Rebel Rebel – The Canon EOS SL1

Posted on May 27, 2014 by marey mercy

First of all, Amazon Prime membership is a beast, y’all. I ordered the Canon SL1 Saturday night, I think, and even though it was a holiday weekend this thing arrived at the post office this morning. BOOM! Well worth the ninety-whatever dollars they’re going to charge me for my membership next year – any and everything I can order through Amazon Prime and get delivered to my doorstep in two days for “free” is worth it for me. Moving on.

It’s like my 7D had a baybeeee

This camera is small, y’all. I squealed like a silly girl who just found the baby shoe aisle at Nordstrom. It’s just so cute! And light as a feather compared to my 7D. It makes me happy.

Sorry for the crappy pictures, I’m pressed for time tonight

I’m not going to get to into the details of this camera, because anyone who’s really interested in it can read the loads of reviews that have already been written, and mostly I just want to share my first impressions. Although it’s almost half the width of my 7D (totally not mathematically provable) the LCD screen is the same size, which is awesome – and it’s also a touchscreen, which is a very nice added feature. I can shoot in RAW and in shutter-priority mode and set most of the manual controls just the way I want, but I do need to spend a lot more time playing around with it to get the most of what I want out of it. Color in particular was crappy in my test pics, and the focus was pretty slow. But I can work those issues out. It’s so small and light and is exactly what I was looking for to add to my gear collection right now. Did I mention that I am thrilled?! Because I am.

Test photo #1:

After charging up the battery and panicking to find an SD card (one did not come with the camera – thank goodness I found a spare one that fit) I tossed on the new 40mm f/2.8 pancake lens I also bought to go with it – I also bought this off Amazon Saturday night and got it today. There’s a telephoto lens coming that is recommended for use with the camera too, but it came off eBay and isn’t moving through the delivery system quite as quickly (it has shipped though). The pancake lens is very compact (hence it’s name) which is probably going to be the only reason I keep it; it focused slowly, and while the photos it took were fine and I got some nice bokeh out of it, it wasn’t significantly lighter in weight than my 50mm f/1.4 which took better pictures. Plus, it’s a prime lens and to get this close to Simon at that focal length, I had to get right up on him – I prefer a little more zoom. Still, it can easily fit into a pocket and is incredibly unobtrusive on the camera, and since it was only $160 I’m going to keep it for those reasons,

The 40mm compared to the 50mm, which isn’t a long lens by any stretch of the imagination either.

The 50mm definitely takes a better photo though – plus it’s so much faster and gets so much more light into the shots. After comparing the two, I started the process of filling out a return request to Amazon for the 40mm, but then I thought about the compact factor and the convenience of the small size and decided what the hell, I’ll keep it around. It practically disappears onto the camera body (too lazy to take more phone pics, so I’ll share some other’s photos of it now – links to photos in captions):

The SL1 with the pancake lens

The SL1 with a 50mm lens

However, the color was off even with the 50mm, and was pretty drab. I think I can play with the settings to improve vibrancy, and I am guessing the auto white balance on the SL1 just isn’t as good as it is on the 7D (I found white balance to be a problem with my last Canon Rebel, too). I’ll have to remember to use my ExpoDisc and custom white balance when I can, because the tones were pretty awful with both lenses. Here’s Simon again, this time taken with the 50mm on the SL1:

More depth and light, still crummy color

I am pleased that I took both photos without the Speedlite, as putting that on this camera would sorely defeat the purpose of owning it. The 50mm wins again in this regard, as it’s so dang fast I can shoot in some pretty low light without having to up the exposure compensation too much. I guess if I ever decide to spend $1600 on a lens, I should probably consider upgrading my mid-level 50mm I now own, but I digress.

