For starters, I’ve been sick with one thing or another since January 1st, and it’s getting old. First there was the shingles, which was miserable, and after that there’s this recurring UTI I can’t get rid of that I’ve dealt with twice already,  and then this week I picked up a wicked head cold that has me sneezing and snuffling and feeling generally miserable. My tutoring business is finally picking up, and there are a few potential projects I’d like to be focusing on right now, so constantly feeling like crap is both slowing me down and pissing me off. Not to mention the ongoing daily Trump assault that often finds me darting out of the house in no time flat to go protest some new executive order President Steve Bannon shits out over breakfast.

https://vimeo.com/203231083

Speaking of projects, I’ve had this thing that keeps happening to me and it’s starting to work my last nerve. Someone will contact me about my photography – either offering to put me in a show or asking me to participate in some project – and when I express interest but request assistance because I’ve never had a gallery show or engaged in a photography project, the person who proposed the idea will be super-helpful for a day or two, then steadily lose interest in working with me until communication is cut off entirely and the whole idea fizzles. I am not sure why this keeps happening, but I can only assume it’s because these people don’t want to work with me if I need a lot of help to meet the requirements of their project, and while I can understand being hit with a bunch of questions over something you thought you could just throw out to someone and have them run with it is annoying, I hardly feel like the questions I’ve asked or the assistance/information I’ve needed has been excessive.

For example, several years ago a friend of mine contacted me about possibly having a show at this gallery of which she was a board member. I was excited about the idea, but never having had a show I had no idea what it entailed, so I asked her how such a thing would come together. She informed me that when the gallery worked with artists, the framing (or in the case of photography, the printing and framing) of the pieces would be taken care of by the artist and delivered to the gallery. OK, so what are the requirements for printing? She didn’t know, but directed me to another photographer who’d had several shows at her gallery and said this person could probably help me. So, I contacted that person and after hearing back from her I asked several questions, such as – what size prints do you use, and how do you frame them, and what service do you use to get these things printed? She answered me noncommittally – something like, well I think I’ve done it this or that way, but I don’t really remember – and then she disappeared. I had a lot more questions for her, but after emailing her two more times I figured she wasn’t so game to help me out, and by that time, neither was the friend who’d originally made the offer. So, that was a dead-end.

Now I feel like the same sort of thing is happening again. Three weeks ago, someone I follow on Facebook contacted me to ask if I ever did anything professional with my photos, and a conversation struck up around that. She was very enthusiastic about my work and asked if we could meet for lunch. We did so, and during that lunch this person was insistent that there was a market for my photographs through this nonprofit that offers art workshops to places like women’s shelters, halfway houses, nursing homes, etc. That may sound strange, but a perusal of their website shows that artists get hired by these places to offer workshops about, say, sculpting or poetry writing, where they teach the participants to do these things over the course of several hours. There was a wide variety of workshops offered, and it sounded like a cool thing to do that not only could pay me well for my time and provide me opportunities to photograph people other than myself, but that it was performing a nice service for people in need as well.

My ‘workshop’ would have to be a bit different, though, because instead of having the participants make something, they’d just be posing for a portrait; a portrait I would work my Photoshop magic on and give to them as a fun picture of themselves looking in some way unusual and fun. It’s a nice idea, but I’ve struggled a bit with how to structure such a thing, and I’ve had some questions and I’ve been trying to put a proposal together for my friend to show to the organization. Logistical stuff, mainly, like how long can I really spend with each client if there’s just one of me and I have to shoot 10-12 people in a session, and how do I get their makeup done too without it taking forever to pull off? And how can I personalize these photos so that when I work with them I can incorporate the subjects’ personalities into them? Should I provide some sort of lesson or lecture about my portraits, portraiture in general, or sit down with each person and get to know them a little so I can include what they tell me in the final product? How much input do I want these people to have in the final result, and how much input is realistic given the time constraints?

I also had questions about the proposal itself – how much should I charge, what additional fees should I include? How does any artist put a proposal like this together? How do you package and promote your artwork for different audiences without your art becoming something you no longer enjoy doing? OK, that last question is more just for me, but all of the others are genuine confusions I have about putting something like this together, so on occasion I’ve asked my friend some of them to see what she thinks. Keep in mind she was very, very enthusiastic about my chances of finding a niche with this organization when we met for lunch, so I’ve assumed she’d be willing to help me out as far as getting things together, but I may have been wrong about that, because in the last week or so I haven’t been hearing from her much, and her responses have been pretty brief. I’ve only contacted her with questions twice since we met, although I could definitely have asked her more, but I’ve been trying not to overwhelm her with requests for assistance.

