Contempt-orary Art

Posted on February 25, 2014 by marey mercy

Our final excursion around town Saturday was to the new contemporary arts museum which opened up five months ago. My friend Candace is on the board of directors, so she wanted me to go by and see the space.

I should mention that my friend is on the board of directors for pretty much everything in this town. Keep in mind, by the way, that this is not the town in which I live, but a town that is very close to my neighborhood and is actually where my school is located. Katy, Texas is a very unique area, one of many that make up Houston and its surrounding neighborhoods, to be sure, but an area with its own attitude. It used to be a small town that was far enough away from Houston to be considered “the country” but those days have been over a long, long time – much longer than I’ve been alive anyway. However, Katy has maintained this sense of itself as a small town that is all its own, and as such, it has a history it has managed to keep alive, as well as scads of “old Katy” families whose members have wielded weird power within the little city for generations, it seems. My friend Candace is from one of these Old Katy families, so she knows everyone and is involved in everything. She attends things I’d never begin to understand, all sorts of Women’s Associations and Civic Luncheons and other mysteries are always on her schedule. It’s a town that still has all that stuff going on regularly, and to me, it’s all foreign (Renee Zellweger grew up in Katy, by the way, if that matters).

So anyway, it is no surprise that my friend Candace is on the board of this new contemporary art museum, and it’s certainly no surprise that she wanted me to see the space.

When she first told me this gallery was opening up, I figured it would be a disaster. There’s never been much demand for contemporary art in a small conservative town like this, and part of me figured it wouldn’t be “real” contemporary art anyway. But it appeared to be the real deal, at least as far as the artwork was concerned. I’m no art aficionado, but I was impressed with the collection of work I saw on display. It was also clear the director plans all sorts of talks and workshops in the space to reach out to the community and make the gallery a place for people to come together and celebrate art, which is pretty awesome.

However, I couldn’t help it – I found the director off-putting and unlikable. Perhaps it’s because she was talking to one of the board members that she went on and on so much while we were there, but she was exhausting. Not only that, she was pretty negative. She spent most of her time complaining about how no one in this little town saw the value of investing in art, something which I would think one would investigate before opening up such a venue. And it’s true, she did seem to be aware of this before the gallery opened its doors, she just really, really liked pointing it out to us over and over again – how no one in the area thought a work of art was a valid use of two thousand dollars. It got weird after awhile, how she kept talking about it, while at the same time shooting down anything either I or Candace had to say about the subject, as if she’d already thought of or realized everything we tried to contribute to the discussion – which again, kept making me wonder why she opened up the gallery in the first place if she was already so acutely aware of something that clearly bugged the crap out of her so much. It got old pretty fast.

Not only that, but I became aware that I was one of these closed-minded patrons she was criticizing; I came into the store and wandered around, liked what I saw for sure, but had no intention of plonking down $1500 for any of the pieces. So in effect, she was repeatedly telling me what was wrong with my attitude about art. I started to feel guilty that I wasn’t ready to whip out my checkbook and invest in anything, but if that’s her selling style it isn’t going to work out too well for her, because it sure didn’t work on me. I just felt judged and uncomfortable.

She also went on a lot about her mission to ‘teach people’ about art, based in part on her assumption that no one in the area knew anything about it already (because they weren’t buying anything). It seemed a bit presumptuous to assume people needed all this teaching, but maybe it’s not – I’m just not sure lack of art sales = lack of art education. It could just mean lack of money. Yes, there is money in Katy, Texas, and lots of it – but this is still a depressed economy, and as far as luxury items go, art is up there pretty high at the top of the list of what people won’t spend money on when the belt is being tightened. And this is a very conservative area to boot, and art of the contemporary variety is going to be a hard sell in such a place even when the economy’s booming.

Besides which, insulting people with the tone of one’s conversation isn’t ever going to be a great way to convince people to cough up their cash. Take this conversation for example. While she was going on about how people in the area just don’t see the value of art and how it’s her duty to teach them about this, I asked her about photography and if she thought it was an easier sell. Keep in mind that as I ask this I am standing in the center of the gallery with my Canon strapped around my neck, and have been snapping photos of some of the newly constructed spaces she’d shown us with abandon. In other words, I am clearly a fan of photography. Her answer to my question was this: photography isn’t art except for very few exceptions, but it’s easy to understand and appreciate so sure, people are going to like it – but if I focus on photographs no one’s learning about art. Anyone can take photographs because it’s easy; sure, sometimes someone with a camera gets lucky by being in the right place at the right time, or snapping a shutter at just the right moment, or taking loads of shots so by default at least one of them comes out decent – but it’s too easy to really be valuable. Wow, thanks for pointing out what crap my passion is while I’m standing in your gallery trying to figure out why I should spend my hard-earned money on what you’ve got hanging on your walls.

I bought a coffee mug.

