Plane Plan

Posted on June 14, 2015 by marey mercy

This past Monday, I woke up thinking about airplanes, so I checked my Flightradar app and saw that – yay! – IAH was using the runway over their observation lot for arrivals. There were a few interesting planes coming in that day, so I quickly packed up my gear and headed out.

#EI-DRE – AeroMexico Boeing 737-700, landing at IAH on June 8, 2015

Since I’ve done this a few times now, I did a better job of being sure I had what I needed and knew what I was doing before I got out there (in other words, no wig hairs on the camera lens this time). But I did make one awful error – in between spurts of plane landings, I would get back in my car, turn the air conditioner on (since it was about 95 degrees outside with what felt like 100% humidity), and switch my camera off to save the battery. Just as I was about to leave, I saw the largest plane of the day heading right for me – a British Airways Boeing 777. I grabbed my camera, flipped it back on, and got out just in time to take some great shots as it passed over. Unfortunately, as I got back into my car I noticed in my LCD screen that all the shots I’d just taken were nothing but bright white light; apparently when flipping my camera’s on switch my finger had accidentally also switched my camera mode from Aperture over to Manual, and the camera let in way too much light and blew out all the shots. Blurgh! (as Liz Lemon would say). The only thing that kept me from pulling my hair out in agony was that I did manage to snap some nice pictures of a different BA Boeing 777 on my last outing to IAH back in January. But still – bummer.

Welp, there it is.

There was another 777 that landed that day, but it was using a different runway that’s too far away for my little telephoto to reach. I tried to get some decent shots of it, but this was the best I could do; in looking at it here, I guess it’s not too bad, just not nearly as close or clear as I would like. I’ve read a little about shooting using a telephoto lens, and everything says you lose a lot of clarity if you zoom all the way in when taking a shot, so I tried not to do that this time when taking these far-away shots even though it meant I couldn’t get quite as close as I would have liked:

#F-GSQA – Air France Boeing 777-200

I was also getting blurry shots at first, so I got on my phone and did some quick research; ultimately deciding to try using Aperture Priority mode instead of the Shutter Speed mode I always use. This actually helped to get clearer shots on a regular basis, so I’ll need to be sure to remember that next time.

#N509NK – Spirit Airlines Airbus 319-100

As I mentioned before, it was pretty damn hot out there, and I didn’t even get to the lot until around 11:15, but the sky was nice and blue and there were plenty of clouds to create more interesting pictures,so I’m glad I went ahead and tried it out in spite of the heat. Especially since it looks like we have another week of rain coming and who knows when I’ll be able to get back out there again. It’s also good to know that, unlike Hobby Airport, anytime I choose to go out there I’m guaranteed to get at least a few planes other than the regulars (United Airlines at IAH, Southwest Airlines at HOU) – as long as they’re using the right runway, that is.

#N618NK – Spirit Airlines Airbus A320

Supposedly there’s another good planespotting location around IAH that isn’t an official one; I can’t tell if it’s still available to park at or if it’s been cordoned off – I get conflicting information on different sites where I’ve looked for information. Since it’s not an official observation area I am still a little chicken to check it out, but sooner or later I’m sure taking photos of the planes in always basically the same position in the sky is going to get boring. For now it’s OK though, because I get a little better each time at getting the whole plane in the frame once it gets closer. Well, except for when I accidentally mess up the camera settings and over-expose the hell out of my shots.

#N703ABV – Avianca Airbus A319

I also caught a few small private planes as they flew over; if you click this next one and magnify it you can see the dude in the passenger seat staring right at me, LOL:

#N500HY – Beechcraft Beechjet. This one must have just gotten a new paint job because in all the other pictures I see of it online, the tail is plain white with brown stripes.

#N281SE – Piper Malibu Meridian

That’s all the planes I’ve edited for now, but I will have a few more to come. I haven’t processed any of the United Airlines ones yet, and there’s a few more I took that were using that other runway that I think I may be able to process and get decent results. We’ll see.

Other than plane photos and wig videos, I’ve been watching tons of documentaries on Netflix – documentaries are a serious weakness of mine, and I’ll watch just about anything if it’s in that category (proof? I watched an entire documentary about a font. Yep). The most bizarre one so far is called Room 237, and it’s dedicated to some of the more obsessive and outrageous analyses people have come up with to explain Stanley Kubrick’s hidden messages in his movie The Shining. Yep. While I didn’t actually believe any of the theories, it truly is fun to take a Kubrick movie and pick it apart for visual symbols and motifs, but I’m still convinced he just did it because he was obsessive about visuals and then he just let everyone interpret things however they wanted. My favorite theories were that Kubrick made The Shining to confess to the world that there was no actual footage of the US landing on the moon, but Kubrick was contracted to create such footage so the world would actually believe we did go there. Want proof? Well, there’s Danny’s sweater for starters:

Oh, and also the inclusion of the Tang powdered drink on the shelves (used on space missions) and something about that key containing the letters not just for “room” but also for “moon” and, the number 237 represents the 237 kajillion miles (technical term) Earth is from the moon. And one woman also pointed out that in the super-creepy scene there where the dead twins roll that ball to Danny, the pattern on the carpet reverses, which had something to do with the reversal of time and how the movie was meant to be watched backwards, or something.

Oh, and for the theory that The Shining was meant to be viewed backwards, the documentary actually plays a bit of the movie moving forward as it should while superimposing it playing backwards on top of it, and I have to say that was pretty cool although the idea that this was what Kubrick actually wanted rather than the theory of someone who’s gotten way too into decoding this film isn’t likely. Still, a fun documentary overall, especially if you are a fan of the movie as I am.

An example of what you see when playing the movie backwards and forwards at the same time. Coincidence? Yeah probably, but still cool.