Overall I am freaking thrilled with this little thing. I am sure the shorter battery life is going to upset me, and I’m going to find more flaws as I work with it more (I barely had time tonight to get it out of the box, charge up the battery, and snap about 15 photos – much more time will be spent with this once the weekend arrives) but knowing Canons the way I do by now, and having the amount of compatible gear I do, I can slip this little baby into the rotation easily and am going to love having it around. The SL1 is not the best choice for everyone, but it’s perfect for me as someone who just wanted to add something light and portable while retaining the benefits of a DSLR. I don’t think it would be a bad little first DSLR either – I’d just get the cheap 50mm lens you can pick up for about a hundred bucks and forgo the kit lens.

Can’t wait to see how the telephoto fits into all this. I know it’s gonna add weight, and it won’t be as sharp as the L-series telephoto I’m used to, but I think it’s going to be another good addition to this little baby, and one I can use at school. It’s an f/4, so that might hold me back in low light (although that is still considered a fast lens), but it’ll be great for outdoor shots which is usually where I use telephoto lenses anyway. More to come!

Studio Time

Posted on May 27, 2014 by marey mercy

Last week I decided to buy a gray backdrop to use on the wall I where I shoot photos in my little office, and on Sunday afternoon I took it out of the bag to iron out the wrinkles and get it hung. I have a white and a black backdrop I bought off Amazon called “mega-cloth” by Cowboy Studio, and while neither one was wrinkle-free by any stretch of the imagination, they were both less wrinkled than the cheaper backdrops I’ve bought in the past, and what creases were there hung out well and did not show up much in photos. However, the mega-cloth only comes in white, black, and chromakey green, so I had to buy plain muslin to get a gray and I stupidly decided to buy a cheaper one, thinking I could iron it before hanging and it would work fine. Wrong!

Not my backdrop, but an impressive simulation

First of all, the fabric was so stiff I could hardly stand to touch it, plus it was little more than a super-sized bedsheet. The wrinkles came out a little when ironing, but not nearly enough to feel encouraged to see the project through to completion. The backdrop was 10 x 12, so it was pretty damn big, and after 30 minutes not even half of it was ironed out. Not to mention that each ironed section ended up pooled on the floor no matter how hard I tried to keep it stretched out and wrinkle-free, and the whole damn thing was getting creased again after ironing. Eventually I got so frustrated with the entire process I wadded the stupid $30 piece of scratchy material into a ball, stuffed it in the trash, and called it a day.

Not my backdrop in the trash, but a reasonable facsimile

This put me in a pissy mood, because I’m bored with the black backdrop that’s been hanging on my wall for almost two months, and I don’t care much for the white one. It also set me to brooding over how difficult it always is to get these backdrops on the wall – I can’t do it myself because I’m not tall enough to get the fabric flush against the ceiling like my husband can, but I don’t like depending on someone else to get them hung and would prefer a method I can execute myself. Not to mention that even with the good cloth there are wrinkles to content with, especially when first out of the package, and then there’s all the furniture I have to move, and there’s the pin-holes all over my walls from all the taking down and putting up of different ones, which got me thinking perhaps it is time to buy a really high-quality backdrop, like Titanium Cloth, that I can hang up and forget about even if it is an over $200 purchase. If it’s as wrinkle-free as it claims to be, then I could get one in, say, a solid neutral gray, hang it once, and forget about it, right?

But that didn’t quite feel like the solution either, because there’s still the hanging and the unfolding and getting the length right and rolling out the floor portion every time I use it, and the cat getting back there and clawing around every time I pull the whole thing out to take photos, and so on. In short, I am quite tired of the whole backdrop “thing” and ready to make a new move. Yep, I think it’s finally time to let go of my remaining resistance against turning this office into a full-fledged home photo studio and get it done already. It means my office, where I spend the majority of my time, will no longer be “homey,” something I’ve been reluctant to give up until now, but I’ve finally gotten tired of moving everything around that I can, and working around everything else, when it’s time to take photos. I am ready for it to be a studio, full time, full stop.