A shot I popped off without looking while we were standing in an as-yet-unfinished area of the gallery. I guess it isn’t art, because she’s right – it was pretty easy.

In the end, I left the gallery feeling chastened, overwhelmed, and unworthy. At the time, I just smiled while she insulted my art of choice and ragged on people like me who won’t drop two grand for a heart sculpture made out of nails, but I kind of wish I’d snapped to her attitude more quickly and gotten bitchy with her. At the time though, I was tired, and not too quick on the take.

Here’s another example of how our conversation went throughout the visit – when she took us around the side of the gallery to show us the new space that’s under construction, I fell in love with the orange wall that wrapped around the side exterior of the building. What followed went like this:

Me: Oooh, I love this orange wall! I gotta go across the street and get a picture. It’s amazing!

Her: Yeah, I’m painting over it. It’s all going to be white.

Me: Oh, erm, okay…

The empty plant holders represent the emptiness of her soul

As usual, I’m saving my favorite shot for last. In spite of her contention that photography is easy, I did quite a bit of work on this shot to get it just how I wanted it – especially since I know that soon, sadly, this orange wall will disappear (she is, however, keeping the ironwork on the windows, I’m assuming to keep out photographers or people without money). I wanted to make the sky and concrete as white as the building, and get the oranges to really pop, including the orange line in the middle of the road. In order to do that I desaturated everything except the oranges, and made the blacks darker to contrast. I didn’t think much of this shot before processing, but the more I worked on it the more excited I got about its potential. Sure, I could have framed it better, but I still really like the way it came out.

That’s the director walking down the stairs. I assume she’s thinking, I don’t know what that chick across the road is doing with that camera, but it sure isn’t art!

I thought about editing the power line out of the shot, but decided against it in the end. I kind of like it being there; it draws an interesting line and adds something of the mundane to the scene. Okay, not really – I was just too lazy.

Saturday shots

Posted on February 23, 2014 by marey mercy

I wasn’t too interested in the shots of inanimate objects and whatnots I took on Saturday, but I did process a few:

Bottlecap stools at the beer garden – in the background behind a big tree you can just barely see the stage where I took Candace’s jump shots yesterday

This next pic is representative of some of the old trees that populate this part of town:

And this next one is of the cloth ceiling over the stage:

Last up is my favorite; as soon as we walked into the store attached to this outdoor space, I spied rows of beaded jewelry hanging on wires in front of a long row of windows. I thought it would make a great picture, but the saleswoman was eyeing me suspiciously so I figured I’d better ask the manager before taking shots inside. It took me awhile to find her, and although she said she didn’t mind at all, it still took me forever to get the pic because every time I went back to the windows to take one there were loads of people looking at all the bracelets and necklaces on display. Finally, after wandering around for about 20 minutes, I spied a break in the traffic and zipped over to there to take the picture.

No, I didn’t buy any of them

I have one more little set of photos from this day’s adventures, and that set has a better story to go with it. But for now, this is all I’ve got – short and sweet!

Location Device

Posted on February 22, 2014 by marey mercy

I went out with a friend to scout locations this afternoon for some upcoming shoots and took some pics while we were checking things out. Last week I booked a studio near my house that has what’s got to be the worst website ever – very little useful information and almost no shots of the space available, but I knew the area where the studio was located and figured it would be OK so I went ahead and reserved it. All weekend slots at this studio are already reserved into next year, so I had to get time during our spring break so I can go over there during the week. I’m hoping some of my friends will be willing to come along, so I don’t have to take photos of myself while there, but I made sure to block out enough time that I can take self-portraits if I need to. The space was surprisingly affordable – $40 for the first hour, $30 for each hour after that, so I went ahead and booked it for three hours on March 17th.

Since I didn’t have any idea what the space looked like, though, my friend Candace and I decided to drive over there after a leisurely Saturday lunch to get a glimpse of it. Unfortunately for us, it was all locked up (I found out later they had a big photography prop swap meet earlier that morning and had just shut everything down for the rest of the weekend). So, I took a quick pic of what I could see, which is the yellow building in the iPhone pic below:

As you can see, there’s some nice outdoor space and a quaint front porch to utilize here as well, so I’m happy with that. I also liked the dirt road leading to the little shopping center’s parking lot:

I could see a few cool shots happening here, too.

I’d actually brought along my Canon, so we decided to venture out a bit and see what we could capture. Unfortunately, my lack of skills with shooting outdoors got the better of me again, and some of these pics didn’t turn out as nice as I would have liked. I’ve got to start reading up on how to do this properly if I’m going to take friends out on location for photos. Anyway, here are the shots I got of my friend, who ended up getting way too excited about jumping once she got started:

Really wonky light and color in this one – 😦

These were all taken at another little shopping center area in the “old town” part of the neighborhood; in this center there’s a beer garden/concert venue that has a pretty cool space for all sorts of events and photos – hence the stage in the photo above.

