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:

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.

Spot Blogging

Posted on January 2, 2014 by marey mercy

Today I stumbled across a little Rogue spotlight I bought about a year ago to attach to my Speedlite; I’d only tried it out once before forgetting about it. At the time I wasn’t very interested in what it could do as I’d also bought a small softbox and got way more into using that than this little thing. So after coming across it again, I decided it was time to play around with it and commit more to learning how to use it.

Spotted!

The detachable spotlight also came with a sample gel filter to put over the spot for color effects; it was an orange one, but I’d definitely like to get more colors at some point. I stuck the gel on the spot and ended up doing the bulk of the shots with it in. The results were interesting – I actually used the orange gel on the shot above, but edited a black and white version also to show the spot effect without any color distractions. Here’s the actual shot using the orange filter:

Pretty damn warm – believe it or not, I actually REDUCED the color in this shot when editing. That’s some serious orange.

Apparently this came with three different grids to create tighter or wider spotlighting, but I could only find two. Figures. Of the two, I much prefer the wider spot to the tighter one, so it’s the main one I used.

The spot/gel combo didn’t do much to wash out the wrinkles in the backdrop, so I added a texture to the photo in an attempt to camouflage them

I thought that shot might be lacking a little, so I added some more filters to it in Snapseed, just for the hell of it:

Totally cancels the effect of the orange filter, but I thought it gave the shot a spooky vibe

But I still felt the shot was missing something, so of course I ventured over to Pixlr to play with it further. I discovered recently that if you access the “adjustment” tool in their Express editor, there’s an “upload image” option which allows you to superimpose another picture over the one you’re editing (more hours of fun on the way, as is the norm any time I discover something new) so I gave that a go by uploading the same image over it, enlarging it a bit and reducing its opacity, then throwing in some light leak, smoke, border and texture filters to finish it up:

Even spookier!

I really like the movement in this last one, and in spite of my itchy photoediting fingers I forced myself to keep the adjustments to a minimum (so hard for me to do):

I’m sure you could get this entire effect using software after the fact, but it’s great fun to experiment with vignetting effects and filters right in the shot. Taking thousands of photos a month using one’s self as the subject does get boring (believe it or not, yep) so any time I run across something new that makes the actual taking of the photos more interesting (taking the photos is never my favorite part) I’m all for it. Plus, I do believe the more you ‘get right’ in the actual shot, the better – it just feels better in the final result.

Seriously considering zipping right over to Amazon and buying those other filters. Loads of colors for $30 and totally worth it. But it’s way past my bedtime and I have a busy day ahead, so the sooner I get off this computer and force myself to get sleepy the better. And I know I still need to share pics from as far back as a week ago (Christmas Eve) but I get so excited about my newest shots that ones I took previously and failed to upload right away sometimes get lost. I’ll get them all shared soon though; once work starts up again I won’t have so much time to take photos and get backlogged.

Family Photos – Christmas Eve

Posted on December 25, 2013 by marey mercy

My family has always made Christmas Eve the big celebration, and Doug’s family has always saved the festivities for Christmas Day. This works out well for us, with the only snafu being that my family is full of slow movers who start their days late and don’t pay attention to time (my family’s typical response to the question what time should we show up is whenever) and Doug’s family consists of early risers who are sticklers for promptness. Not to mention that both sets of families live an hour away from us. This means we never get home from Christmas Eve supper before 11:00 PM and are expected to be halfway across town for Doug’s family the next morning before the break of dawn. So, by the end of Christmas Day we’re both pretty tired, in spite of our general lack of responsibilities on both days – not having children means we are automatically never expected to cook or host any gatherings (in fact, this year we simply took Doug’s dad to Luby’s, and everyone was happy).

Since we don’t consume alcohol, we were also not expected to drink one of these. I’m not a big fan of booze, but I did think it was pretty enough to photograph.

I decided to contribute this year in one way however, and actually brought my Canon EOS 7D in spite of all the reservations I generally have about doing such a thing. One of my sisters-in-law (sister-in-laws? I can’t remember) actually commented on this when she saw me break it out; she said she’d been wondering why if I take pictures so often I would always leave the camera at home when we got together. I explained my reasons to her (she wasn’t asking in an antagonistic way by the way, she was just genuinely curious) – I am only good in studio situations with special lighting and a fixed subject, my equipment isn’t very good for “walkabout” shots, I feel a lot of pressure to take quality shots when other people are involved which makes me nervous, etc.

