Air Apparent

Posted on November 3, 2014 by marey mercy

This past Saturday was the Wings Over Houston airshow, and for the second time I went with my father. Last year, the military were not involved with the show because of the government sequester, and it being my first trip I had no idea how much that impacted the crowd – but this year, the event was twice as crowded as last. And, there were loads more planes than last year, including the Blue Angels. It was a great show, and well worth the early rise time (I got up at 5 AM to be at my dad’s house by 7) and the hour-long line we had to stand in when the show was over and we went to catch a shuttle back to the park-and-ride. Now for the fun part: I took THREE THOUSAND PICTURES. How am I ever going to sort through them all?!

The Blue Angels

The sorting has already begun, actually, because the first thing I discovered Sunday morning after processing that shot above, was that everybody with a camera at the event took the exact same pictures as me. Once I realized it, it made perfect sense, but I admit there was a moment of disappointment in comprehending that of course we all took the same pictures, since we were all watching the same show. Allow me to share the example with you that enlightened me:

Hey! No fair!

I’d searched Wikipedia to read up a bit on the Blue Angels, and yep, there it was – my photo! Only, it was taken two years ago. The only difference is that the smoke trailing from one of the planes in the Wikipedia shot is gray whereas all of mine are white – other than that, it’s exactly the same. Once I got over my disappointment at realizing it was highly likely the majority of my awesome three thousand shots were not that awesome at all, but were actually pretty damn common, it at least provided me with a starting point for culling through them. I decided to try and find more unique shots that perhaps not as many people bothered to capture, like this one:

An F-100F Super Sabre flying into a cloud of smoke during a demonstration

I’m not sure that particular shot works all that well. but certainly the dark smoky background is different than the usual. Unfortunately I didn’t quite get the back end of the plane into the frame, but that’s not always a necessity.

By the time the Angels came out to fly (they’re always the grand finale, and rightfully so) the moon was visible in the late-afternoon sky – it was a welcome appearance, since the sky this day was cloudless, and for aviation photographers clouds add so much interest to a shot, as well as giving the pictures a better effect of being airborne. I’m sure many picture-snappers got shots of the Blue Angels flying over the moon, but mine has actually gotten 5 retweets and 10 favorites on Twitter, 3 of which were from Blue Angels pilots themselves, so I’m happy. Hey, don’t laugh – 5 retweets on a photo is more than I’ve ever gotten, so I’ll take it!

Aside from the sky being cloudless, it was a gorgeous but COLD day, at least for Houston (in the mid-forties all morning, and very breezy). I was wearing Ugg boots and my long Free People sweater, but I still had to go purchase a big fugly Wings Over Houston hoodie to keep from chattering my teeth off until mid-afternoon; I was quite the sight in my oh-so-fashionable outfit, including kicky scarf, and a big gray sweatshirt stuffed over all of it, but it’s not the Wings Over Houston Air and Fashion Show, so whatever. Plus, the morning chill gave way to an afternoon that was incredibly pleasant, especially when standing in the aforementioned shuttle bus line for an hour. And if you still felt cold, there was always this to warm you up:

The Shockwave Jet Truck

Yes, that’s a jet engine strapped to the cab of a semi, so yes, at some point in someone’s life this was actually considered a good enough idea to make it happen. It’s at the show every year, and while watching it reach speeds of up to 375 miles per hour doesn’t do anything for me, seeing it taxi past the crowd with flames leaping everywhere is pretty awesome. Makes for a nice picture too.

More Blue Angels shenanigans – yep, that’s actually two planes, one right side up and one upside down. Actually, I think this is how baby airplanes are made.

A funny story: at one point during the show, a group of four people came up right in front of us, carrying two poles attached to banners. They had on orange reflective vests that said “Oracle Team Polehandler” on the back, and to us they looked like they were at some point going to parade around with the banners advertising whatever Oracle sells. They sat down on the tarmac in front of us, and I was totally amused by the one female in the group who kept turning to face the crowd and take selfie after selfie (with the tarmac as a backdrop) on her iPhone. She seemed completely unaware of the fact that we could all see her sitting there smiling at her phone camera, and I admit to thinking her a bit oblivious – especially since a pretty amazing stunt flyer was putting on one hell of a show at the time. You would think the fact that the pilot’s stunt plane had the huge word ORACLE painted on it might have clued me in to something, but nope. Then her whole group got up, picked up their poles (in accordance with the title on their orange jackets) and marched themselves with precision over to the active runway, where they proceeded to stretch the thick ribbons that were attached to each pole across it and hold each end. Not soon after that, the completely obnoxious announcer (not the announcer for the whole show; ORACLE apparently had their own) told the crowd that the pilot was now going to perform his infamous “triple ribbon cut,” wherein he flies between each of three sets of poles, cutting each set of ribbons stretched across the runway with his plane – using the left wing for the first ribbon, the right wing for the second, and cutting the third ribbon with the fin of his plane while it’s inverted. WHUT?!