I don’t know if it’s the lens or my camera settings that makes everything wonky color-wise when I shoot outside, or if it just wasn’t the right time of day when I was taking them, but I really struggle to get picture quality I am pleased with later when I edit. It’s almost as if this lens shoots too clean, and there’s an overabundance of clarity that makes it hard to draw the eye in to the subject of the shot. Maybe I just need to put more distance between my subject and the background to correct that, but the color always comes out weak also, and even with the 17-40 lens there’s too much aberration for my taste. I think the 85mm would have taken prettier pics, but then the aberration would have been worse, so who knows. And I can’t zoom in and out with the 85mm soooo…I’ve had all these complaints before, haven’t I? And yet I still haven’t figured it out.

See, like in the shot above – where’d the blue sky go? And there’s no pretty bokeh, just some slight blur. Overall, I think results like this is due my lack of technical knowledge regarding how a camera functions; I’ve tried to learn but it all goes to oatmeal in my head when I try to sort it out. So, how I do figure things out is by taking shots I’m unhappy with, then looking at what I did that time and trying something different the next. The truth is, it’s gotten so automatic for me to shoot in Tv mode (controlling shutter speed only) while in my studio so I can get the level of clarity I want in my jump shots that I’ve forgotten there are other modes with which I can work. Sometimes I remember to switch to Manual mode when shooting outside or with the 85mm, but more often than not I forget to do so – and these shots are the result. I kept the camera in Tv mode during this walkabout simply because it was easiest for me to use, and as I always get rushed when shooting candidly or working with others I stuck with what I knew. But the shots would have better if I’d slowed myself down. Lesson learned.

In spite of all that, based on these shots, I also think it’s time for me to suck it up and get the 50mm f/1.4 that would be an upgrade from the cheap f/1.8 I used to own, but is still a far cry from the $1500 I’d have to cough up for the L-series version. It’s a good compromise cost-wise as well as great compliment to the two lenses I already own, and I feel the need for something new without spending a fortune (I can get the f/1.4 for about $350 – in fact, I’m off to buy it as soon as I finish writing this post).

Anyway, I know that it’s a cute photo and all so who cares, but I’m always going to be bugged by imperfections even if no one else notices.

The beer garden was quite big and had all sorts of cool little photo opportunity areas, like this one. It’s an old cigarette machine that’s spitting out some sort of artist tokens rather than cancer sticks, and I loved the color as well as the scratched-up mirror. Using that mirror eventually led to one of my favorite shots of the day:

So much to love here – the texture the mirror’s surface added to our photo as if I’d Pixlr-ed it, but I didn’t, the frame within a frame of the mirror and the borders of the machine, the cool reflection of that sitting area in the background – just a really fun shot.

I actually a took some non-person photos during this outing as well, but of course I was interested in processing the shots with humans in them first. I should be able to share the other pictures from this set soon, but I’ll leave for now with my other favorite photo using Candace as the subject. She was doing some leaping on the concert stage, and unlike my usual process I kept the camera in landscape mode rather than flipping the body over into portrait (which I do to create more height in the jumps) because I wanted to get the width of the stage. Her body got a little blurry because I was sketchy on the best camera setting to use, but I think this one turned out well:

So, pics of inanimate objects from this set to follow.

Glitterbug

Posted on February 17, 2014 by marey mercy

I woke up this morning determined to take pics with my new black backdrop, but the truth is I felt inspired by nothing. I’m tired of my costumes, tired of doing my makeup, and tired of posing for portraits and jump shots and whatever else I might pose for. In short, I am tired of myself. Along with learning Photoshop for reals, it is most likely time for me to start working with other models, so I can actualize some of the photographic visions I have in my head that involve locations other than my little studio. I want to be solely behind the camera, and process shots of people other than myself for awhile (by the way, I had some sort of allergy explosion tonight and I am hopped up on Benadryl, so this won’t be the most well-written post I’ve ever created. Sorry).

I have no idea yet how to go about all of this, so this morning I dragged myself to the grocery store to get the week’s shopping done, fully intending to come back home, suit up, and show up for photos even if I was frustrated and bored by the whole prospect. I don’t mind telling you, I was pretty grouchy about all this. I’ve been through it with other art forms as well, but the truth is that trying to create when one is out of inspiration is the pits. But I was determined to keep on shooting.

Then, on the way to grocery store, my best friend called and asked if I wanted to go shopping, and I jumped at the opportunity. She’s my best shopping partner, and I knew going out with her for a day would be way more enjoyable than shooting yet more photos of myself (oh how times have changed, a year ago I would have blown off leaving the house to get more pictures). So, I turned the car around, told my husband I’d get the groceries later, and got dressed to meet her up at the Galleria. Turned out to be the right choice.