Yep, this is about the size of it

What this mostly entails is getting rid of furniture and painting the walls, which, after reading up on the subject, I’ve decided to do in gray (and leave the ceiling white). There are different ideas about wall/ceiling color, but almost all of them fall into the black, white, or gray camp. A simple Google search brings up a lot of discussion about what gray is best and what to do with flooring too – I think I am going to get the carpet yanked out and just leave the concrete for a floor, possibly paint it gray too. Then I need to get rid of the furniture (which is all cheap and throwaway, so thank g-d for my lack of taste and/or interest in home decorating as it’s working in my favor here) except for my computer desk, and maybe get some rolling drawers for storage – anything that I can move in and out the room easily. I already have lighting, and know well how to use this space to its best advantage, so it really is just moving things out and getting the painting done and it all feels very do-able. I’ve only been reluctant because it eliminates the homey touches that makes this room a cozy space for reading and whatnot when I’m not on the computer, but the truth is I’ve finally turned a corner where I’d rather have a workable photography space more than a sofa to sit on and a coffee table to prop up my feet on while I watch Downton Abbey on my iPad or pet my cat. I can always get some big throw cushions or something to sit on so that it’s not completely cold and lifeless when not in photo-use anyway. More importantly, when it is time to shoot I will have loads more room, and a lot less setup, not to mention having a wall I can shoot against without having to hang fabric anymore.

I’m sure I’ll have to get used to the look of my shots against a wall instead of a draped backdrop, and will still want to hang fabric or paper on occasion, but somewhere down the road I think I can get something installed that would make that easier too. The nice thing is, I know exactly what I need now, and what I want my studio to look like, and that hasn’t been clear until recently – I now know with gray walls and floors, I can make my studio work. I know I don’t need elaborate backgrounds for what I like to do, and from what I’ve read I can use gels to get color out of a gray wall anyway. So I think this is the right time to do it. I also think this is something I can do fairly quickly, and without too much expense. Probably not much more than the $200 I would have spent on the backdrop! And, I don’t have to do it all right away. The painting is the main thing, and believe me, this is not a big room I’m dealing with here. I’ll probably pay someone to do the work because on my own I’m both sloppy and lazy, and the work to rip out the carpet will be paid for when we replace it throughout in the house, which we’d planned to do this summer anyway.

Gives new meaning to the phrase “shooting a gun”

I even started a Pinterest board to gather ideas for how this will look, so if you’re interested you can check it out here: Home Photo Studio Ideas. My first step is going to be clearing all the stuff off the old, cheap bookcase I have in here, so I can get rid of that thing, which takes up one whole side wall no one ever sees in the shots but is actually quite an added limitation to the space. I have all my weights on that bookshelf so I’ll need something to store them on, but that can be easily found; the rest is old textbooks I don’t really need and will probably throw away as well as random stuff I’ve thrown there rather than putting it where I should. I know I’m just thinking out loud at this point, but I’m pretty excited about this now, whereas before it sort of bummed me out to think about turning my cozy little office into a cold empty studio. Now I’m ready to de-clutter and move forward.

A studio in progress with 18% gray wall – supposed to be the best color for photography

I’m even thinking that on a second wall – one that has a doorway into my bathroom – I could hang a paper roller and use it to take photos against different backdrops, like this guy did in this little video – he just installs the roller right over the doorway and when needed, the paper covers it completely, creating a whole new wall:

That would definitely be a step 2, but it would actually work. Here’s hoping I can get going on this soon!

Picture Plans

Posted on May 17, 2014 by marey mercy

The weather is gorgeous this weekend; we had some record-breaking low temps this past week and it’s left us with a beautiful but cool weekend for mid-May in Texas. And as luck would have it, I have very little to do this weekend aside from buy groceries, which we all know I enjoy doing anyway so that’s hardly an unwelcome chore. But last night I started to get that anxious feeling when I have a few days of nothing facing me – what will I do? Of course my immediate response is photography, but I just dolled up and posed last weekend and still have plenty of shots from that set I’d like to process, plus I still need to edit more beach photos and I know the farther away from those sets I get the less likely I am to get interested in them enough to continue editing. Plus I’m not in the mood for all the prep-time new self-portraits would take, so I know if I do some shooting I want it to be outdoors or involving other people somehow.