Oh yes he did – see the ribbons?

That teeny tiny person in the white shirt and black pants is the female in question, and after realizing she’d volunteered to stand on a runway and hold a pole while a plane hurtled towards her upside-down to cut some ribbons in half, I conceded her participation was totally worthy of multiple selfies (in fact, I want to find out how she got the gig so I can do it next year). And speaking of the obnoxious announcer, he must have said the pilot’s name a zillion times while describing his various death-defying stunts: SEAN D. TUCKER. He said his name so much, it reminded me of late-night infomercials that use repetition to make a product stick in the viewer’s brain. He also mentioned several times what EXCELLENT PHYSICAL CONDITION the pilot SEAN D. TUCKER was in to be able to endure the G forces while he performed his stunts, and I found myself wondering aloud if this was a performance or a personal ad. Either that, or perhaps the announcer had a serious crush on him. Either way, I decided to roll with it, and since SEAN D. TUCKER was in such EXCELLENT PHYSICAL CONDITION and so obviously proud of it, when he taxied by us after his demo was over I yelled out to him: Take off your shirt, SEAN D. TUCKER!!! OK, maybe I didn’t shout it, but I did mock-shout it to my dad and his friends so we could all get a good chuckle. Still, I think it’s possible SEAN D. TUCKER heard me:

Bask in the gloriousness that is SEAN D. TUCKER!! Actually, he is rather handsome.

My Canon 7D and my used eBay 70-200 lens did me proud, but I admit to suffering lens envy at some of the humongous ones the photogs in the media box were sporting. And while the Blue Angels were performing, a military photographer out on the tarmac stopped right in front of us to pop off some shots, and I drooled at how fast his continuous shooting was compared to mine. But in the end, I got some nice sharp shots with my little “cheap” setup. I still want to get my hands on the new 7D, but I’m wondering if a better zoom lens might be a smarter investment (they cost as much, if not more, than the new 7D camera body). I definitely saw the limitations of the lens today, and would have loved to get a bit more zoom as well as some image stabilization, so we’ll see which way I decide to go. If I move up to a lens that’s much bigger than the one I have, however, I’ll no longer be able to shoot without at least a monopod, which leads to a whole new set of limitations. Plus it might be ridiculous to have a $1600 lens strapped to a old-model 7D anyway. Moving on.

These are just the first shots I’ve had time to edit, and I’m not sure how I’m going to more forward with it all. I hate to bore the crap out of everyone with shot after shot of air show photos, but in the end, if it’s where I’m at and what I’m into, why would I do anything else with my time? So love my plane photos or leave them, people. Because they’re gonna be around for awhile!

Fact or Wig-Tion?

Posted on October 7, 2014 by marey mercy

I’ve tried to post this a couple of times now, but something keeps going wrong. I hope it actually works this time. When working on this post Monday afternoon I accidentally hit ‘publish’ instead of ‘save draft’ so it went live for about fifteen seconds, and some of you got an email about it only to find nothing new when you came to the blog. But now when I publish it, it’s not showing up at all. Weird.

Sunday afternoon I wanted to play around in some new wigs I’ve bought recently and haven’t had time to try on, so I decided to set up my camera and combine wig-time with photography (taking photos of yourself in new wigs is also a great way to get perspective on how they really look on you). I took about 150 shots overall, and once again did this quickly to make it work with the time I had available; I didn’t put on any drag makeup or anything, just freshened up my normal day-to-day face, and wore a simple tee-shirt as my costume. I took some straight-up pics to show the wigs for a review I may do later, but then with each wig I also did some arty-farty hair-flinging to try and come up with some interesting shots for my portfolio, such as it is. I just had my Speedlite on top of my camera and opened up the blinds for some natural light (rather than taking the time to set up my umbrellas), but I got a handful of cool shots to play around with for the week, so I am happy.

Here’s the process for the one I made my 365 for the day. Original:

It was a cool shot right out of the camera, but of course I had to mess with it a bit. I used my RadLab editor in Photoshop to brighten things up as well as add color, change the tone a bit, and create more contrast:

Oh and I also changed my shirt color, too

Then I used Snapseed’s sharpening and structure tools for better clarity. This is tricky with all those hairs flying about – over-sharpen the picture and it will look a hot mess, but I think I did OK.

Lastly, I used my desktop Pixlr app to cool down the color a bit more and add some slight texture to the background. Overall, not a bad Day 67:

Here’s one more I managed to edit the next day – this is one of those wigs that looks great in photos, but not so much in real life. I’d never wear this one out of the house because the lace is way too dark (it’s made by an ethnic line, and those lines in general use much darker lace for their customers) and it’s just way too big for me – way too much hair. Exhibit A:

I look like The Lost Judd in this

But the color is fabulous for photos as are the pretty waves, and, at $45, it’s a bargain anyway, so why not:

Side note: As I mentioned in my previous post, I tend to shoot in vertical or portrait mode as opposed to landscape, and another drawback to that aside from the fact that the camera is usually off-kilter is that when posing for self-portraits, I often don’t know exactly where to stand to get my entire body into the middle of the frame. So, I usually end up taking several shots of a pose, each time moving over a millimeter or two in the hopes that in at least one of them I’m fully in the shot. This is actually why so many of my portraits aren’t centered: I often like the facial expression or focus best on a shot that is off-center and use it anyway. In the case of this shot, I did not intend to be cut in half, but with the fall of the waves here I really thought it worked nicely. So yay for happy accidents.

I of course removed some of my facial lines and smoothed my skin slightly in PS, then used what has rapidly become my new favorite tool, my RadLab photo editing plug-in. I love to brighten and add contrast and color using this tool, and on occasion I’ll even go into the color filters to change things up a bit, like I did here:

I was a little nervous about giving my skin such a yellowish-green hue, but I really liked the effect overall and especially how it made the red hair pop, so I went for it. And yes, I did shave a few years off the old mug, so deal with it. After getting to this step, there wasn’t much more to do, but I did use Snapseed to sharpen as well selectively make the red hair a little brighter and more vibrant. Then I used my RadLab Dirty Pictures plug-in to add a slight texture to the background, and voila! The finished product:

Honestly, this is a ‘favorite shot’ for me – I really love how this turned out.

Sometimes my changes are so slight, like adding that background, that I wonder if they really matter. But that was a lot of blank wall just sitting there, and although I tried to add more interesting and noticeable light leaks and bokeh effects, everything else seemed overdone, and I still wanted to add something. So subtle texture it was. I like how it makes the photo feel a little 3-D, like you could almost reach out and touch that red hair. I really can, of course, but that’s because it’s sitting in a bag in my bathroom cabinet.

That’s all for now, but hoping to have time to edit some more from this set later this week as well as review some wigs. We’ll see what all I manage to accomplish.

Levitation Break

Posted on October 5, 2014 by marey mercy

Overall it hasn’t been a great week, but I’m not going to talk about that right now. I’d rather randomly share this ad I saw in my Facebook feed a few days ago, because it cracked me up:

Why yes, the first thing one thinks when looking at this photo is WOW, NICE EYES

I actually see this sort of thing quite often around the internet when looking for tips on taking portrait photography or getting the right lighting for studio shots. Many of the tips are written by male photographers, and their example photographs are often scantily clad women. My favorite, and dammit I wish I could find it again, was a video on YouTube that featured a sloppily-dressed, fairly dumpy looking middle-aged guy firing away with his camera at a very young woman in a bikini to show how he set up his portrait lighting. It was kinda gross, but amusing as hell at the same time, in a dude, we all know you’re paying her to wear that bikini in front of you sort of way. Half the time while trying to get tips on studio shoots I end up feeling like a big old creeper because of the half-naked women I have to view over and over just to learn. But moving on.

Here’s a shot I managed to pull off Saturday wherein I, of course, am not scantily clad, but I am in a studio. I ran errands all morning, then felt like trying out this clear plastic stool I bought recently because I thought it might help with levitation shots by being easy to edit out. It was, but the shot was still hard to edit and I spent several hours on it for various reasons. For one, I always forget what process works best for these shots because currently I am doing them so infrequently, so I never remember what I did last time that worked. For another, I forgot about the rule of wearing contrasting colors to the backdrop so I can easier edit myself out of the shot and into the background one, so the process of selecting the subject was tricky and took a good deal of time. But this picture is proof that even if I have very little time to shoot photos right now, it still can be done. I am in my regular clothes, and have on no stage makeup or fake hair – just me and a backdrop and a plastic chair. I also went along with my new strategy of going in with a plan – I knew exactly the shot I wanted, set up and posed for it, and once I had it, I quit shooting. This set? Was 32 shots – that’s it. As opposed to my usual 350. So it’s good to know I can work this way and pull it off.