As you can see, we keep things very informal in my family. Plastic plates and cups, and everyone serves themselves. And yes, that is a kid eating supper on the stairs in the background.

Certainly my photos suffered from some of these things, but overall, it went much better than I expected. And, I didn’t find the presence of the camera nearly as distracting as I thought it would be to myself or to others, although I did hear the occasional comment on how bright the flash was (I had my Speedlite attached to the hotshoe and usually bounced it off the ceiling). I got it out a few times throughout the evening, then when I felt I’d gotten some good shots of people, put it away and enjoyed the company. I did get a few more of the annoying let-me-grab-someone-and-stick-our-heads-together-and-smile-for-the-camera poses than I would have liked, but no one forced me to take a massive family-in-front-of-the-fireplace shot (which I was dreading and purposely left my tripod at home to avoid), I also got some great candids, and I even managed to edit some of the posed stuff to my own satisfaction.

My favorite candid – this is one of my nephews, and he was purposely being silly, but it comes across like genuine annoyance (he’s an actor and musician who does voice for anime films).

Some of the shots I’ve processed were done simply to satisfy the family, which was fine, but I certainly see in those shots some of the pitfalls a less experienced candid photographer encounters. Poor framing and messy backgrounds reduced the quality of several shots, but I tried to keep in mind that the people who will ultimately benefit from those pictures won’t care or notice, and forged ahead with them anyway. And all of these look better at their original high-quality size, but I always reduce the photos before uploading them here, which seriously reduces clarity. It bugs me, but I don’t want to upload full-sized shots on my blog for various reasons, so I have to accept it (if you click on any of the photos, by the way, they will always pull up a much higher-quality version, so please click away).

My sister Pam and her husband. I thought she looked so pretty in this shot, but their stance in the doorway with all that clutter behind them bugs the crap out of me. And for the record, Pam is two years older than me, and when we were kids people often thought we were twins.

I also chose to use Photoshop to smooth skin and soften wrinkles on the middle-aged among us in the family; I think in a few cases I used this more than I normally would as I am a stickler for clarity in my photos (which isn’t always the greatest thing for portraits), but keeping in mind who the photos were for, I figured people would like to see themselves smoothed and gussied up for the final print, and went with it anyway. In a few early shots I think I overdid it a bit, and made sure as I edited later pics not to polish the wrinkles too much, but once again, I don’t think anyone in the family will notice.

My oldest sister, Kim (in the blue glasses), and my sister-in-law Veronica. I think I oversoftened them here, and this was clearly one of those posed shots I don’t really like, but they were happy with it, and in certain situations I need to relax a bit and let that be enough – and again, if you click on it you’ll see a better representation.

The end result of all this is that I’m now considering buying a better lens for walkabout or candid situations like this, so I can venture out more with my ‘real’ camera. My 17-40mm is a fantastic lens for small spaces (which definitely applied here) but doesn’t have any decent zoom at all – something that even in the small spaces of the house I still felt was a considerable lack, as close portraits are what interest me most in these situations and to get those I was having to walk way up on people and get in their face with the camera. Although I have a few prime lenses with a close focal length, they aren’t L-series quality (which I’ve come to love after using the 17-40 as my primary lens over the last year and half), and I do feel there’s a need for variable focal length when taking shots in candid situations like this. There’s a few lenses I’m considering, and I need to really do my research as whatever I decide to buy is going to be well over $1,000 – my most expensive lens purchase to date (my 17-40 ran me around $800). I’ve often considered getting a walkabout lens but wasn’t convinced I really needed to spend the money until now (“need” being a relative term here).

My mother, downing that shot from the first photo. My sister’s husband is the one who made it, and his expression here is priceless.

I’m not sharing all the photos in this post as there’s just too many and I still have some to process. And in a few cases I made big changes to get a result that made me happy, and plan to do separate “evolution of a photograph” posts about those. But this experience could open up a whole new world for me as far as photography goes. I will always love taking my studio self-portraits, but the truth is it’s become very time-consuming and requires an entire day to pull off. It would be nice on occasion to decide to take photos and be able to start shooting 10 minutes later, rather than 3 hours later. And, it’s also nice to simply be the photographer sometimes and not also the model. Although, I still managed to worm my way into one shot (my husband took the photo, and was honestly befuddled by using my camera – I forget how intimidating that thing is to non-photographers):

Me with my siblings.