I decided to work more airplane pics into this post, but I’m warning you they’re not very good ones.

I soon hit on the idea of driving out to IAH and checking out the observation area they have there, but it’s an hour away which is a long way to go on one’s own, especially if where one ends up isn’t too safe and/or thrilling. So I started emailing everyone I could think of who might not mind spending a day sitting in a parking lot watching airplanes land, and surprisingly, everyone I contacted was up for it – just not this weekend. Doesn’t me help me in the moment, but it’s sure good to know! The most immediate opportunity appears to be my dad, who said he might be able to go next weekend, which does give me something to look forward to. Once I’ve visited the spotting area once, I won’t be as cautious about going again alone, so in the end I won’t have to force any of my friends to go with me unless they really want to do it; according to what I’ve read, the airplanes are as low as 100 ft above the parking lot when they fly over, so I’d think it would be a fun experience for anyone – but what do I about how normal people enjoy themselves.

So for this weekend, probably no airplanes to shoot, but I may break out my macro lens and try to work with it awhile since my attempts to use it so far have been less than stellar. I bought this cheap ring light off Amazon a few years ago and never used it in the appropriate manner (I just stuck it on a tripod and used it to help light up my face for portraits) so I may dig that out and try to attach it to my camera for the first time, and see if it helps light up a subject for macro-photographing. I’m thinking I might connect the grocery store trip to photography and take macro shots of food; but that’s probably just because I’m hungry, so it’s off to breakfast now.

And I’ll break my general silence about work to say that all hell has broken loose up there in the past week, and next year is shaping up to be even more insane than this one, but in very unpredictable ways. I must be insane myself to sign up for another year of it, but since my idea of enjoying myself on a Saturday involves standing around under low-flying airplanes perhaps we already knew I was bonkers.

Terminal History

Posted on May 15, 2014 by marey mercy

At last, I have edited more pictures from my trip with my dad to the 1940 Air Terminal Museum. It’s the site of what was the original terminal for Hobby Airport, which opened in, not surprisingly, 1940.

This photo looks a lot like the photo on the website, the difference being I took this one. Also my dad is in the window. Other than those two things, it’s the museum sign, yep.

I was so excited to get out the back door and onto the tarmac that I didn’t take pictures of much else, but here’s a longer shot of the entrance:

I have to tell you that as I look at these photos of the front entrance, all I can think about is that I locked my keys in the car when we were there, and we spent a ridiculous amount of time standing around in that parking lot during the heat of the day waiting for AAA to show up and break into my car. Except, once that happened, we discovered that my keys were not in my car at all, and had fallen out of my purse somehow and gotten lost somewhere in the museum or behind it where all the planes were. So my dad and I, along with all the museum volunteers, spent an hour or two scouring the place looking for my keys, only to have me discover while talking to a volunteer and glancing down into my purse that they were actually stuck in a side pocket the whole time. Mind you – this is after AAA showed up and broke into my car. I was too mortified to tell anyone, and kept it a secret until I got my dad alone so we could share a good laugh over the absurdity of it (the whole time I thought they were lost I kept repeating “this doesn’t make sense, I never lose my keys!” over and over, turned out I was right). Then we both decided not to tell the volunteers a thing about it, walked out to my car and pretended to dig around in the trunk some more, and came back in claiming the keys had been buried under the trunk lining. Good times.

The museum’s foyer, restored to its original appearance. The museum hasn’t been open long, and does not yet have the funds to restore the second floor, so it is off-limits. Also, I think all of those people are looking for my keys.