We shopped, we ate a fabulous lunch, I picked up some makeup and a few bits and pieces here and there – then on the way out of Nordstrom I spied this, and just had to try it on:

It was a size medium and a bit too big, and it was wicked hot, but it was on sale for $43 and my friend talked me into buying it when I initially decided to put it back. I’m really glad she did, because it is kinda fabulous in a hideous sort of way (and no, there were no birds or other animals harmed during the making of this jacket – it’s fake). The jacket inspired me to take some photos when I got home, but it was about 3:30 before I got the chance to get started, so I quickly slapped on a ton of this white glitter pigment I bought at MAC years ago and barely ever wear, and slopped on a ton of sparkly eye shadow to complete the “look.”

The end result of the makeup was weird, and the shoot was fairly frustrating. As I said, that jacket is ridiculously warm, and it was about 70 degrees today where I live, plus my husband in his middle-agedness has decided the house needs to be perpetually 80 degrees. And from what I could tell through my LCD screen, the shots weren’t coming out so hot anyway, but I played around with lighting to get a decent effect out of all that glitter. When processing, I realized a lot of them were pretty cool, but I tried to stick to just a few to process.

I ended up using a silver reflector and a remote Speedlite off to the side to get a more glittery effect, and the result of that is a lot of shadows I am not used to for portraits, but I forced myself to live with it so I could get some good contrast in the shots.

Usually that much shadow around the eyes would make me crazy, but I decided to go with it when processing. This hasn’t deterred me from my new plan of enlisting friends as models and venturing out of doors for shoots, but at least I got some use out of my new jacket, and some new photos for the week. Plus I got to test out the new black muslin, which was OK, but I found it shows wrinkles more than the white one I used for so long and finally took down (I edited them out the shots by darkening the background). At least I don’t have the white balance issues with this one, where the backdrop turns out a different tint in every shot. Black is pretty much going to be black every time, so that’s reliable. And I do think it gives shots a much more dramatic feel.

I think my next backdrop should be gray, though, to get a happy medium. Black does some pretty harsh things to my lights, although adding silver reflectors, which I don’t normally use, probably messed with me some too.

I wanted to try some black and whites with the makeup, since I thought all that glitter would make a B&W look really intense and grainy. It did, but in general taking out the color made the photo boring anyway. I think that’s because the black background and my reddish-brown wig together so exactly mimicked the colors in the jacket that it appealed to me. But here’s one I decided to go ahead and transform into black and white:

Overall, not bad for shots I didn’t really want to take or enjoy taking. I think this last one is my favorite of the bunch:

Stupor Bowl

Posted on February 5, 2014 by marey mercy

Taking a break from my usual photographic musings to say this: thank you, people in this country who are incensed over the singing of a patriotic song in languages other than English, for reminding me why I consider the Super Bowl, football in general, and practically all competitive sports to be not only mindless entertainment but also violent, hateful, and mean-spirited. This whole attachment of individual or collective egos to sports teams has baffled me since I was a child – who gives a crap which arbitrary “side” manages to do the appropriate things with balls of various sizes – and I will continue to avoid the whole damn circus, thankyouverymuch.

I realize that only about 10% of the nation that watched that dumb game took to the Internets in an ignorant ripple of racist hatred, but to my mind, it’s an extension of the us-vs-them mentality that provides entertainment to those who enjoy being whipped into a hateful frenzy against some Other way more than they enjoy supporting the home team (not to mention the hate they’ll heap on the home team if they don’t perform up to their standards). Experiencing my father watching football as child was so stressful I came to avoid venturing anywhere near the television on Sundays – and according to him, he actually enjoyed going through that stress week after week, until his team disappointed him for another season.

I, on the other hand, was so non-competitive as a child, it made my parents nervous. Like most kids, the question I asked more than any other as a child was, why? And when asking that question about participating in a competition of any kind – be it athletic, academic, or other – about eight times out of ten the answer was, for no good reason whatsoever. The other two times, I’d suit up and give it a whirl, but that was pretty rare.

I remember it used to bug the hell out of my mother that every morning in elementary school, when the teachers came outside at first bell and held up their hands so we could line up behind them and be escorted into school single-file, I’d stand back until my entire class had gotten in line and then fall in at the end. “Why do you do that every day?” my mother would ask repeatedly, “Do you always have to be dead last in line?” My answer was perfectly logical: we had assigned seats in the classroom. Jostling and pushing my way towards the front of the line served absolutely no purpose. To this day, I’m pleased with this approach to life, and I think I was a smart kid not to bother scrapping and pushing just because societally that’s what I was supposed to do, but I’m sure my poor mother thought I’d end up a speed bump in the slow lane of life, getting run over by even the laziest of drivers.

And yet – I turned out just fine. But back to the football. I’ve been asking myself why about sports fanaticism since high school, when our entire campus was mandated to hate some certain school for being a certain number of miles away and hosting a certain sort of student that at some point in our school’s history it had been determined we didn’t like. I have yet to get an answer other than for no good reason whatsoever (and yes, that includes the Olympics, shocking and horrid as that may be).