Still, I think I may have derailed this project somehow anyway, without meaning to do so, and I’m not sure why this keeps happening. Maybe because they like my photos people assume I know more about marketing, promoting, or even just printing my photos than I do, or that any 47-year-old woman should be able to figure this shit out for herself without needing help – I dunno. It’s not like I’ve been sitting around dreaming of the day I was able to work for a nonprofit taking portraits of people in nursing homes or shelters, and had an entire proposal at the ready  in case I was ever asked. It’s not like I’ve been preparing for the day someone gives me a gallery show, either, so when someone asks me if I want to do such a thing I’m all ready to do that, too (in fact, when it came to the gallery show, I did learn that I hadn’t even been editing my photos properly for printing anyway, and nothing I had up to that point would have worked).

Come to think of it, though, I bet that’s exactly what these people have assumed. They see me as a photographer, not a hobbyist, so they do assume I already know these things and are ready and waiting to jump at the first offer I get. In fact, that’s probably what they would expect of any artist, since for many of them they are ready and waiting for someone to ask; I just never have been. I’ve never given these sorts of propositions any thought at all, so when someone presents me with an opportunity I expect them to help me get my shit together to pull it off – which I guess isn’t really the deal.

On the flip side of that, though, is the thought that I’m not really sure this nonprofit thing is something I want to do. I’m not sure what I do is as right for their purposes as my friend thinks  it is, although she herself gets work through them and thinks I am a good fit. I just feel lost trying to put something together for it for one reason or another  – one reason, for example, is the fact that I think I’d have to bring a makeup artist with me to these sessions, and I don’t know any makeup artists. I’d also have to supply all the costumes, which includes accessories and wigs, and I’m not real sure how to package all of this stuff into a workable, time-efficient program. I feel like I need someone to bounce the whole thing off of, and my friend clearly isn’t going to be that person (one recent feedback she gave me was that my prices were “VERY reasonable,” which I took to mean I wasn’t charging enough money for my services, but she didn’t tell me what she would have considered reasonable).

Lordy, I just don’t know, but I feel like my window of opportunity for this is narrowing, and I still don’t have a clear picture of how it should work. And this is on top of being sick in one form or another for a month straight, dealing with a sick father-in-law who is in the hospital, the daily Trump outrage, and juggling new clients, so that days go by right now where I haven’t even given the project any thought and don’t much feel like doing it, either. I don’t feel I’ve got any sort of grasp on it at all, which knocks it down to the bottom of my to-do list on a daily basis. You know how that goes.

Anyway, in other news, I’m excited for Rene of Paris to come out with several new wig styles this month. There are several I’m waiting to try, and the company has some gorgeous new colors they’re adding to the line also (a pastel blue that looks fabulous and several delicious new brunettes). And as usual, they are keeping prices reasonable, which is great. I really want to try Sonoma and Evanna even though, being Rene of Paris wigs, they will probably be waaaaay too huge on me; ROP really goes overboard on the curls and swirls, but whatever. I haven’t made any videos in quite a while because I haven’t bought anything lately, but I will definitely be trying these two out and filming them in the future.

As you can tell from these photos, I’ve been enjoying playing around with some of the Photoshop plug-ins I purchased but just couldn’t use with my old laptop; the Topaz Glow, Impressions, and Textures plug-ins in particular are really floating my boat right now, and I’m so happy to be able to use them again.

I think this about catches me up for now; hope your February is moving along nicely and that you are having some sort of winter wherever you are. It was 85 degrees here today, which is depressing; aside from one weekend of freezing temperatures we’ve had no cold weather here at all this year, and I can’t remember the last time winter was so warm (that’s actually because it’s never happened; we’re breaking records for highest winter temps almost daily, it seems).

Welp, 2016 finally pissed off, but not before bitch-slapping me one last time on the way out the door.

Over the winter break, Free People kept having all these awesome sales, and I ended up buying WAY too much stuff but it was all really inexpensive so no harm done. Of the many things I bought, there were these “body baubles” I kept scrolling past on the sale page; they were little face jewels pre-packaged into interesting shapes, and after much hemming and hawing I eventually put some of them in my cart – they were on sale for about six bucks a bauble, so I figured why not. They came on a thin adhesive strip, so all I had to do before the day’s shoot was peel them off their backing and stick ’em on my face. Easy-peasy.