Some other great ones I’ve seen this week are Dear, Zachary (do NOT watch without an entire box of Kleenex, because you’ll need it – trailer below):

The Queen of Versailles (voyeuristic view of an uber-rich family attempting to build the biggest house in America that turns on a dime after the crash of 2008 and ends up really being about clueless rich people trying to function without their private jets and 15 servants. SPOILER: apparently rich people do not know how to potty train, or clean up after, their dogs):

All This Mayhem (two young skaters from Australia and the tragic yet spectacular fall from grace they experience when the money and the fame dries up):

The Source Family (a hippie cult in the 70’s made unique by the inclusion of quite detailed video footage taken by the cult’s “historian”):

Bridgend (haunting and bizarre story of a small town in South Wales where almost 80 teenagers have committed suicide by hanging over the past 8 years):

And perhaps the best one of all so far, The Imposter (story about a guy who actually convinces a family that he’s their missing son, even though he’s not):

All of these are currently streaming on Netflix, and I can’t recommend them enough!

Wig Time

Posted on May 17, 2015 by marey mercy

At a Nordstrom fitting room a few weeks ago – loved the blue lights

You may have noticed I’ve been uploading a lot of wig videos to the site. I’m not sure what prompted me to start doing it – probably my friend Lana starting to put up videos again got me thinking about it – but once I got to looking at my old stuff I realized I have tons of these things, and I figured I’d give sharing them another shot. I asked some friends if uploading discontinued wigs to the site was helpful, since a lot of the wigs I filmed are no longer being made, and they said they were because they could look at colors or styles anyway, so that really opened up the possibility of sharing many of them here. I’ve been getting a lot of positive feedback, and I guess I never realized how helpful the videos were to other people; knowing that now I will try harder to keep them up without yanking them down so quickly. Watching all the old vids of course makes me want to buy some new ones, but I need to be careful with that since I don’t wear them much anymore. Even when I think I will, in the end I opt for a ponytail on bad hair days instead of a wig, so I need to keep that in mind when considering buying new ones.

Work is very busy, so when I get some free time I’ve just been editing old stuff, but I am anxious for summer so I can take some more shots. I don’t think I’ve even touched my camera in over a month; I’m just trying to catch up with errands over the weekend and then working like crazy all week. It’s not bad or anything, just how it is right now.

That photo above got some weird reactions; with some people commenting that it’s “not the best” I’ve ever looked – but the fact that I looked different was kind of the point for me. In fact, I thought I looked a little Kate Bush-ish, aside from the blonde hair, and what could be bad about that? But it’s funny to me how people have to point it out when I don’t look glamorous or whatever it is they normally think I look like, as if it really bothers them or they’re surprised or something. I’m not; I hardly walk around looking glam in my day-to-day life anyway.

One thing that’s tricky about editing such old shots is all the techniques I’ve learned since weren’t employed in them, so I have to navigate around, say, super-wrinkly, ineffective backdrops, or bad lighting, or makeup that does nothing but accentuate my wrinkles and pores. So, I’ve had to use a lot of textures and other extras to conceal the flaws. It’s true what they say – best to get as much right in the actual shot as possible, and leave yourself less to correct in processing later.

In dog news, Penny did have another seizure when Doug took her back to the vet last week, so the doctor is going to make a house call this week to draw blood from her. Other than that she has been fine, so the second seizure was clearly due to stress and pretty much confirms that the cause of them is epilepsy and not something else. Still, we will do bloodwork to be sure, since epilepsy is one of those “rule-out” diagnoses.

There’s actually something going on this weekend called Drag Con, and I am so sad I’m not there it’s ridiculous. But the middle of May is too crazy a time at work to get away, even for a weekend, so I’m going to have to settle for viewing a lot of pictures and videos online. I’m sure it’s going to be a fabulous time, and I’d really like to try and go next year.

I realize I haven’t said much of anything in this post, but I did have a lot of photos I wanted to share and got tired of waiting for really important things to talk about to do it. I guess I don’t have much to say about these shots because I took them so long ago, and already discussed the shoots back then when I first shared them. Anyway, here they are, and hopefully in just a few weeks I’ll have a lot more to discuss about new stuff I get to share. In the meantime, enjoy the wig videos. Or don’t, whatever works for you.

Just Shoot Me

Posted on April 5, 2015 by marey mercy

I have a few more new shots to share, and for some reason I’ve got a lot that have two or more different edits and I can’t decide which I like best. So I’ll use you all for that, if I can. The one above, though, just got one edit and I was done, so no choosing to do there. That top is a Free People long duster that I put on backwards,and the wig has always been a favorite. It’s by Forever Young, a company that makes pretty nice costume-type wigs that you can still get away with wearing as your real hair as long as you have the right attitude, and they don’t cost very much (they average around $40). While wearing this getup, I was shooting without the softbox, so the light was a bit softer on my face, and it was a pretty straightforward and easy photo to edit; I didn’t have to do much more than sharpen and brighten things to get it how I wanted.

Some of these photos, though – I still can’t decide which edit I like best – like these (click to view larger):

The one in the middle is the basic edit; I’m pleased with the lighting I managed to pull off here (I moved a light stand with a fluorescent bulb attached up over my head and had the external flash on my camera set pretty low) but, because of the low light it came out pretty grainy, and in processing it to remove the grain I lost a lot of clarity. Because of that, I thought I’d add some texture or an overlay to detract and/or conceal the softness (which isn’t bad, and a lot of people like soft shots like that, it’s just not my thing). I actually like all three in their own ways, but can’t decide which is the “best,” or the final one. The one on the left just has some texture added, while I used a Pixlr overlay for the one on the right. Let me know which one you like better so it can help me decide!

I also need help deciding which of these two I like better – the difference is so subtle you might not even notice it, but I can tell:

The only difference is the subtle texture on the right-hand edit. I thought the original (left) might need just a little something extra, but I don’t know – maybe it doesn’t. Does it matter? Does it add anything? Let me know what you think. Also, let me just add that there was about twice as much flyaway hair in my face than you see in the these shots; it was an absolute bitch to edit out and took a long time; eventually I ended up using some filters that added a ton of light to the face to also help reduce the visibility of not only the hair but some of the editing I did to get rid of it, which started getting sloppy. That’s why there’s such a green tone to it; it was a filter that really worked to reduce the appearance of the flyaway hairs for some reason so I went with it.

Here’s the one shot I got of the Thugmaste tee I talked about in my last post; it was actually difficult for me to get the entire slogan into a shot, because the words at either end of the tag line were disappearing in most of the shots. I ended up taking one of the few shots of my torso where the whole slogan showed and layering a better head over it. So there’s really TWO wigs showing in this shot because when I layered the different head into the shot I kept what hair was sticking out from the bottom one. I liked this one with the black and white treatment, too, but so far everyone I’ve shown has liked the color better. Thoughts?