Evolution of a photograph – makeup test shot

Posted on December 18, 2013 by marey mercy

I’ve mentioned this here before, but I always take test shots as I am applying my makeup to be sure it’s going to appear as I want it once I start shooting. Sometimes I luck out and get an interesting photo out of those shots; in fact, I often discover that some of my expressions in those one-off shots are more interesting than my posed ones, and I regret that the makeup and outfit wasn’t complete when I took it. Sometimes I can still get a decent shot out them though, like this one:

Edited, of course

Anyway, I discovered one such shot Wednesday evening and played around with it a bit, so I thought I’d share its evolution. This is as close to an original as I have, but it was not shot in black and white originally:

Same headband as in the first photo – it’s the one always I use when applying makeup for shoots

Obviously my makeup was not complete here, nor was it well-blended, as I discovered after taking the photo. But the extreme highlighting and contouring did make for an interesting look in its own right. However, one of my regretful side-effects of getting older is the sun damage that is starting to show itself on my skin, my neck in particular. I admit it is getting more and more difficult to disguise it in shots without it being obvious, and at some point I’m just going to have to embrace it or quit taking photos of myself (which isn’t likely). I doubt anyone notices, but it does bother me (more in photos than in day to day life, when it isn’t as noticeable but is slowly getting more so). The sides of my neck as well as my decollete are both getting red and splotchy; I used to try to cover it with makeup but just ended up with a red, splotchy neck AND a foundation-stained shirt, so I don’t bother anymore. But in this photo, the hyperpigmentation showing on my neck, as well as the crappy pajama t-shirt, were really bugging me, so I decided to try something new instead of just my usual softening and lightening:

Problem solved

With my nominal Photoshop skills, I used the patch tool to blend the background into my skin and hair; I also blended out some of the harsher contouring around my hairline and softened the skin to conceal the fairly sloppy powder-blending job I’d done right before taking the shot (I also got rid of the headband I was wearing).Then I pulled the photo into Snapseed to sharpen and define it:

To blend in some of the rougher edges where I’d blended the background in, I also added a texture to the background, keeping it very faint so as not to overwhelm the nice clean lines of the face (I did this in Paint Shop Pro, since I don’t yet know how to do it Photoshop). This was nice enough as is, but it was tempting me to give it a little Pixlr treatment to make it extra-special, so off we went:

I also liked how my cheekbones started to look like mutton-chop sideburns somewhere during all of this

I added a vintage effect to add contrast, a space overlay for a ghostly feel, a tie-dye overlay for a little color, and an ink border for depth and visual interest. I still like the plain old black and white version too – but this one is probably going to get my top vote, ultimately.

I may look through my test shots and find a few more to work over this way. Blending the background into the subject in a portrait is something new for me, and I had fun giving it a go. As always, problem-solving when editing leads to new and creative processes and solutions. At least, that’s how it works for me.

Here’s a collage of the work in progess:

More pinkful pics

Posted on December 10, 2013 by marey mercy

I know ‘pinkful’ isn’t a word, but it just popped into my head so there it is.

I am editing the hell out of that last shoot, so I thought I’d share a few more real quick. Also, I got another fuzzy sweater in the mail today – same as the pink one, only this one is baby blue. Gotta get pics in it soon!

This first shot includes a pair of glasses I got from Zenni Optical, and represents the occasional pitfalls one encounters when ordering frames online; in the photo they looked much less stark and insane than they do in reality. I really cannot wear these on the regular, they make me look nuts. But they are great for pics or when I really want to give off a super-freako-nerd vibe (which admittedly is not often):

The next one is missing something, but I don’t know what. I chose to process it because I liked the swoop of the hair, but I can’t get it to transform into anything capitvating:

I high-keyed, then pixlr‘ed the hell out of this one, and I love the results:

This photo is what I did Tuesday night instead of exercising

If you’re sick of pink and fuzzy photos you might want to check out for a few more days. I feel there will be even more coming soon. I have barely scratched the surface of the jumping shots I took in this outfit!

mareymercy.

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