I took all of these on December 31st, and this was one of those shoots where everything worked – I used the right lens, my lighting was on point, and I went ahead and used my DermaBlend (which I usually just use on my neck and chest)  on my face since last time out my Smashbox foundation didn’t work so well, and it did the trick. I put on a decent amount of foundation and highlight/contour, as well as lot of liner and mascara, but I purposely went light on the rest of the cosmetics so I could really play around with PortraitPro’s makeup effects on a cleaner canvas than usual (foundation is always a must, though – I’ve learned that the hard way).

I didn’t just play around with makeup in PortraitPro, though; I broke out a really long wig and really flung it about when posing – something I don’t do as often as I used to because, quite honestly, it’s a pain in the ass. You have to stop and re-brush the wig every few shots or you end up with an ugly, tangled mess, not to mention all the wig hairs that get in your eyes, your lipstick, the fan that’s blowing your wig around (it doesn’t just happen to Beyonce), and, of course, it gets hot. My laziness lately has pretty much led me to forgo long wigs for shorties that are colorful and easy to play around with, but this long ombre pink one made for some amazing movement shots – in fact, I have already edited a HELL of a lot of the long wig photos and am still going.

PortraitPro can also change haircolor, so even though all these long hair shots are the same wig, I managed to make it look a bit different using the software. I really can’t explain how much fun all this stuff is for me to do – as a kid, I used to get fashion magazines and lay them out on the floor, then get colored markers and ‘improve’ all the models’ makeup and hair. So with Photoshop, I basically get to do what I enjoyed doing so much as a kid, only with more effective results, which I think is pretty damn cool. Technology, yay! Although, I still do miss the JC Penney catalog I used to deface year after year. Moving on.

I made sure to do a few costume changes so I’d have lots to work with, but I didn’t really think about switching out  the ‘body baubles’ once I got to the multi-colored set you see in most of the photos above. I wore the silver ones with the blonde wig and the polka-dotted PJs (yes, they do have feet in them, something someone on Facebook guessed without me telling them – is it that obvious?) and then switched to the colorful ones for the long wig, and kept that set on for two more costume changes, leaving out the green set I got entirely (after a few hours with the adhesive on my face, it was starting to itch, so I decided to stop and save the green baubles for another shoot). So, while I had some different wigs and outfits to play around with when editing, I had the same bauble-face in most of them. Enter Photoshop again:

Aside from eyeshadow/mascara, I didn’t add any makeup to this shot – I started to, but for some reason it worked better without added blush and lipstick

Yep, I realized that it was super-easy to copy the face baubles in PS and paste them onto other parts of my face as much as I wanted. Score! So that gave me plenty more ways to take shots from the same set and make them look a bit different. I also worked the hell out of the makeup tool in PortraitPro – when using the tool, you can only add one eyeshadow color at a time, so I usually use it to add to existing color and move on. This time, I kept using and re-using the tool to get all these different colors of eyeshadow on my face – it’s tedious work, because every time you load PP you have to move the guide points around the subject’s face to get all the outlines right, and on my poor old laptop (got a new one on the way, thank god) the software slows to a crawl. But using PortraitPro and Photoshop’s blending tools, and a LOT of patience, I was able to create some pretty realistic and different makeup effects from photo to photo.

I purposely left off any eyebrow liner or pencil when putting on my makeup, because I knew I wanted to play around with my brows, and I do not like using the glue-stick drag-queen trick to block my natural brows out and draw them on higher (tried it once and it yanked out a lot of my already-sparse eyebrow hair). In some shots, I was able to remove the brows entirely and use copied and pasted face baubles in their place (like the photo above with the short purple wig), while in others I used Photoshop to raise them high, drag-queen style. In the shot directly above, all of that eyeshadow was done via editing: my first round with PortraitPro added the green-gold shadow, and then I went in a second time to add the copper color on the lid. You can choose whether or not to make the shadow matte or shimmery, and you can see in that shot how realistic the shimmery shadows look. Each photo took hours to work with this way, but as I mentioned already, I was having fun doing it, so no problem there.