Also, although I really liked this shot when I took it, in looking over this section of my set I realize I didn’t have the right attitude for this shirt. I should have done something with more attitude and probably a bit of humor, since as has already been pointed out to me my ability to project “thug” is pretty limited. Just standing there staring at the ceiling really isn’t what this shirt called for, which is probably why when I sent a copy to the woman who made the shirt she just said ‘thanks’ and didn’t do anything with it, LOL. Oh well. You win some you lose some.

As a closer, I’ll share the other shot I had processed that didn’t have any different edits to it; it’s another one where I experimented with a harsh light above my head and off to the side, and I like the way it worked out even though I did have the same noise issue to contend with:

I used a RadLab texture to rough up the softness a little, but other than that just some color punches and things like that to get this where I liked it. I considered using some of Pixlr’s space-y overlays on this one, but they all detracted too much from the lighting, which I really liked and wanted to keep prominent in the shot.

That’s all I have from the new shoot for this time, but I know there’s more to come – at least of the curly wig and the space dress. The t-shirt section of the shoot I’m pretty much done with, and there was a bit at the beginning of the shoot where I tried to get close-ups of my makeup, but they ended up a little boring so I may not share any of those. However, I still have a few from the edits I’ve done of old shots to share, so I’ll throw them into a little collage for you here:

Photo Friday

Posted on April 4, 2015 by marey mercy

I know it’s Saturday, but I took photos Friday so hence the title. I have’t processed many yet, but I took over 500 so who knows how long this will go on. It was a really fun shoot that was also productive; I was pleased with a lot of the shots. Here’s my favorite so far:

I really liked the lighting in this set; a fluorescent light behind me really works to outline the subject, especially the hair. And there’s the $10 ModCloth dress that keeps on giving. It worked great with the purple wig (which I had to discard after because I killed it) and with some added saturation the color was great. I took a lot in this dress that I like so there will definitely be more of these later.

I took these close-ups right at the beginning of the shoot, because I wanted to capture the makeup job before it started to get messed up. I followed one of Miss Fame’s makeup tutorials, and I haven’t followed a YouTube tutorial from start to finish in a long time. The results were worth it – I finally got my nose contoured right, which was my biggest success, and I didn’t even have a hard time getting the lashes on. I hated to take it all off later, because it took me about an hour to do.

I may a little over-softened here, but I do love this pose. The wig moved nicely and again, I like the effect of the light behind me when working against a black background. The t-shirt is a project started by a friend of mine, and this part of the shoot was really to just get a good photograph of it, but of course I took plenty just playing around with the wig also. Turned out to be difficult to get the entire slogan into a shot too, because the words fall off to either side (It says: “THUGMASTE – the badass in me recognizes the badass in you,” LOL) but I did manage to get one that I’ll share later.

That’s all I have for now! Going to see my mother today; she’s struggling a bit and quite honestly I think my dad is hovering over her too much and making her a little crazy. I’m going to go out there to see if I can help. Still have Monday off so going to enjoy the long weekend.

Fine and Sandy

Posted on March 18, 2015 by marey mercy

As promised, here’s a post of photos I’ve been re-working in anticipation of a show that may not happen now, since I’ve emailed the gallery owner twice and she hasn’t responded. Oh well. I’m still having fun re-working all these shots, so i’m going to keep on keeping on. Because it’s a lot of photos, I put most of them into collages, since in general I’ve processed several per set. This first one, though, hasn’t had any companions so far, so I’ll post it by itself first. And before I talk too much about the photos, I have a little Sandy the Massage Therapist story to share.

I quit going to see Sandy a while back because I made two consecutive appointments with her that I forgot about, and I was too embarrassed to try again. But eventually my arm started hurting enough to motivate me to make the call, and I’ve gone to see her several times the past few weeks. She has been her usual chatty, bizarre self, but hasn’t really given me anything to write about until today. Today, though, she went in on a topic she talks about often: all the men who come to see her and try to flirt with her or, erm, get buck naked instead of staying covered up. I didn’t realize this was a “thing” with massage therapists, and maybe it’s just Sandy exaggerating, but she swears that most of the men she works on constantly want to uncover themselves while she is working and, according to Sandy, she has to chastise them to make them keep their towels on.

I kind of wish I’d had a normal wig on here; the pastel hair distracts from the shocking balletic movement I managed to pull off in this shot. I didn’t think I’d be able to change it to a plain color without it looking fake though.

“Do you know how many of those things I’ve seen over the years?” she said with an exasperated sigh. “Puh-lease, it is not like I need to ever see one again.” Then, she went on to share with me just how many of those things she actually has seen (and in case it isn’t clear, when Sandy says those things, she means penises).

“I mean, I’ve been married five times, so that’s five right there.” Five times? I asked, amazed that I’ve been coming to see Sandy for over a year now and this is the first I’ve heard this. “Yes ma’am. And then there’s all the guys I dated before that. I dated one guy for seven, eight years, and let me tell you, he was hung like a horse. I remember asking him how many times it would take before I stopped being sore every time, and he said about ten, so I said well let’s just get those first ten times out of the way now so I can get on with life. We’re still friends, you know, and every time I see him I ask him – so, have you tore any women up lately?” (I know, I totally should have warned you that was coming. Sorry.)

It’s a good thing I’m always lying face-down on the massage table when Sandy tells me these stories, so I can freely allow my mouth to drop open in awe and disbelief at whatever it is she’s just said. Feel free to do the same at home. But hey, my arm feels loose enough now to type this up and share it with you, so maybe that’s the plus side. Then again, maybe not.

But now, about these pictures. The shots directly above are macros of some roses Doug got me for our fifteenth wedding anniversary (March 11); I was taking pics of the Fendi purse I wrote about in my last post, and while I was at it I decided to spritz the flowers down with water and shoot some macros. I took a ton, but these were the best of the bunch. There was some freesia in the arrangement as well, so I may process some of the shots of took of it also, but I haven’t had time yet. I don’t have them anymore, because Simon kept looking at them and thinking, hey look, lunch; plus they were slowly dying anyway. But they were pretty while they lasted.