I don’t have any conclusion to this beyond re-sharing the following:

A Chair-Raising Tale

Posted on January 29, 2014 by marey mercy

I promise that title will make sense in a minute, but let me start by saying I pulled off a photo on Tuesday (when we were off due to inclement weather) that has to be one of my few all-time favorites. It’s true that of the thousands of photos I’ve taken over the years, only a handful are in that ‘favorite’ category – and it’s been awhile since I’ve taken one I can label as such. But as I mentioned yesterday, after reading Natalie Dybisz‘s book on portraiture, I had some ideas to break me out of my outfit-shot rut and back into more interesting images, and while trying things out I managed to pull off what I consider to be one hell of terrific shot. I was torn about whether to share the other photos from this set first and save the best for last, but decided against it. It’s going to be a while before I upload this to Flickr, and I am excited about it so I’m going to share the best one first this time, then talk about the others I took later. I also have some editing steps to show, so we’ll start with those.

This set from Tuesday has no relation to yesterday’s self-portraits at all aside from being taken the same day, but the idea for both did come from the same book. Dybisz has a chapter dedicated to her popular levitation shots (which, once again, she pulls off masterfully using way more technical photoediting skill than I have at my disposal) and she did mention that she often sits her subject on a chair or stool for the levitation poses, then edits the chair legs out later. I’ve done this once before, but not intentionally – I just realized when editing the shot that it would be easy to edit the chair legs out and make it look like I was floating – so I’ve never actually taken shots while planning to use a chair to contribute to the levitation effect. Dybisz mentioned using a simple chair or stool with skinny legs to make the editing process easier. so I yanked one of our kitchen chairs from under the table and brought it into the studio to use for the shots,

The original – I flung the fabric up to get movement, which is why my hand is up in the air

The fabric I’m wearing is the same backdrop Simon was wrapped up in during a shoot last week – no, I still have not managed to hang the thing on the wall. But it was a TON of fabric (I believe it’s 10 x 20 feet) so I thought it would work for my purposes this way, which was to cover enough of the chair to only leave those skinny little chair legs exposed, but also cover enough of me to make me appear entirely clothed by it. I considered some sort of outfit to go with the fabric, but in the end there was just too much of it, and having to worry about an outfit underneath it to keep straight and untwisted was overwhelming (so was wearing a wig – just way too much to manage, so I didn’t cover my real hair). I don’t mind telling you it was a real bitch to do this; turned out to be about twice as much material as I really needed, and the space I was shooting in was quite small so that I had to scrunch everything into the frame while also trying to be sure everything I wanted to be covered was covered, AND that the fabric was moving in an interesting way. Very frustrating, and I only took about ten shots total, which is incredibly unusual for me as I generally like to take as many shots as I can so I have a lot to choose from later.

I’m going to show you the super-edited version first, because after I altered one completely to share over on Facebook, I noticed an unanticipated problem with using a cloth backdrop for something like this: the chair legs make indentations in the cloth that can be pretty noticeable, and I realized I needed to go back to the original and do a better job of concealing the wrinkles that indicated (at least to me) that a chair had been sitting underneath me. The reason I’m sharing this extra-edited one first is because it actually shows that flaw; the reason I’m calling it extra-edited is because I added a swath of fabric across my shoulder to appease my sense of modesty; I am friends with some people from work on Facebook, and even though all that’s showing here is a shoulder, it hints strongly at nudity underneath the fabric and I’m just a big enough prude to feel uncomfortable with that. Perhaps that’s because I actually was nude underneath the backdrop in these shots; it was never my intention to show nudity, but the fact is clothing of any kind would have gotten in the way and ruined the shot. I like it much better without the added fabric, but for Facebook I just didn’t want to come off as trying to be sexy or something. I know, I’m weird. Anyway, here’s the Facebook version of this shot, with added “modesty swath” and the rather suspect-looking floor wrinkles:

Art, now 100% more modest!

But enough about my nudity (because I’ve probably said too much already. Again, there was no attempt to be titillating here, just trying to preserve the integrity of the shot. I do not now, nor have I ever done, nudes. Just saying). If you look on the floor you can see a pretty distinct dent in the cloth from where that chair leg was, and once I spied this on Facebook where the Modesty Shot was uploaded, I decided to go back to the drawing board and do the whole thing over – I had to do this, because I stupidly forgot to save a .tif file of the final shot and I liked the shot too much to go editing it as a .jpg (I didn’t bother uploading a new shot to Facebook though, no one there would notice such a thing).