You can imagine how long this one took to edit, with not one or two but THREE eyeshadow colors happening. My dedication is real, people. Another fun PortraitPro makeup fact: Because I lined my eyes using white in the waterline and bringing the dark liner down below (another drag queen trick to make eyes look bigger and change the shape), I was able to use the software to apply lashes and mascara below the dark eyeliner – something I could not have done on my own (drag queens can do this with false lashes, but I was already risking it with the bauble-adhesive on my sensitive skin and wasn’t gonna go there). I think if you scroll back up to some of the previous pictures, you can see the effect of this better than you can in the shot above, but it is amazing how realistic the eyelashes look. I also used PP to over-whiten the eye area to increase the big-eyed effect. So fun.

But wait – I started this post saying 2016 kicked me in the ass one last time on December 31st, but so far everything sounds hunky-dory. So what happened? Well what happened was this: after I took about 400 shots, and my face started to get itchy, I called it a day, uploaded my shots, and removed all the makeup from my face so I could start editing. And a few hours later, I started to get – itchy. But on my chest, not my face. I was so focused on the photos that it took me awhile to notice that I’d gotten SO itchy I was scratching my right side, right around the rib area. Then I felt a big old bump, like a huge mosquito had bitten me (not an unlikely thought, since it was about 84 degrees around New Year’s, and there actually WERE mosquitoes outside). I went to the mirror to see how bad the bite was, and YIKES. It wasn’t just one bite – it was whole cluster of them! No wait, upon further inspection – there were TWO clusters of bites on the right side of my chest.

I showed Doug, and he agreed that they looked like some kind of bug bites, which was freaking me out more than the itching. I hated to admit it, but they sure looked like bed bugs. Bed Bugs! Ugh! I freaked out and washed a LOT of shit in hot water that evening, not gonna lie, even though it was not logical that I would have been bitten by bed bugs all over while my husband had none anywhere, or that I wouldn’t start feeling them until four in the afternoon. Could we have fleas? How was this possible with all the money we spend to keep our totally-indoor pets flea-free? Or – was it actually an allergic reaction to the adhesive, and if so, why was it on my chest and not my face, where the baubles actually were glued? The mystery, and the itching, deepened.

One of my faves from this set so far – I love the tones in this one

As I’m typing this, I’m wondering if it’s even a good idea to share it at all – but, the real story turned out to have nothing to do with bugs. I loaded up on Benadryl to get through the night, then realized in the morning when the bites hadn’t changed a bit (they hadn’t gotten worse, but certainly were no better) that I was going to have to hope against hope that a clinic somewhere was open on New Year’s Day so I could find out what was going on (isn’t it always the way that you develop some weird something or other on a holiday, or a weekend when doctors aren’t open?). Thankfully, a RediClinic was open in our local HEB and I headed up there, along with every other sick man, woman, and child desperately looking for emergency care on the first damn day of 2017.

Lots of added face baubles in this one, and you gotta give me credit for using PortraitPro to create that ombre lip. Fake makeup takes work, people!

Anyway, long story short (too late) – the doc takes one look at my chest and identifies the rash immediately as shingles. Something I have never had – and three days in, I hope to God I never have again. The rash has not spread – but oh my GAWD is it painful. Not to draw too clear a picture, but I eventually had to cut the right side out of a t-shirt just so I could be somewhat covered up around the house because I cannot stand to have any  fabric touching my chest right now. And of course, it finally decided to get cold here in Houston today, so I not only have on a t-shirt with the right boob cut out of it, but a legwarmer stuck on my right arm to keep me feeling somewhat covered since I had to cut the sleeve out too. That’s right people – the glamourpuss in the photos above is currently typing this blog post in a green, half-ripped t-shirt, with her rashy right boob hanging out and a brown legwarmer on her right arm. Earlier, one – ONE – hair from my head fell onto my chest and it felt like someone rubbed sandpaper on it, that’s how bad it is right now. If ANY fabric from this ripped-up shirt comes close to the danger zone, I feel it, and it feels awful.

So, day one of 2017 found me in a clinic getting diagnosed with shingles. And I was so ready to hit the ground running this week too, to finally buckle down and get my tutoring business up and running. Instead, I’m hiding out in the house dedicating all my time and energy pampering and protecting my chest. I blame Donald Trump. But hey, I’ve had plenty of time to play around and edit my pictures! Notice I’ve already processed ELEVEN of them, and I just took the shots four days ago. That’s gotta be a new record for me.