For most of the other shots, the main changes I made in re-editing them was to do less with them, rather than more. For most of these, when i shot and processed them originally, I was just learning how to add textures and filters and in many cases had gone overboard; I’d always wanted to go back to some of the best ones and re-process them in a more straightforward way but never got around to it until now. Also, I am using this opportunity to format my TIF files at 300dpi instead of the 72 I was using as a default before, so the files are a lot bigger (which makes them slow to work on at times, as my little laptop struggles to keep up).

Some of these shots were old enough that they were taken before I used full backdrops, and would instead hang a sheet on the wall and place a matching one on the floor, creating a very obvious line between them. When I couldn’t get that edited out properly, I did add some background texture to help conceal the edits, but I kept the textures subtle so as not to overwhelm the subject of the shot (the very first shot, and the second one in the collage above, are both examples of where I needed to add some texture to the background).

More coming from this set – I can only stand to do a few at a time before I get bored, but lots of interesting shots from this one

In the two curtain pictures above, I did use one of Topaz’s Re-Style filters to change the color pretty radically; in the original shots (some of which you can see here), I had a brown background and a purple curtain, but I decided I wanted a more unified color to entire shot, and I liked the underwater feel this filter created. I’ve got a few more to edit from that set, but these are the only two I had ready by the time I wrote this post. To get the color exactly right, I have to add more of the filter to the background than to the curtains, so it’s a rather tedious process to get it just right; I get bored with working on them rather quickly, but I’m pleased with the end result nonetheless.

For these next floral dress shots, I decided since in the originals I hadn’t covered up the floor at all and it looked kinda sloppy, to just go with it and create shots that appeared to be outtakes; I left the remote sitting on the floor instead of editing it out to add to that effect. I kind of wish now that I’d had more junk sitting around I could leave in, but alas, I was rather neat on this day, I guess.

This was such a thrown-together set but I got a lot of good shots out of it. Also, favorite wig.

As I said, I haven’t heard from the gallery owner anymore, or the woman she asked me to email my questions to, so who knows if that will ever really happen. My plan right now is to leave things alone for awhile and keep editing my photos, then in a few weeks contact her again and ask her directly if she was serious or not about a show. If she was, great, and if she blows me off, oh well. Next time someone asks at least I’ll be prepared.

That jumping one gets tons of reactions – so much orange! – and the portrait I liked because it’s an unusual expression for me.

Cipro-tection

Posted on March 11, 2015 by marey mercy

In preparing for a possible show, I’ve both emailed someone the owner of the gallery put me in touch with to ask her about how to best format my photos and started re-working old, favorite shots, since I now know without a doubt that in order to print them I’ll need to completely re-process them from the original RAW files. Moving forward I will be sure to save a TIF version of an edited document with enough size and pixels to be workable, but until now I haven’t done that, so while this is a lot of work to do, it’s also rather fun. Sure, I’ve dipped into the archives before when short on new shots to process, but only to find different things to work with; I’ve never gone back and re-edited old shots that were clearly the best ones to begin with, if that makes sense. When going back trolling for new stuff, I’m always choosing from the shots I rejected the first time around, so it’s infinitely more enjoyable to work with the best material again. Plus, I am finding more shots I think are valuable, AND I have also always wanted to re-edit some great photos that I now feel I didn’t quite edit right. So, fun all around.

The first oldie I edited. Definitely an all-time favorite. Interestingly, this was only the second shot of a 200-photo set, and it’s the best one (partly because I didn’t yet realize the importance of brushing a wig every 2-3 shots during a set, and this one was completely trashed within the first ten minutes).

I figured by now I’d have a ton of re-worked oldies to share with you, BUT. I got completely sidetracked by a weird health scare over the weekend. Before I get into it, though, allow me to share the only other photo I’ve edited from an old set – this one is an example of a shot I ignored the first time around, but decided this time that had potential:

I’ll get more into what I’m doing differently to make these more print-worthy, but it involves MUCH bigger files, so I’m most likely going to have to re-learn how to save them best for the blog so they aren’t huge here also. Haven’t had time yet to do that though, so – moving on.

I was working on some of these old shots Sunday afternoon when out of nowhere, I had a pretty bad stomach upset. It came on quickly, and rather painfully; within ten minutes of the first stomach cramp I knew I was in trouble and contacted my boss to let her know I wouldn’t be in the next day (something I usually wait until the last minute to do because missing a day of work as a teacher is a pain in the ass, for reasons I won’t get into right now). Now. I’ve had stomach bugs before, of course; everyone has. But this one was just weird. Not only did I feel terrible, but I felt…confused, and panicked, when really there’s no reason for that. At times, I struggled to stand up or communicate what I was feeling, which my husband was demanding I do because I was freaking him out. One of the worst symptoms I had were chills that were almost violent in nature – on the scale of chills you might get when you have the flu, but my other symptoms didn’t match up with that. I would lie down somewhere for about ten minutes and groan, then get so uncomfortable with the chills and body aches that I’d have to move to some other spot, only to feel the need to move again ten minutes later. Through all of this, I was insanely frantic and confused, as if something were happening to me I couldn’t understand, when really, it was just a stomach bug so why all the panic and tears? Doug started taking my temperature, and when it started to climb over 100 by 10:30 PM we both decided it was best to go to the ER in case whatever this weirdness was got worse before morning.

So off to the ER we go, where they clearly thought I was wasting my time coming in – I get it, there are people with serious emergencies and here I am with a stomach bug – and I immediately felt embarrassed and foolish. But again, there was this panic to the whole experience I couldn’t get rid of, which was what prompted me to go in; this feeling that something was much more wrong than I realized and I might get dreadfully sick if I didn’t. So there we were, waiting for an hour to get some blood drawn and an IV of fluids since I was ridiculously dehydrated, and then sent home afterwards with me feeling not necessarily better but at least not panicked anymore.

Feeling a little better after an IV of fluid, and thinking the worst was over. NOT.