So without further ado, here is the final shot, which I LOVE:

That chair wrinkle still isn’t perfect, and the shadows on the floor are a little wonky, but for now I’m satisfied. The framing of this shot was a happy accident, as it always is when self-shooting as you can’t actually view yourself in the frame and are always guessing to an extent – but the movement of my body and the fabric create nice balance to my off-centered legs which are almost poking out of the frame; that balance looks intentional but it wasn’t at all. As I mentioned already, that was just me hoping to get my entire body and the fabric into the frame – something I still didn’t accomplish as there was a lot of fabric still draped across the floor. But this was a test run for the chair/levitation process more than anything, so I’m happy to settle here. For now. That damn wrinkle and those shadows might bug me so much I eventually re-edit the whole thing, but for now I’m good.

More from this set tomorrow, but I wanted my favorite shot to have its own post!

No-Snow Day Part 1

Posted on January 28, 2014 by marey mercy

More sleet and snow was expected today, so school was canceled, then none came. Our city is going to have to figure out a better way to deal with this weather if it keeps happening like this, or we are all going to become terribly unproductive.

Well, not me – at least not as far as photography is concerned. Last night I came across a book about portrait photography by Natalie Dybisz, who got her start uploading photos to good old Flickr. I bought her first book, and found it interesting even though her self-portraits and mine don’t have much in common. Hers are much more representative of real self-portraiture with her emphasis on sets, props, and location; as I’ve mentioned here many times, I’m more aligned with fashion photography than the self-portrait kind.

Dybisz actually works with models too, but her work always incorporates interesting environments and unique lighting, as well as some killer Photoshop skills I can still only dream of possessing. Her new book also highlights several other self-portrait photographers, all of whom have radically different styles and processes; I love reading about how other artists work and get inspired, as it generally makes me feel less like a freak for working the way I do. There are as many types of photographic processes as there are photographers, and every once in awhile I need to be reminded of that.

I knew since today was an off day that I wanted to do some more artistic shooting, so reading this book last night generated some good ideas for me to work with. I was determined to start early and not spend the entire day working on photos, but of course I failed at that. I finished up the shoot fairly early as I didn’t take nearly as many shots as I usually do (mostly because the shots I was going for were so specific that there wasn’t a lot more posing to do once I got what I was wanting) but then of course I spent the entire rest of the day editing obsessively. Whatever. I am happy with the results, so I’ll consider it worth it.

I took two very different types of photos today, so I want to share them in two separate posts. Problem is, I like both sets so much I can’t really decide which ones to share here first. I guess I’ll go with the straight-up self-portrait shots, then share the arty ones tomorrow, So here goes:

Taken with my 85mm

OK, so that shot isn’t all that different from what I’ve done before, but I did take a few snaps of the makeup before hitting the set, just because I always do. To speed things along, I kept the makeup very simple; I modeled this after a picture of January Jones at the Met Ball last year (scroll down), when the theme was punk (I think). It’s just a lot of heavy eyeliner and really not much else, so I went with that because I knew I could do it quickly and get on with the shooting. And no, I didn’t pull off her eyeliner look well at all, but I got the basic idea. The wig is a fabulous asymmetrical one called Tulip – it only cost $13.95 and it is amazing, It also went well with the punk makeup I had going.

Self Portrait with Hammer Pants

So there it is – my first ‘real’ self-portrait. I wasn’t brave enough to go venturing outside or anything (plus it was cold), but I tried to squeeze into my limited space some things that represent me, at least in a humorous way. There’s no deep meaning or anything here, in fact, I centered the entire set around that fab t-shirt I got from ModCloth, then made sure to get my mirror in there as a tongue-in-cheek reference to my own vanity, and dragged a bunch of my fashion props out of the old hat box I use to store them. The clothes thrown on the chair represent, well, the fact that I am a slob who always has clothes thrown over a chair somewhere, and those Uggs are actually my house shoes. The trickiest part was getting my reflection right in the mirror so it showed up in the shot; took about eight tries to get this right, and this was the last shot of the eight.

What I really like about this one is that you can see my laptop in the mirror, where I have another photo of me pulled up in Photoshop (it’s actually the portrait I shared at the beginning of this post; I was working on editing it while taking these shots). My glasses are tossed on the floor here, since I always have them thrown on the floor somewhere during a shoot. The bunny ears are fuzzy and I like them, so there you go. Also decided to hang one of my fuzzy sweaters over the chair, because I love fuzzy things. And yes, white balance was a bitch once again, and each of these shots is a slightly different tone. To hell with it, that’s something I can’t ever get consistently right.

Of course I had to jump in one of the shots. I also had to crop the hell out of these; I barely had enough room in my little studio to get everything into the frame, without having to go beyond the boundaries of the white backdrop. I considered at one time just letting the edges of the backdrop show, as well as the edge of my clothes closet and the bookshelf full of old workout equipment, but in the end, that was too much reality for me even when trying to be so representative, so I cropped it all out.

Finally got the white balance right with this one

All in all, I’m pleased with how these shots turned out. Nothing like what I usually do, and I expected to be completely disappointed with them, but they did what I wanted them to do, and they weren’t hard to set up or edit. So, something different, but kinda fun – tomorrow, on to the arty-ness!