One funny thing about the lost-keys fiasco was how one-track-minded the volunteers were about the whole airplane thing. Most of the volunteers and visitors were male, slightly older than middle-aged, and plane enthusiasts of one stripe or another. Many were photographers. There were a few married couples with small children wandering about, but overall it was an older male crowd. And me. It was also one of the friendliest groups I’ve been around in some time – full of information and ready to share. I had people suggesting good camera settings and spots to take pictures as well as offering background of different planes that were on the runway, like these planes, which are apparently planes from other countries that flew into the airport and were confiscated for one reason or another:

But back to the lost keys: so there we were, my dad and I, on my cell phone trying to call AAA and figure out the address to the museum. At this point I’m a little panicked because I don’t yet realize, of course, that I do have a way to start my car and get us out of there, and I’m wondering just how long we’re going to be stuck at the airport. Then in the middle of all that a man with a camera slung around his shoulder came over, exclaiming excitedly that a Frontier Airlines jet was about to queue up on the runway, and it was really rare to get a glimpse of one there, and I really should grab my camera and get ready to take pictures. I kept explaining to him, no really sir, I am on the phone with triple A, you see I HAVE LOST MY KEYS and am trying to find them, so no I really do not want to go take pictures of a Frontier Airlines jet right now, thank you. He totally did not get it. It was something else my dad and I laughed about later, how when a good jet came up the runway, no one cared about anything else in the slightest. Of course, when I looked up their airplanes on Google, they do look pretty cool, and I’m rather sorry now I didn’t just go outside for the ten minutes it would have taken to snap the photos and continued with my car key search afterwards, especially now that I know my keys weren’t lost after all.

One of the planes you can view from the tarmac behind the museum

We also missed out on the opportunity to walk with a volunteer down to “the hangar” as they kept calling it, to view some planes up close and personal that I gathered were kind of a big deal, but again, car keys.

It was such an enjoyable day, and I’d really like to get back there again. Of course, there’s the whole car-key humiliation to deal with, but it’s been awhile now so perhaps they’ve forgotten. I think the fundraiser this month is titled “Learn How To Fly Day” so I probably should sit this one out as I’d most likely lose the keys to the plane and ruin everyone’s day. But I gotta go back sometime to get a photo of a Frontier Airlines jet, if nothing else.

One of the many planes I will not be flying

Fab Pants

Posted on May 14, 2014 by marey mercy

Because I take and process so many photos, I am often pressed for what to title them so that I can keep track of them on my hard drive. I have to do something with them other than just use the numbered data they are given when uploaded to my computer, so I tend to give them whatever title pops into my head first when it’s time to save an edited file. The title that popped into my head when working with the shots I took Saturday was “Fab Pants.”

Then every shot from that set that I process I just number; so far I’ve got a “Fab Pants 1” and a “Fab Pants 2.” This is all I’ve had time to edit since I last updated, but I wanted to share it so I had to reach a bit to come up with a blog post, hence the rather lame rambling I’m doing right now. By the way, for anyone who’s curious – I actually had my leg up on a chair when taking this shot. Then I used the composite technique to remove the chair when processing. I’m getting better at this whole thing, I think. Even added some decent shadows this time using the burn tool in Photoshop CS5.

I also thought I’d share that I suffered my first optical tragedy during Saturday’s shoot: I always wear a spare pair of glasses when I’m shooting self-portraits because there’s so much putting on and whipping off of the spectacles that I worry about stretching out my real pair. I have several spares to choose from but I use the weirdest ones since I care about them the least. I will usually keep the glasses on until right before I hit the remote, then I toss them onto the floor somewhere for the photo, and sadly, on Saturday after posing for the shot above my left foot came down right smack on top of them and broke them. I knew it would happen someday, and as I said it’s fortunate that they were a pair I didn’t like very much – although they looked great in photos, they were too harsh on my face to wear them out of the house, and my husband always said they made me look angry. I don’t think he’ll be sorry to hear they had to go.