So to get to the punchline here I’m going to rewind a bit, back to the Thursday before my ER visit. I arrived at work at 7 AM as usual, feeling a bit unpleasant and realizing pretty quickly that I had a bladder infection (this post is just full of TMI, I guess – sorry). Because, as I previously mentioned, leaving work as a teacher is a PITA, I decided to once again go to one of those emergency clinic-type places so many people I know frequent (seriously, I know many people who don’t even have regular doctors anymore; they go to these clinic, for everything, and while I am not a fan in general, especially after my first experience getting charged $350 for what was essentially a check-up, in this case I figured my problem was a simple one and it would save time,so I did it). I got coverage for my class, showed up at the clinic right when they opened, peed in a cup, and got my diagnosis and some antibiotics, which I had filled at the pharmacy they had on-site. Back to work in less than an hour. Easy-peasy.

Except – fast forward to the Monday morning after my ER visit, when I’m trying to decide whether or not to take the antibiotic again after Sunday night’s illness. I felt OK, although still head-achy and queasy, but I had asked the ER doc the night before about the antibiotic and he told me I should keep taking it, as did the pharmacist at the clinic when I called that morning. So, around 9:30 I took one. And within an hour, I thought I was going to die. Seriously. My ears started ringing. My chest was cramping. My throat felt like it was closing up. And I got the most bizarre head and tooth pain I’ve ever experienced – it was like my entire face hurt. Plus, the nausea came back. I had no doubt at that point what was going on was all about the antibiotic, but I did not know what to do. Another trip to the ER was not something I wanted to consider, but for awhile there I really thought I might die if I didn’t go – I’ve had allergic reactions before to the point that my throat closed up, and I know that is nothing to mess with. I ended up calling Doug down from his office (he works from home) because I was so freaked out, and together we decided I’d (finally) call my real doctor and make an appointment if I could get one. Fortunately I could, and with Doug’s assistance I managed to drag myself in to see him that afternoon. The doc took one look at me, heard about the medication I was taking, and concluded that no way should I have ever been given that drug (Cipro), much less to the amount I was prescribed (1000 milligrams a day), and that clearly I was having a bad reaction and needed to stop immediately. Since it was apparent by this time that I just felt awful and was not, in fact, going to snuff it, he me gave another medication to stop the nausea and put me on a liquid diet for the next 24 hours to get things sorted out and sent me on my way with a doctor’s note to stay home again on Tuesday.

I felt like absolute HELL the rest of Monday, even though the nausea subsided. The weird face and tooth pain continued, as well as the lethargy and chills and horrible headache, until I went to sleep that night. Amazingly, I woke up Tuesday morning feeling perfectly normal, and can now look back at the whole thing with the amount of OUCH it requires. It really was a horrible couple of days, and fortunately for me, I forgot to take the Cirpo a few times (I only took 500MG the first day and 500 the day I got sick) and therefore didn’t get more sick than I did. In reading about Cipro it does seem insane anyone would prescribe me that amount, much less tell me to keep taking it when I have chills and headaches and fever and nausea, but that’s the problem when dealing with medical personnel who don’t know you or your medical history. I don’t care how many people use these emergency clinics and claim they are fine – I will never use one of those places again to save time, because as it turned out I missed two whole days of work by trying to save a few hours on Thursday. Emergency rooms I tend to steer clear of anyway, and because of the panic I was in as well as the level of dehydration I was experiencing (I’d been wickedly thirsty since starting the Cipro, almost to the point of distraction even though I drink water all day) that probably was an OK decision at the time. But that doc sure didn’t give me the right advice about the antibiotic either. So yeah.

God, I remember the days when I could basically take whatever pill a doctor tossed at me with not a problem in the world, but here is the second medication in the past few years I’ve been prescribed that caused me serious problems. I guess it’s another sign of getting older – although I realize some people have difficulty with medications all along, so at least I had a good 40 or so years of having it easy.

Anyway, it’s back to work Wednesday after handling solid food Tuesday afternoon and evening with no problems. Here’s hoping the rest of the week goes smoothly. I’m sure I’ll have a ton of work to do after missing the last two days,

Self-Possessed

Posted on March 2, 2015 by marey mercy

Still working through the portraits from Valentine’s Day, so here’s more to share.

This expression is still a favorite

I may have mentioned this before, but I’ve been asked a few random times for prints of my photos, and for the most part I just blow people off about it because I don’t know how to do it. Although I should know all this stuff by now, it involves planning and thinking and numbers and math, so I’ve never bothered to figure it out. Well, I did that one time a rep for that florist’s magazine emailed me and offered me three hundred bucks for one of my pictures, but then I promptly forgot what I did. Anyway.

I don’t like this one; I completely started over on it three times but am still un-thrilled with the results

A friend of mine runs a little small-town art gallery in our area, and she asked me today if I’d like to hang some of my photos there – she’s also mentioned the possibility of a show. This finally prompted me to try and figure out just what I’d need to do to get my photos print-ready, and while I still don’t totally get it, I know that almost all I’ve done so far can only be printed rather small. The problem is that I have so many photos (well over 4,000 by now) that I never keep the edited TIF files once I’ve converted a photo into JPEG to save space on my hard drive, so I can’t go back and correct some of the formatting errors without compromising quality (I do keep all the original TIF files, but it would involve me re-editing them to use them, which I may end up doing). I only did so much research before getting bored and dropping it, so I’ll keep checking into it and see what I can come up with. I really thought because I keep my files as huge as possible that was all that mattered, but once again it turns out I am clueless. Moving on.

I’m still getting mileage out of the shoot, primarily the shots with the vintage plaid dress since it moved nicely and created interesting images; I’ve had some mis-steps along the way but have still stumbled across a few winners here and there, like the one above. So far, that one has generated the most positive response; I think it’s all that color.

I don’t normally smile when I pose since in general, I don’t think my smile is all that great. I always try, but usually it looks stilted and false. I’m not kidding when I say I’ve spent hours practicing my photo-smile but for the most part, it still reads false (this usually happens in non-studio photos too, when just hanging with friends or whatever). I swear I’m not being down on myself when I say this – I’m speaking from a photographer’s perspective and not from some negative perception of myself – but in general, smiling is not my best pose; it just isn’t. But this one actually worked; probably because it’s more shouting than smiling, but whatever.