My sister-in-law asked me to bring my camera Christmas Eve, so she could get a few quick shots of her family. I’ve gotten to where I generally don’t bring my camera along to such events, because going into photo mode gets distracting and becomes a chore. But I actually hadn’t taken any photos of the fam at Christmas for a few years, so I decided to bring it along and see how things turned out.

The family in question – my brother and his wife and kids

I tried to learn from past mistakes and bring along a few different lenses, instead of just picking one that I think will work and only bringing that one along. In the end I took everything with my trusty 50mm, but I brought along my wide-angle lens in case I needed it in  small spaces. In the end, the 50mm worked fine (one lesson I’ve learned from my recent outings with the 17-40mm is that it just doesn’t take people photos all that well, and if I can ever get by without it when taking people shots – which I can’t always do – I should).

For the most part, I was able to simply pull out the camera on occasion, then put  it aside and partake in the Christmas cheer. I think I’ve gotten better at discerning when it’s time to take photos and when it’s not necessary, so that I’m not constantly snapping away because of a misguided belief that if I stop, I’ll miss out on some amazing shot that I would totally regret not taking if I put the camera down to eat a tamale or something (if you do not eat tamales with your Christmas dinner, well then, you’re not from Texas). I think years of leaving such events with thousands of photos that are basically the same thing over and over has finally taught me to relax a bit and not try to shoot everything.

For the most part I took pictures of people as they arrived, which, in my family, is a fairly spread out affair because at least half of them have no concept of time. Usually when someone is planning a get-together, they don’t even bother to tell anyone what time to show up, and if you ask, you get an estimate (and an apathetic one at that) rather than an actual starting point – just be there around 4 PM, or you know, whenever.  The problem is no one wants to eat, or in the case of Christmas, open gifts, until everyone has shown up, which as you can imagine becomes a problem. This time, we were told to be at my sister’s house at 4:30. Doug and I arrived at 4:30 on the dot and there were already three other groups of people there. Then guests were trickling in all the way until SEVEN-THIRTY PM, all done while periodically texting the hungry, prompt participants that they were ALMOST THERE. One of my  nieces texted her mother that she was about twenty minutes away, only to post a photo to Facebook five minutes later which clearly showed her still in her bathroom at home getting ready to leave. All this to say that I decided to just break out the camera every time a new group of people arrived, and then tuck it away until the next round of entrances occurred. Since people were wandering in for about three hours (and of course, as soon as the last tardy group arrived, people immediately started to leave) it made for a relaxing evening of picture-taking, with lots of downtime in between to just sit and chat. So, win?

Another lesson learned (and man, it sure takes me a long time to learn such things, doesn’t it? I’ve been taking pictures for at least 7 years) is that I simply cannot edit every single photo I share with others, nor do I need to. In considering the purpose of taking such photos, I realize that most people just want to see some recorded moments of the event, and would be perfectly happy with iPhone shots so therefore do not need perfectly lit, color-balanced, and perfected photos – that shit just takes way too long, and people don’t care anyway. So, for most of the Christmas family shots, I just uploaded them straight from the camera into Photo Ninja (the camera RAW editor I use), cropped them, sharpened them a little and did my best to color balance, then loaded them immediately onto Facebook. And everyone was happy. I did, however, choose to edit the pictures my sister-in-law wanted of her family, since she was going to print those and use them as family shots, and there were a few others I liked enough to also give the Photoshop treatment. All of the big ones I’ve shared here were edited, but most of the ones in the collage were not.

And of course, being me – I just had to play around with Portrait Pro tools on at least one of them! In this cause, my niece Chana gave me the perfect shot for some Photoshop trickery:

Her original hair is fun, but I just wanted to see how many different colors I could make it in PortraitPro (answer: many). And it was too easy to add makeup for me to resist. Not that there was anything wrong with the original shot – I just wanted to play around a little.

My new less-is-more philosophy also came in handy when I went with my father out to IAH today to watch some planes land. Since I have over a zillion shots of United Airlines planes landing and taking off (IAH is one of their hubs) and I’ve plane spotted there plenty of times, I no longer go completely insane when I get there and feel like I have to snap everything. It was a pretty slow day, being a weekday and all, but they were using the good runway (over the parking lot with the port-o-potties – very handy) and I managed to snap a few non-United planes without going too crazy. Sure, I still ended up taking about 1,000 shots, but that’s easy to do when using high shutter speed, and in actuality I only shot about 20 planes total. In the past, I’d shoot as many as 4,000 shots out there, and end up having way too much to sift through when I got home. This was much easier, and there were a few planes I didn’t shoot at all, and just sat back and watched land over my head alongside my dad.