By the way, it appears that Fly Fest 2014 has finally wound down, a torturous six days from when it started, with just a few stragglers hanging about that have yet to leave the party. Here’s hoping that’s the last aspect of the cycle of life currently breaking down inside our bedroom wall that we have to deal with.

Kinks and Links

Posted on May 9, 2014 by marey mercy

The kinks in my title refers to getting them worked out of my arm again with good ol’ Sandy. And Sandy? Has had enough, y’all. Of her husband, mostly. Today’s OMG moment came when Sandy was working on my right shoulder and suddenly started giggling. Then she kind of put her head down on the massage table for a moment and said, ‘You know, I’m really not a bad person, but…” and for those of you who know Sandy, you’ll be surprised to hear that she did not conclude that sentence with a mention of squirrel-shooting (actually you probably won’t be surprised, because Sandy would never consider herself a bad person for shooting a squirrel). What she did conclude it with was the statement that Thursday morning her husband had been feeling “frisky” and for the first time in her life, she told him, “You know what, no. You’ve been doing everything the same for forty-plus years, and I’ve had enough. I AM NOT IN THE MOOD.” I was little flabbergasted Sandy’s been married forty-plus years and this is the first time she’s ever told her husband to put that thing away, but I’m beginning to suspect Sandy has a tendency to exaggerate. And is it sad that the first thing I thought when Sandy told me this story was, “I can’t wait to share this on my blog”? The links in my title refers to one link, actually, not several, but I wanted to be parallel so I had to make it plural. Forgive me. The point is, a feature has been published about my photography on the Pixlr blog. They do an occasional segment called “Follow-Worthy” which features a photographer they consider to be, well, worth following. And apparently I made the cut. Supereric from Flickr, who writes for the Pixlr blog, contacted me earlier this week and sent me the questions, and now he’s got the blog post up and running. So without further ado, I’ll quit talking here so you can go read what I’m saying over there: Follow Worthy: Marey Mercy. A big thanks to Eric and the folks at the Pixlr site for doing me the honor. I’ve shared that link with everyone I can possibly brag to about it, so I hope they saw a nice increase in numbers. You know – because I know hordes of people and all.

Beach Macro Bingo

Posted on May 7, 2014 by marey mercy

I tried to use my macro lens while at the beach Saturday, but my attempts were less than successful. I really need to read up on how to use this thing appropriately; in my defense, it was incredibly windy which made shooting difficult, and I’d forgotten my lens hood so I was pretty nervous about being out in all that sand and wind. Plus – I have no idea what I’m doing. But crappy photos won’t stop me from sharing them on my blog!

It’s a shell…yep

My mother wanted me to take some photos she could print out in black and white and frame to hang on the walls of her house, so for awhile she walked around with me pointing at things and saying “That! Take a picture of that!” which was less than inspiring. She mostly wanted pictures of tall grasses for some reason, which was weird for me to photograph since it’s not something I normally would care to shoot. I haven’t processed any of those yet. In fact, most of the nature shots I attempted to take with the macro didn’t come out at all, which again I blame on the wind. It really was crazy windy, I swear. So – I took a picture of the grill of her Cadillac instead.

Since most of these shots were boring and/or sub-par, I began running them through Pixlr.

I think the Pixlr effect work well on this next one – original is first, then the edit:

I really do like the Pixlr’ed photo there – I call it “spaceshells.” I didn’t process too many other photos from the macro portion of my weekend, but here’s two more taken with other lenses that I worked on last night, just because.

A view of the pier railing

My niece

A Beached Tale

Posted on May 5, 2014 by marey mercy

Today I thought I’d just show you some photos of the beach house where we stayed over the weekend, as well as share a little story.

Another view of the house…

Or do you like the black and white version better?

We weren’t as isolated as we looked in that photo; immediately outside the frame on either side was another house. But we did have more room down at the far end of the island than a lot of the rental houses further up do, and the house was just lovely; one of the nicer rentals I’ve ever stayed in, actually.

Not only was the house nice and roomy with a great view, but all the furnishings were high-quality and the kitchen was well-equipped. For the most part, Doug and I rent houses only when we can take our pets along, which means the furnishings are going to be less impressive. Doug was staying home this time, though, so my pets weren’t with me, and anyway, my parents were the ones who rented the house so it wasn’t up to me (if it had been, I would have gone for a pet-friendly place as always).

One seriously nice kitchen

I am like my parents in that I’d rather spend a lot of money on a nice place to stay when I vacation, and spend less on outings and sight-seeing while I’m there. Then I tend to hang around the nice house most of the time and venture out only on occasion. My folks are the same way. A few times we wandered down to the public beach that was right beyond our private walkway, but for the most part we hung out on the balcony or in the huge family area – the wind must have been at least 30 MPH on Saturday and was almost intolerable, so I spent a lot of my time in this room, looking at the beach through the back windows:

Speaking of the public beach, our little strip of it offered an interesting day of people-watching, as beach-sitting always does. The most memorably mind-altered beachgoer had to be the twentysomething woman who drew our attention towards sundown. My niece’s boyfriend was the first one to alert us to her presence; we had just finished eating dinner when he walked over to the windows and said “hey, what is this person doing?” That led to all the teenagers heading to the window, where various exclamations were heard, all questioning the behavior of a person who was “just hanging out” by one of the many trashcans that dotted the beach (if you look in the photo below, you can see a few of them lining the sandy roadway). Eventually my mom wandered over to the windows with her binoculars, at which point they could all be heard squealing, “Eeewww! She’s leaning over it now!” I responded by saying that she’d obviously had too much to drink and was, shall we say, relieving herself of her liquor through less than pleasant means, but someone said no, it didn’t actually look like she was getting sick, but rather was just sticking her head in it.

Our private walkway to the beach

Well, who just sticks their head in a trashcan? Didn’t make much sense to me, so I finally got up to see what was going on. By that time, the woman had walked away from it; I could see that she was dressed normally for the beach (shorts, a swim top, a light jacket, barefoot) and was walking quite steadily towards yet another trash can; she then pulled back her longish hair with her hands, and leaned right down into it, sticking her head and shoulders all the way in. She did this for a few minutes – and in fact, did not appear to be heaving – then poked her head back up, looked around, walked around to the side of trash can, kicked it over…and then crawled into it.

And yes, I took pictures. I know what this says about me.

By this time we were all beside ourselves. We’d run through all the possiblities, but none of them seemed to fit. She did not appear homeless at all and was very clean. Her gait gave no indication that she was altered by some substance – she walked in a straight line (when not occupied by crawling into trash cans) and would even break into a run while making her way down the beach. But every once in awhile, she’d stop and stick her head, or her whole body, into one of the cans.

At first I contended that she was mentally insane, but again, that didn’t quite fit – she just didn’t look disheveled enough, although I could totally be wrong about that. My best guess is that she was tripping on acid, which might explain why she could walk so normally from time to time but then get totally distracted by this experience of sticking herself into trash cans. I tried to take the high road at first, but admit I eventually became as amused by her as everyone else (at one point, one of my nieces snuck down to inspect a trash can she’d visited, and came back to report that it was completely empty), and we monitored her progress all the way up the beach until she took a sharp left at a private walkway a good distance away from us and disappeared.

It didn’t stop there though – since my father had his guitar out and was noodling away on it while we all tried to figure out what this woman was doing, someone got the bright idea that we should write a song about her, to commemorate her trashcan-love. As soon as my dad heard this suggestion, he immediately began playing “Annie’s Song,” by John Denver, the first line of which is “You fill up my senses…” Which of course, completely cracked us up.