This one was blurry but I wanted to try because I liked the idea; the end result is MEH

I’ve noticed that as I moved into the second costume of the set, the lighting I created for the curly red wig shots became too bright; I don’t know if it was the change in costume that create more flash bounce or if I just inadvertently moved in closer to the camera where the external flash was mounted; but my facial features were pretty blasted out in this part of the set for the most part, creating a flat appearance. I really should start hooking up my camera to my computer while shooting so I can catch things like this before it’s too late; the LCD screen really doesn’t work that well to reveal such things. I had to work pretty hard to tone my over-bright skin and bring back some of the definition to my face; I was only so successful at this and had to settle for merely OK facial features in most of these.

Used several Topaz filters here to mess with the color – can you tell I’m starting to get bored?

Not sure how many more of these I’ll work with, but since I haven’t had time for a new shoot, and probably won’t for a few weeks more until Spring Break comes around, be prepared for more of these or nothing at all. And who knows, maybe I’ll be able to print some photos and hang them in a gallery soon. It was a passing comment on Facebook, so we’ll see if she really even meant it, but still, it was nice to be asked.

Changed and Deranged

Posted on February 28, 2015 by marey mercy

I have edited a ton more photos, but I am going to focus on just a few real quick and then I’ll share more in another post. As I’ve worked through the self-portrait shoot from a few weeks ago, my usual tendency to get bored with the same set after awhile has taken me in some interesting, but perhaps not always successful, directions, so I have one little tangent here to share. Prepare yourselves though, because it’s seriously creepy. But first, more airplanes:

There’s some other one floating around that I spent hours trying to edit to my satisfaction and ended up abandoning; I’ll have to get back to it at some point but I just moved on to other photos of the Spirit Airlines plane because it became too frustrating. As I’ve mentioned before, since my telephoto is rather cheap and an older model, the photos do come out a little grainy and the color rendition isn’t the best, so they do require some work on my part. A lot actually. But in the end, I’m happy with these and still have more to edit – I’ve been switching back and forth between planes and portraits since last weekend, and doing so is rather fun. Moving on.

As I’ve edited photos from the portrait shoot, one thing I’ve had to fix in every picture is the over-contouring I did on my nose (one of the hardest parts of the face for me to contour and I rarely get it right); I didn’t get the shading right and it was too dark on the sides of my nose, actually making it look a bit wider instead of more narrow. I used some cloning in Photoshop to soften it for the most part, but one thing I noticed with this next portrait was that I actually edited in such a way to make the shape of it change quite a bit.

I don’t know if it’s noticeable to anyone else, but I really don’t look much like myself here at all. In fact, I think I look a little like Laraine Newman from the old Saturday Night Live original cast, but perhaps that’s just me. Obviously I also added some filters and texture to this shot; I did that because my skin looked pretty bad in the original photo here; it’s winter so my skin is dry, and as I get older my sun damage gets more noticeable too plus this is REALLY close up, so I looked pretty blotchy and flaky and had to apply quite a bit of skin smoothing to get the color I wanted. In the end it made me look TOO ‘touched-up,’ so I thought adding some texture and wet plate filters would detract from that a bit. I usually do not like adding grain or texture to portraits, so when I do it you know that either there was something wrong with the picture I was trying to conceal, or I just found it boring and wanted to add some interest.

Working with this picture got me thinking, though: just how much can I alter my face and still have the end result be believable, anyway? Could I alter myself to such an extent that I am unrecognizable, and if I do, will I still look human? I decided to try this out for the hell of it, and well, I did get part one of the question right – I definitely made myself look different. Human? Not so much. But first, the before:

I went with an older photo to get another one that’s mostly just face (didn’t want another shot in the red cape). I’m pretty sure this was one of my makeup test shots again…anyway, I started out messing with the eyes, mainly using Photoshop’s warp tool to change the shape of things. What I ended up with was this (and I’m warning you, my husband came into the room right as I was finishing up messing with my face and he was seriously disturbed. I believe his exact words were, “I’m sorry…I just can’t look at that.” And then he ran from the room):

GAAAAHHHHH!!!!!

I think the biggest mistake I made here (aside from attempting it at all) was to re-shape one eye and then copy and paste that eye onto the other one, flipping it vertically to make it fit. I’ve seen this done before to get eyes more symmetrical, but obviously I don’t have the skill to do it realistically, and they do look kind of ‘pasted’ on I think. And also, well, ew. I look like some bad woman/Bambi hybrid. But if you want to know what I did, I used the warp tool to also slim up and lengthen my nose and to give myself bigger lips that I also made a little less wide. I started to also screw around with my chin and cheekbones, but honestly i was getting pretty freaked out by the sight of me by this time and ready to make the whole experiment go away. But I did go ahead and give it some filter treatments in case I ever want to scare the hell out of Flickr by uploading this thing (I highly recommending doing something like this before getting any sort of face-altering plastic surgery. The doc who gives me my Botox injections is always trying to talk me into plumping my lips with some collagen, but after looking at this I’m thinking no).

So, there you go. When I started, I rather liked the idea of trying to take pics of myself, then make them look like they weren’t me at all, but honestly I don’t think I can handle it, and my husband might divorce me. I’ll stick to the skin smoothing and wrinkle reduction and call it a day, I think. Although – I rather like the idea of not posting any pictures on Flickr for about a month, then popping up with this and saying I had a little ‘work’ done. Can you imagine?! It’s really tempting…

Oh, and I also plugged this photo into one of those “celebs you look like” sites and got this back, so apparently I look like these women in my altered state:

More to come – I couldn’t bring myself to share my other, better photos alongside this creepy monstrosity. Happy weekend everyone!

Loose Change

Posted on February 16, 2015 by marey mercy

I’m posting this photo again because, of all the plane shots I’ve processed and shared so far from my shoot last month, this one has gotten the most positive response anywhere I’ve shared it – Twitter mostly, where a simple hashtag (#unitedairlines, #airbusintheUS) can connect a photo to the proper audience almost immediately. United Airlines, IAH, Hobby Airport, Airbus, and Airbus US have all re-tweeted it and sent me compliments, as well as several aviation and photography lovers who have since become followers. I find that interesting because I really felt I’d over-processed this one; most of the planespotters I follow stick to accurate representations of the planes and don’t appear interested in adding effects or filters. But I really haven’t done much more than skim the surface of the entire culture, so perhaps I’m wrong about that. At any rate, I’ve been pleased with the response to this one and it encourages me to experiment more, especially since it’s the part of the photography process I enjoy most.