So, in spite of feeling recently like I’ve become pretty bored with taking photos, I’ve actually taken a ton of them lately. I also gussied up in some of my new Free People stuff (because they KEEP HAVING GOOD SALES, dammit) to show it off, but I haven’t processed those yet because then our impromptu plane-spotting trip came up instead. But I’ll get to those soon. If I don’t pop back in here again before the weekend, happy new year everyone. Here’s hoping 2017 is better than the shit show 2016 has been, but I kinda doubt it. But that’s for another post. For now let’s enjoy this one last week of peace on earth and good will towards men before that all goes to hell in the new year, shall we?

Welp, it’s been over a week since the US election, and while I am still mortified, I’m also motivated. I’ve joined a few local groups and have already been involved in some planning sessions. Meanwhile, Trump is giving white supremacists high-level appointments and blocking the press from attending his meetings with international leaders while allowing his daughter, who has no security clearance and serious conflicts of interest to boot, to sit in. Oh, and of course he’s still lying on Twitter. Yeah, we’re off to a great start.

But enough about that for now. Monday afternoon a friend of mine asked if I would take some photos of her to use on her professional website and LinkedIn, so we made a day of it. She threw a few outfits into her car and we drove around the area looking for good locations. The neighborhood she lives in has a ton of great locations, but unfortunately we were out and about at the worst time of day for outdoor shots and the sun was incredibly bright. A few of our indoor locations worked well, and we managed to find ways to get into the shade and do our best, but a lot of the photos are requiring some major Photoshop magic to get them to work. Fortunately I am up the task:

This was probably the trickiest one I’ve worked with so far. It isn’t perfect, and truth be told I could have just ignored all these park shots and edited photos from other locations (I’m far from done working with them and will have to more to share later) but I wanted to see if I could make one of the blasted-out afternoon outdoors shots work. For reference, here’s the final shot up against the original:

She was standing in the shade, so while the light on her was pretty dim, behind her you can see how blasted out the color was from too much sun (oh and also, one of her other tops was sitting on the bench behind us, LOL). I managed to use both PortraitPro and LandscapePro to bring her into the light and add some color depth to the background; PortaitPro in particular has been helpful with these shots, because among other things you can completely change both skin tone and light on a subject to compensate for lighting problems in the original. Very useful here.

This lovely flower wall was inside a greenhouse facility located in the community center of a neighborhood near my friend’s house. It’s a fairly well-to-do, brand-new development, and the whole community center was amazing. We would have taken a lot more shots there, except wouldn’t you know that within 15 minutes of our arrival, a huge group of elementary school kids showed up for some reason and we felt it best to leave. It was disappointing, because the whole place was fantastic. It had a greenhouse, two clubhouses, and various garden areas with very nice seating arrangements. The buildings themselves were made out of a variety of stone and steel and dark wood, with a huge lake and fountains in the background. There were also large balconies, winding staircases, and lovely outdoor sofas and rocking chairs and the like that provided lovely interest to the photos. One of the big balconies even had a glassed-in fireplace, and the fireplace was lit and roaring even though it was about 85 degrees outside (it was November 16th, so I guess they just decided screw it, we’ve got this damn fireplace, let’s use it anyway). In short, it was an awesome location, and I hope to go back there soon to take more photos as for a shoot, you really wouldn’t need to leave this place at all to get tons of interesting shots.

Anyway, you know I love a good B&A, so here it is for this one:

Again, there were a ton of shadows on her face that needed to be eliminated, but PortraitPro came through for me again. And let me just say that working on a 33-year-old face is a hell of a lot easier than editing a 47-year-old one; her skin tone on its own is so much more uniform than my multi-colored, splotchy one (not being self-critical, just stating a fact). I often will have 4 or 5 different colors happening on my own face that I have to correct, and she basically has one. The shadows created problems for sure, and it was still tricky to get the skin tone even and bright enough, but at least I didn’t have to contend with any sun damage!