I’m sad to say that we still kept going; we actually sat down and wrote new lyrics for John Denver’s song (whom we re-named “John Dumpster” for the occasion) and then WE SANG IT. We are terrible people, I know. But since we’re already going to hell for this one, here are the lyrics for you to enjoy as well. We can all sing this together as we ride our hand-basket into the fiery pits of Hades:

You fill up my senses
Like a night in a trash can
Like the beaches in springtime
Like a walk through the dump
Like a storm in my stomach
Like a summer day’s garbage
You fill up my senses
Come trash me again

Come let me lean on you
Let me give my lunch to you
Let me roll in your lining
Let me die in your can
Let me lay down inside you
Let me always be with you
Come let me love you
Come trash me again

The last thing I’ll say about poor Trashcan Woman is this: the next day, I remembered I’d actually taken a picture of one of the cans the morning before, because I thought the saying on it was amusing – but by that time I’d forgotten what the saying was. When I pulled the photo back up and showed it to the family after all this though, it cracked us up all over again:

Oh Trashcan Woman, it all makes sense now

Beach Patrol

Posted on May 4, 2014 by marey mercy

The benefit of hanging out with my family when on vacation is that they don’t care at all if I spend the entire time taking photos and edited them on my computer. My husband gets annoyed if I spend too much time doing that, but no one in my family cared so I got to snap and edit away. In fact, my dad is as obsessive about his hobbies as I am, so while I was editing on the computer he was trying to learn some James Taylor song on the guitar.

This was the neighbor’s beach house, actually; I took that one with my telephoto lens from our balcony as it was actually pretty far away. This was our house:

I took some quick snaps of the interior that I can edit later; it was a really beautiful house. I was deluded that it would take an hour to get there though; it was more like two hours. It was just me and my parents for a few hours, then my sister showed up with three of her four kids and their significant others. They’d had their senior prom the night before and seemed to really enjoy having a day on the beach. They wanted their pictures taken, and then after I took them they wanted to see them right away, so that’s a lot of what I have to share today.

My nephew and his girlfriend

My niece and her boyfriend – that date in the sand is the day they met. Cheesy, I know.

They dug big holes into the sand to sit in. They also dug cupholders.

I took those with my 17-40mm, but since I knew I’d want to take lots of pictures I brought along all my camera gear. I took a bunch with my macro lens, but have only had time to process one of them; it’s a good one though:

I forgot to bring my lens hoods so I started to get nervous about wandering around the beach with them because it was ridiculously windy outside. So windy, in fact, that all of the rocking chairs on the balcony were rocking without our assistance. Of course, I had to film this:

Here’s another I took with the 70-200; I liked how the bird looked like he was tilting in the wind.

I’ll finish up with this one, and tell one sad story: at one point in the afternoon, I was sitting at the dining room table which sits in front of the long row of windows overlooking the balcony and the beach; I looked up just in time to see a Beach Patrol helicopter fly by right in front of our balcony. I literally could have licked it if I’d been on the balcony – OK not really, but if I’d been outside with my telephoto lens and been able to take pictures, it would have looked like it. Sadly, I missed it, and it never came back by. Ok so here it is – it’s Sunday morning and my parents have Fox News on, so I have to hurry up and post this and get the hell out of the room, so sorry if this isn’t the most well-written post ever:

Saturday Break

Posted on May 3, 2014 by marey mercy

My parents rented a house on the beach this weekend, so I’ll be heading out there tomorrow with my family. It’s been requested that I bring my camera to take head shots of my sister and some beach photographs I can get printed in black-and-white and framed for my mother’s house. There are also some plane spotting sites that can be found around the small airport in the area, so I should be busy photographically if nothing else. I am taking both camera bags and all my lenses and Speedlites so I can take all sorts of photos while I’m there, and I’m looking forward to it. The beach is only a bit over an hour from my house, so it’s a short trip, and I’ll be coming back Sunday morning to get my weekend errands done before another hectic week of work starts up.

This morning my mother posted a picture of the balcony view from their beach house on Facebook; I stole a copy of it to share with you here. It’s not the prettiest beach in the world, but whatever. There’s sand and water and a balcony, so I can make do. See you all at the end of the weekend!