Most of the new experimentation comes courtesy of the Topaz photo processing software I purchased over Christmas break thanks to a review by my blogger friend Beth Byrnes; as I get to know the software better I branch out more and try new things, and it’s amazing how a simple purchase of the right product can so enhance and even alter a creative process. It’s true that even without cool tools one can create art, be it painting or photography or poetry, but man are all the cool tools helpful.

And so, as I edit the 300 or so costume portraits I took Saturday, I’ve begun to experiment with them as well. I have a pretty set style at this point when it comes to portraiture – I like clarity and realism but I also want to look as good as possible, and there are lots of tricks I’ve learned to make that happen. Controversial or no, I do use Photoshop to edit out my under-eye wrinkles and even up/smooth my skin tone; I’ve learned to use stage makeup to great effect and eliminate the need for some of that sort of processing, but at 45 years of age it’s still necessary for me to get the effect I want – I’m not pretending that this is how I really look anyway since I’m always in costume, so whatever. Moving on.

After wrinkle removing and skin smoothing, I pull up RadLab to brighten, add contrast, pop color, and add light to the subject, as well as occasionally mess with filters to change tone. I don’t like too much contrast in a portrait, but I do like clarity, and I always, always put as much light on the face as possible without blasting out the skin and losing color or facial features. All that light is great to conceal any makeup errors I might make; even though it doesn’t show in the final shots, my makeup skills are still mediocre. I can follow a YouTube tutorial and put all the colors in the right space, but my blending skills are sub-par, especially when it comes to contouring the nose and adding lip liner. I am also a disaster at applying false lashes, so whenever I do apply them they are usually done poorly and practically falling off the entire shoot. All of these things can be concealed with enough light on the face; I already aim a lot at me during the shoot because I’ve learned it’s best to get as much right in the original shot as possible, but I always end up adding more, more, more.

Some examples from my latest shoot:

Brightening the whites of the eyes is always helpful, as well, and can be done using the dodge tool set to about 15% midtones. Really makes the eyes pop, or, if you’re into that sort of thing, it can make you look completely insane by making them too bright. Your call. My point in all of this (and I do have one) is that after processing these first two shots, I started playing around with the Topaz software more and experimenting with different approaches to editing them. This was not done intentionally, but came about as I clicked around in different filter programs just to see how each one changed the look of the photos. The first one to get a slightly different approach was this one:

First of all, that fabric is a vintage dress I was wearing; I got the idea to yank the skirt up over my head and use it as a prop (it’s ideas like this that confirm my need to shoot only indoors and alone). And I was only using the Speedlite on my camera and no extra lighting for these shots; I’ve gotten to the point where I know how to manipulate that flash effectively enough so that the umbrella lights I used to always use are not needed as often. But, in some shots I got a bit too close to the flash and had just a bit too much light on my face; this photo was one of those. So, as I was processing I came across a filter that actually darkened my skin quite a bit and decided to go with it. I still think I came out a little orange, but it looks much better than it did when there was this bright white face staring out amidst all that vibrant fabric. It may not seem like such a big deal to anyone else, but believe me I agonized over that darkened skin tone; I knew it was the better choice but MAN it bugged the hell outta me. Moving on.

I think the experiment here is obvious: to someone who is obsessive about clarity, working with an unfocused shot is a nightmare. But I loved the movement of the sleeves and the composition was pretty great with my face dead-on into the camera, so I decided to make a go of it and see what I could do. There are some fantastic Flickr photographers who work beautifully with blur (kokorage, who I learned of from the Pixlr blog, is probably one of the best) so I knew it could be done; I just wasn’t sure I could do it. With no real roadmap to follow, this literally took over four hours, and more filters and overlays than you could possibly imagine (I ended up using Pixlr for a lot of it, a program that hasn’t gotten a lot of love from me lately; mostly because of my fascination with Topaz, but also because my desktop version crashes on occasion AND I still find the masking feature awkward to use). In the end I do like the result, but it was so hard to know when this one was finished, as opposed to my usual portraits where the stopping point is clear.

Now for this one, I really went to town:

I went for something highly stylized, much like my plane photo at the top of this post. I envisioned a low-key look although I didn’t actually use any low-key filters to get that effect; I just wanted something cartoon-like to match the silliness of the expression. As I worked with it I kept thinking of print ads from the 1950’s – that overly-painted/colorized/watercolor effect they seemed to have. But it was HARD, y’all. First of all, none of my little tricks were available to me to help conceal my makeup flaws, so I had to use Photoshop to correct blending errors, something I’ve never had to do before and hope not to have to do again because it took forever. The blush on my left cheek? Totally edited; that side of my face showed very little color in comparison to the ride side which was nice and rosy, so I used a brush to add it – something that is much harder to do effectively than it sounds! And the wig had random flyaway hairs everywhere that I had to edit out; doing that was not too hard, but it left discolorations all over my skin that were enhanced once I began to add color rather than lightening it like I normally do – that took me ages to figure out how to do properly too. And then there was my nose. Remember how I said I am not the best at contouring noses? Well my contouring for this shoot was particularly bad; I had to lighten it in all my shots but it wasn’t a big deal; when making my skin darker and more colorful for this one, oh man was it hard to correct. But I eventually figured it all out, and I am pleased with the result, even though once again it was hard to know when it was finished and all the editing was done.

Since I love those comparison shots, let me show you the before of this one, so you can see how much work I had to do to get rid of all that wig hair and fix that terrible nose job (click to see it larger):

I think you can tell in the before shot how much more blush was showing up on the right side than on the left, and in case I haven’t made the point clear enough let me repeat that getting rid of all that stray wig hair was really tricky. The editing left dark smudges on my forehead and neck, and it took some time to get the skin tone even as a result. And getting the shot to those exact colors took so many different filters I couldn’t recall them all if I tried, but I am obsessive about such details and will spend 20 minutes to choose an effect I end up reducing to 5% opacity, so that didn’t help. This is another one I spent about 4 hours getting right, so needless to say I only edited two that day.