Oh, and I also spent some more time on Polyvore this morning, but the looks I created were more for myself than for sharing – they weren’t all that exciting, but they did serve to compile some of the stuff in my closet into outfits I can remind myself to wear later (mostly for my two fuzzy sweaters, actually – they are fabulous to look at, but they have kind of a frumpy shape, and I’ve been struggling to figure out how to wear them). I did not make a Polyvore set for the gold hammer pants, however. Let me figure out how to wear the fuzzy sweaters before I take those suckers on.

Space Dress

Posted on January 19, 2014 by marey mercy

I decided to play in clothes again today; reading everyone’s comments on my previous post about taking such photos inspired me to do what I want and worry less about how I might be interpreted by others, especially since I’m enjoying shooting outfits from my closet right now – usually I pose in costumes and vintage pieces, but these are all (with a few exceptions – one you’ll see in this post) things I actually wear in my day to day life, which is kinda fun to photograph and share.

I managed to get a few outfits shot outside with my lovely but temperamental 85mm before I lost light (didn’t start shooting until around 4 PM) and had to move it indoors, but that was OK by me as I wanted to experiment with putting different pieces together and that gets frustrating while trying to also shoot outside. I tend to save outfits I already know “work” on me for the outdoors stuff so I can throw the clothes on and get to it; if I want to mess about in my closet and try lots of things on in different combinations, it’s much easier to stay in the same place for the photos once I decide what the look is going to be.

Brought to you by Pixlr, as usual

By the end of the day I had another 500 shots or so, and that’s on top of last week’s approximately 500 shots of which I’ve barely scratched the surface. I know I say this all the time, but I am really going to have to hold off on shooting more stuff for awhile so I can plow through all of these. They aren’t as time-consuming to process as I keep things simple in the final edit, but I have so damn many I want to work with and share that I’ll need at least another weekend to catch up. It’s just that I haven’t quite gotten off the shopping treadmill I jumped on over the holidays, so I keep adding more things to my closet that I’d like to photograph. For example, I have a few more things coming in the mail this week from ModCloth, so I know I’m going to want to shoot those next Saturday in spite of the backlog.

Speaking of which, the first dress I’d like to share is from ModCloth, of course, and it’s an absolute stunner. It was on clearance for $16.99, and although there is no way in hell I’d ever wear this thing out of the house, I thought it would do a bang-up job in photographs, and I was not mistaken.

My favorite shot from the set

Most of the reviews for this dress said that it was clingy but looked fabulous, which isn’t untrue, but this is way too tight for me to feel comfortable wearing it out and about. That said, the material is nice and thick so it does a decent job of containing and concealing the body’s imperfections; my main issue with it is how I look when not standing in perfect lighting while perfectly posed (which isn’t great). That said, I’d like to add that in none of these photos did I edit my body in the slightest, it’s all me although there were certainly plenty of photos that did not present me in the most appealing light. I edited the shots in my usual manner – color edits, clarifying/sharpening detail, smoothing skin, removing undereye wrinkles, etc. – but I didn’t slim down the curve of my thighs or smooth out lumpy bits like I usually need to do when wearing something this clingy in a photo (which isn’t often).

Oh, and Spanx. All the reviewers mentioned the necessity of Spanx, and I followed their advice.

I get why people would like this dress in spite of it’s clinginess, though; as I mentioned it’s sturdy enough to hold everything in place a bit, and the dark fabric helps to further conceal imperfections.

It was not, however, a good jumping dress. Doesn’t move at all plus the print gets crumpled.

As you are about to figure out, I edited a lot more of the shots in this dress than I usually do for one look. It’s not just that it makes my bod look pretty great, it’s that amazing print. That’s what really drew me to the dress in the first place; the colors are lovely and the idea of it is unique but not totally crazy – when you first see it, you think wow, that’s a bizarre print for dress, but then right on the heels of that you think, no wait, it’s the perfect print for one. The length is a little awkward, but other than that it’s terrific. So, I processed a LOT of shots of me wearing it.

Yep, I’m still wearing it.

It’s not often I can wear something this tight and not look badly proportioned; maybe it’s the long sleeves balancing out my small upper half with my ample lower half. I almost wish I was brave enough to wear this out somewhere, but before you start trying to talk me into it, don’t think I won’t show you a few of the bad shots of me in this thing to change your mind. Because I have plenty.

This, however, isn’t one of them

On a completely superficial note, it’s still funny to me to hear women say they wish they had my shape, my lower half in particular. I spent decades of my life hating my butt and my thighs, and then somewhere in the 00’s big rear ends became desirable which helped me to accept my shape. Whether that’s good or bad, I don’t know; I suppose I should have been able to get past it on my own, but that’s not how it went down for me and it’s too late anyway. I just needed society to validate me, is all. Moving on. Not only that but friends of mine say they’re jealous of the junk in my trunk; that never happened to me when I younger and my junk was less, well, junky. I’m not going to get into my body issues in this post, but I could talk at length about my thighs and how much I was tormented by them when I was a teenager (my mother would poke at them and say “Can’t you DO anything about this?” on a regular basis). Bottom line is (pun intended), I am not tormented by any part of my body anymore. It is what it is.

And what it is at the moment is wrapped in a seriously fabulous dress. Oh, and Spanx. Lots of Spanx.

And in case you’re wondering how I manage to pose myself so I don’t need Photoshop to make me look curvy in all the right places, here’s my secret – I always stand with my upper body leaning slightly forward while pushing my hips back to de-emphasize them. You will never see me sticking my hips forward in a photo; I’m always leaning slightly forward with my upper body to emphasize the part of me that’s smaller. Go back and look at all the photos in this post, or any post, and you’ll see the same basic stance every time – upper body forward, lower body shifting back. Too bad I can’t walk around like that as it’s how my body looks best, but I haven’t figured out a way to walk while leaning forward and sticking my butt out. Yet.

Oh and if you’re wondering – I have one arm behind my back in so many photos because I was holding the remote with that hand. You’re welcome.

Phoga

Posted on January 15, 2014 by marey mercy

Phoga = Photography + Yoga. Lame but I tried.

In uploading a few more pics from this weekend’s shoot, I wanted to comment on how much my yoga practice is helping me with my jumps and movement. It’s not that I am necessarily getting shots I couldn’t have gotten before, but that in doing the amount of leaping and moving I must do to get them I am feeling more free and loose. Usually after a shoot of any length I’m sore for a day or two, and on occasion my back (where I have a tendency to get really tight) will be extremely tender. But lately that hasn’t been an issue. And as I am moving and leaping it requires less effort, I’m less tired, and my joints and muscles feel more flexible. The entire experience has a more effortless quality to it than it had previously.

I think this shot best sums it up – again, it’s not that I couldn’t have pulled this off without yoga practice, but I actually got a lot more of these shots this time, as well as having an easier time pulling this stuff off. It’s as if my body is one long spring that used to be tightly coiled, and now it’s loosened so there’s more space between the coils with which to move.

I’ve found that the important little details like keeping the feet pointed and the hands looking graceful are getting easier too (one of my yoga DVDs actually has exercises for fingers and toes).

And most of all there’s improvement in my back. As someone who spends a ridiculous amount of time sitting at a computer typing blog posts and processing photos, my sciatic nerve can get really tight, especially in my lower back. My neck and shoulders feel it, too, to the point that I always now have to wear an arm brace when I’m on the computer; it’s more like tennis elbow than carpal tunnel, but it’s pretty much a bitch. Not that it’s going to stop me from my online endeavors though, so I just learn to deal with it. But, my lower back is definitely the biggest issue; many yoga moves I’ve been doing deal with slight backbends and spine twists that help to loosen those muscles up. This next photo isn’t anything close to backbend, of course, but I guarantee you I could not have pulled even this off a month ago (I’ve been doing some sort of yoga, even if it’s as little as 20 minutes, at least 5 nights a week since I started).

Sure, I possibly could have gotten that much arch in my back, but not while keeping myself on my toes and the rest of my body in alignment so the move looked graceful. And I probably would have been grimacing. Even as I was taking this shot, I was noticing the difference in how it felt to move this way. And, I not only pulled this off once, I did it about five times – again, without strain or struggle. This one just looked best.

So far, I’ve been cautious with the yoga and am just now starting to push myself with difficult moves. But I’m enjoying it immensely. It’s a very peaceful way to work out. I can’t say I’m seeing any improvement in muscle tone or definition at this point – something that after a month of regular weight workouts I would be seeing – but whatever. I’m enjoying this too much right now to care about that. Maybe later I’ll need to incorporate some of the free weight work I’ve done in the past and had gotten so bored with, but perhaps as the workouts get more challenging I’ll start to see some of my old body come back without that stuff, as I just burned out on it entirely. Or maybe I won’t care about that and can just enjoy being fit even if it doesn’t result in cut abs like I used to have. I haven’t had those in a few years now anyway, so I’ve started to get used to being a little softer. My husband certainly doesn’t care, and I still look good in my clothes and am wearing the same sizes, so it’s not like I need to go around built like Madonna. Overall I just need to get healthy again, and this is a good start to that.

More Christmas Pics

Posted on January 4, 2014 by marey mercy

Some more shots from Christmas Eve – I’m finally getting back to them.

My dad

My niece Chana and nephew Ben

My brother Scott and my sister Kim

The Christmas Ducklips Contest – not sure who won

In many of my shots, the color was rather washed out and boring, so that’s why some of them are black and white. If the color wasn’t vibrant I found the shot looked better that way.

I have a few more to share, but I want to show their editing process, so I’ll save those for later.

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