This was a candid I took while she was fluffing her hair for the shot; I was just testing the lighting but I liked the photo so I edited it anyway. This is also taken at the community center; it’s a second-floor open balcony overlooking a large rest area around down below. Opposite where she’s sitting here is the fireplace I mentioned. You can really tell how nice the place is – just an awesome spot for a photo shoot! I had brought a few floaty dresses along so we could perhaps take some levitation shots for me to work with, but we basically blew it off and just focused on getting pictures of her in her regular clothes. I just didn’t feel like setting up such shots, and she wasn’t much in the mood to change into a real costume – it was 85 degrees out, remember, and this is Houston so it was also humid.

This was our first location – the county courthouse. It was already around noon so the light was already an issue, but she’s standing under the front awning of the building here, which made it work. I added some light glow to her hair to accentuate that, since I thought it looked pretty, but I tried not to overdo it so she could use this as a professional photo. It was hard though; I get so into the fun of editing that I tend to over-do it at times. Still, I really like the end result of this one.

We also went inside to take shots; one thing I like about Candace is that she isn’t inhibited about posing for photos in public or basically wandering in anywhere to do so. We strolled into the courthouse and just started snapping away; something I might have been cautious about doing without her just going for it. There were people around, so when we passed by the receptionist we asked if taking photos was OK, but we’d actually already taken a bunch and the woman said it was fine anyway. I tend not be as confident and feel awkward about going around taking shots in public, which is something I need to get better at, but it is what it is.

Without the light and shadow problems we faced outside, the indoors shots were easy to pull off. I’ve only edited this one for now, but I’ll work on a few more later. She wanted to be sure she came off professional and not too “pretty girl,” which is always a tough balance to strike when you are, well, a pretty girl. If you’re too pretty you risk not being taken seriously, but you still have to look well-groomed and professional. Honestly, after finishing up for the day (we took about 1000 shots) we realized she should have put up her hair for at least some of them, because the long flowing locks can read too young or “sexy” which wasn’t what she was going for, obviously. But we didn’t think about it at the time, and as a photographer I am such a sucker for long flowing locks, especially with the sunlight hitting it as it was on this day, that the idea of pulling it all back bores me. But there were plenty of shots like this where her hair was pulled to the back for the most part, and it did help make her appear, not older necessarily, but just more mature. She still gets mistaken for a high school student at times, even though she’s 33 years old, so it’s something she still has to contend with (I reassured her that at some point, yes, even she would no longer look ‘too young,’ which is definitely a mixed bag. In a way it’s a good thing, but it also means you’re starting to look ‘older’ which can still suck. Anyway).

Remember when I said I was a sucker for  long flowing locks in the sunlight (and if you don’t remember me saying that, I’m a little worried for you, because I just said it in the previous paragraph)? Well, here’s one of those instances where the hair totally gave me what I am always looking for. I told her I was going to edit some of the photos just for the hell of it even though she probably wouldn’t want to use them for professional stuff, which she was fine with (she doesn’t care how much I edit or mess with her shots for the most part), and this was one of them.

This was another outdoors shot, so as with the others light was a problem, and I used various Photoshop tricks and tools to get the effect of a sunrise instead of it being three in the afternoon, like it really was when we took it. I mean, the light in the original was really awful, and I really wasn’t sure when we were taking these if I’d be able to make them work:

In some cases, though, my editing madness ran amok and I totally overdid it. This usually happens when I work on too many photos in one sitting, because I start to get bored with making the same old edits and changes and become too experimental; I really shouldn’t work on more than three in one sitting because that’s when I start to go off the rails. This last one is a pretty good example of that.

It’s interesting how different it can  be to work with a different face. Her face is very round whereas mine is long and oval; and there are little edits I’m so used to making to positive effect that I really thought doing the same things with her portraits would also work, and none of them did. Her hair color, skin tone, and eye color are all so different from mine that I had to play around with new techniques to make any changes. Her eyes, for example, are such a dark brown as to almost be black, and her pupils really don’t show in photos, which isn’t nearly as effective in a portrait as being able to see the color of the iris. But lightening them too much made her look a little strange, so for the most part I accommodated for it by adding light reflections in her eyes to give them depth rather than too much iris-lightening. Changing her eye color for fun was also more challenging than it is with my eyes, which are much lighter in color. And other little tricks I use on my own face, like accentuating the cheekbones by adding shading and light, I had to use very sparingly on her; my little cheekbone trick, on her round face, tended to make the face look rounder and more full, which wasn’t flattering on her, and whereas my pretty small, close-set eyes look better when I add the makeup and mascara enhancements PortraitPro provides (they are a miracle for my beady little peepers) most of that overwhelmed her, so I kept it minimal. Blush, in particular, she just didn’t need, and her big eyes looked too ‘done’ with the mascara enhanced, so I ended up barely using those tools at all. And even when enhancing the light and shading on her face, the effects I tend to use on my own just didn’t work on her. None of it was a problem, it was just interesting to play around with.