I’ll close with the last one I’ve edited so far. I threw on a short wig and took some quick shots against a different backdrop towards the end of the shoot. I’ve taken to using up two walls in my office for backdrops instead of just one – the big blank wall holds a large, full-body backdrop, while against an adjacent wall I’ve stuck a shower curtain I bought years ago for just this purpose but that can only be used for portraits as it’s not very big. So for variety I wanted some shots against the other backdrop, but as often happens towards the end of a shoot my energy and creativity were low and I was anxious to upload the photos to my computer and start editing, so these shots weren’t all that thrilling. Still, there’s a few from this bit that I like, and this was one of them – nice close-up of the makeup I worked so hard on if nothing else (and yes, I did go through the torture of applying false lashes this time, even though they almost always make me cry and I end up with my real lashes all glued together):

Continuing with the theme of editing photos differently, I obviously used a much softer effect here than I would normally do. The photo on its own and straight-up edited just wasn’t very interesting to me, so I played around with light leaks to give it some added appeal, even though it washed out the previously vibrant color quite a bit and the haze reduced the clarity. I still think it’s a decent shot, and the softness seemed to work OK, so I left it alone after adding the light leaks and called it a day (and in looking at this shot in particular, holy cow can I see the weight loss in my face. Losing ten pounds is no joke; even my head looks different and of course I’ve had to buy a bunch of new clothes. But I digress). Oh, and I love that wig – I believe it cost me a whopping $20 and it is awesome. Short wigs really are a great way to get short hair for a day, and overall they are much easier to deal with than long ones. But I digress again.

I’m finishing up Day 3 of my 5-day minibreak, with absolutely nothing to do on Monday, so I may take some Stitch Fix pics for my blog and some purse pics to share with friends on the Purse Forum where I am now a member (there’s no interest or hobby in which I indulge that I cannot find a message board somewhere to join. Trust me on this one). So who knows, a shopping post might be to follow, as well as loads more airplanes I have yet to edit! Suddenly I’ve gone from no photos to way too many.

Speaking of which, one of the things I’ve realized during this little break is that it’s not so much that I’ve grown tired of my portraits as it is that I’ve just not had time to do them properly. Every time I’ve had more than one day free on weekends since the start of the school year, though, I’ve gotten right back into the swing of things, so I think it’s mostly a time issue, and we can all rest easy that the selfies aren’t going anywhere anytime soon – they just get put on hold until I have some breathing room. One of the nice perks about being a teacher though (especially at a private school) is that time off is always worked into the schedule somewhere (except for the start of the school year, where there’s a pretty long stretch from August to November without any decent break). When I only get one day off on a regular weekend though (if I even get that), I don’t feel free enough to do a full shoot it seems. So this may be the last one I do until Spring Break next month, but with over 300 shots in the can that shouldn’t translate into a lack of portraits.

Enjoy your President’s Day!

Plane As Day

Posted on February 1, 2015 by marey mercy

And no, I don’t care about the commercials either.

Last night when the Stupor Bowl was about half-done I fled fromTwitter and Facebook to write this blog post until it was all over. However, in defense of the Stupor Bowl (defense – get it?) I will say this: there is someone I dislike so much that I did actually want the Seahawks to win, because this person is the most ridiculous Patriots fan I’ve ever seen – it’s practically his entire identity. So it’s really true how they say hate destroys the soul, because my hatred for this person actually made me care just slightly who won the Stupor Bowl. Of course I now know the dude is going to be intolerable for the near future; all the more reason to avoid him more than I already do. Moving on.

As I ramble I will share some more airplane photos as well as a few random others I’ve edited the past two weeks and have yet to upload. I didn’t realize how behind I am on sharing plane shots; there’s a whole slew of ’em to show. So, here you go:

That baby right there is a British Airways Boeing 747; it was the biggest plane I saw when I went planespotting last Saturday; really impressive. I took several shots of it:

This next shot was taken at the same time of day, but on its own it was rather boring, so I decided to really go for broke with my Topaz filters and attempt to make it a sunset shot. Judge for yourself how it turned out:

It’s not perfect, and personally I can tell where I did a little cloning to edit out the stupid wig hairs that were on my lens, but overall it came out better than I expected. For grins, here’s a before and after collage:

There were several pretty cool planes that landed that day on a different runway, so although I was able to snap photos of them, they were quite far away and my telephoto couldn’t handle the distance; at some point I’ll have to cough up a LOT of dough for a 100-400, I think. This one is great, but when it comes to planes I still could use more zoom. Anyway, I went ahead and processed the teeny little shots I have because, what the hell, I was there and I took them, but they aren’t thrilling at all:

Lufthansa #LH440 Airbus A380-800 flying in from Frankfurt

Volga-Dnepr Antanov AN-124 #RA-82045, flying in from Paramaribo; the photo was crappy so I played around with editing to pretend like it was intentional. It wasn’t.

Star Alliance flight; couldn’t read the registration number to get any information about this one.

US Airways Airbus A320-232; flying in from Phoenix. Couldn’t make out the registration number on this one either.

One thing I tried to do this time out was take some interesting close-ups of parts of the plane I don’t usually photograph, just to see how that turned out. I was seeing loads of United Airlines planes, since IAH is their home base, and I knew I didn’t want to sort through thousands of shots of the same plane to get to the unusual ones, so I got a little creative when they flew by to give me some images to mess with later. Here’s what I came up with – all of these shots are of United Airways (which I still want to call Continental) Boeing 777 #N78003, flying in from Amsterdam:

Wheels! Yay?

Love me some lens flare

Fuselage – YEP

Then, I also took a shot to show how close the traffic was coming in that day (between 3 and 6 PM seems to be the best time to go on a Saturday as far as air traffic goes):

There’s one gaining on ya!

Believe it or not, I still have a bunch of shots to edit, but we’ll see if I get time to do so this week. Let’s close this out with a few shots of Simon, who can always be counted on to provide me with a few poses whenever he’s around. I think this first one was taken during one of my purse shoots; I had a stool with a black blanket over it in front of a black background to photograph the purses, and at some point Simon leapt up there and made himself at home. Of course, much posing ensued: