda spooky, so there it is.

On to the photos soon!

mareymercy.

Art, Horror, and Other Obsessions

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