All that said – ugh. I don’t like this last picture at all. I used a lot of the techniques I use on my own portraits but they just didn’t work here. I tried to change her hair color, for example, but it wasn’t very successful, and as I mentioned before, her eyes came out more freakish than I intended. Basically I played too much and somewhere along the line I think I ruined it, so I added some texture to it to detract from its flaws (not sure that worked, because I even over-did the texture) and called it a day.

In closing this post, I realized there were two selfies I took recently that I never shared here – well, we can’t let that stand, so here they are:

I took these in October, actually, so I’m not sure how I missed getting them uploaded. That fuzzy yellow jacket thing I found at Goodwill for 99 cents and after shooting a bunch of videos I decided what the hell, since I had some heavy makeup on, and I threw the vest on with a wig I’ve had for a while and some yellow lipstick. I didn’t take too many shots, since I planned to only edit one, but I did do a few wig and lipstick changes so as to get more than one pic out of the whole shoot. The one above was definitely the best of the bunch, though.

I’m basically in the exact same pose here, just with a different expression, so yeah, not really all that exciting. But here it is anyway.

It’s been a minute since I posted anything, but a lot has been up in the work department and I’ve been busy. A few weeks ago, I was given one section of AP English Literature to teach, and while it doesn’t involve a lot of planning or grading since another teacher is doing all of that, it still eats into my available time and increases my workload. So, for the most part, I’ve been chilling out once I get home and doing a lot of nothing to make up for the added stress. I not only haven’t been writing on my blog, I haven’t been reading anyone else’s either, so sorry about that. I’ve thought about writing a post many times but haven’t been able to muster up enough enthusiasm for it lately to actually go through with it.

Before I got busy, I was still working on the photos I took over Christmas break, and I have more I’d love to process once I get back in the mood for it. I’ve also (obviously) been playing around a lot with the Portrait Pro software I talked about last time; I’ve discovered it works best on portraits that are positioned directly into the camera; even a slightly off-center post as the one above can cause problems. The software will still ‘work,’ but the changes the software can make tend to be less radical and have the potential to look more fake. But, I’m still learning.

Aside from work, I’m not even sure what I’ve been doing. I will say that Logo television just announced the contestants for Season 8 of RuPaul’s Drag Race, and I could not be more excited about this lineup. Last year’s contestants were fun enough, and I did not hate the season as much as many hard-core long-term fans did; but I didn’t realize just how bland most of them were until I watched the promos for these 12 queens; man there are a lot of strong personalities and unique styles of drag being represented this time around, and I think it’s going to be a ball to watch. My early favorite is Bob the Drag Queen, and if you haven’t ever seen his performances before be sure to check a few out on YouTube; she’s unique as hell and edgy to boot. March 7th cannot get here fast enough; I’m so glad Logo isn’t making us wait until May again this year.

I bought a whole new slew of costume wigs that at some point I’ll drag up and take photos of, but that may not be until Spring Break with the way things are going. I haven’t much been in the mood for all the work it entails – but I did get the urge to take photos last weekend without it involving any prep work on my part, so I packed up the car and headed out to the airport, where I spent Saturday taking shots of planes. The weather was lovely, and the planes were landing on the runway opposite the main observation area, so I got some nice shots of planes I’ve never photographed before. It was a nice little outing and gave me the chance to scratch my photography itch without having to apply makeup.

And actually, these next two shots are from the trip I took out to the airport with my father back in December; the trip where the weather was awful and I forgot to use the proper camera settings. Most of these photos were crap, but I managed to snag a few nice ones:

Wish I had more to say, but unless you want to hear about the symbols and motifs in Shakespeare’s Hamlet my head’s not full of much else these days. Hopefully soon I’ll get used to this new glitch in my routine and have more time for typing and taking photos. Until then, I’ll at least try to keep up with other blogs and photos over on Flickr; I’ve been pretty absent from both places lately. Happy weekend, everyone!