Now let’s see the whole thing in action:

That duster is fabulous and from Free People, of course. I own two because I snagged a huge hole in the first one and went and bought another. The one I’m wearing in this shot is actually the one with the hole, because I figured I’d be tossing it around a bit so might as well wear the damaged one.

Here I am, layered over a second shot of a blank background and highly filtered and edited in Photoshop. My hair in particular was a bitch here, because I realized halfway through the editing process that I’d clipped out all the little flyaway hairs the first time and it left it looking flat and fake, so I had to go back to the original, select all these little flyaways, and layer them into the composite shot. Took some time and might not have seemed like a big deal to other people, but it made huge difference to me because it gave my hair back the movement it lacked with all the flyaways cropped out. And, I am getting better at adding shadows, I think – the ones you see here were added in Photoshop by me. Final shot:

I used my Pixlr desktop app for the final finessing, since I can edit TIFF files with it now. I used a “smoke” overlay to add some depth to the background, a barely visible little star overlay, and a couple of very faint borders for added pop. Unfortunately, something I did somewhere along the way with all my editing made my teeth turn kinda gray, but what can you do. It’s always something. In this case, the something is gray teeth. Still a cool shot and not a bad levitation, so I’ll take it.

Sidenote: Because I shoot in vertical or portrait orientation so often, my studio self-portraits are almost always crooked. And by almost always I mean always. I start out with the camera pretty straight, but the more I shoot and chimp my shots the more off-kilter it gets. Then I often forget to straighten it when I edit, so when you look at the floor line in my shots it’s often crooked. Hopefully most people don’t notice it, but if you go back and look at my levitation and jump shots over on Flickr, I guarantee you almost all of them involve a slightly slanted floor. Moving on.

Not much else to report at this time; I wanted to take a few more levitation photos with these cool new Minnetonka moccasin boots I bought, but I got sidetracked by it taking me 45 minutes to lace the stupid things (not even kidding) and then couldn’t get my feet into them, so that ruined my mood. Time to go return the shoes and get ready for another week. Happy weekend everyone!

Distant Disappointments

Posted on September 28, 2014 by marey mercy

That picture is symbolic of Saturday’s big jaunt out to the observation park at IAH, and of my mood in general. But more about my mood later. Let’s talk photography.

Those fairly blurry antenna-things in the distance mark the direction all those amazing planes fly in as they approach Runway 27, coming in as low as 100 feet over viewers’ heads. That is, when they approach Runway 27 to land, which they were definitely not doing this Saturday when my father and I drove roughly 55 miles out there to spot planes. Because everyone raves about all the action at the observation park, and because Runway 27 is considered one of the busiest runways at IAH, I never seriously considered the fact that it wouldn’t be used at all when we finally ventured out. But that’s exactly what happened.

Our view of the control tower, where I can only imagine everyone inside was looking out windows in the opposite direction, since there was ABSOLUTELY NOTHING approaching from ours.

Mind you, this was after agreeing to meet my father at a Pappasito’s for lunch on FM 1960 without realizing there were, in fact, TWO Pappasito’s restaurants on FM 1960, which is such a massive road that those two restaurants are about 40 miles apart. Guess who drove to the wrong one. Yep. So, our 11:00 AM lunch turned into a 12:00 PM lunch, with my poor dad sitting in a booth for an hour waiting for me to arrive (thank g-d he’s the most patient man on the planet and didn’t mind). It was nice to have lunch with him and spend some time, but I’d be lying if I said we weren’t both hugely disappointed not to see anything at the park. We saw loads of planes departing in the distance, some of which would turn and pass overhead, but they were already so high that one was indistinguishable from another, and all I could get was the underbelly of most of the planes. Add to this that the sky was cloudy and gray and taking photos of planes flying directly overhead does not make for a prime lighting situation, and you’ve got a ton of incredibly boring, disappointing photos on your hands.

He’s smiling because he’s yet to realize we’ve been had.

This first one was the absolute best of the bunch, and if you’ve seen my other airplane shots you know how unimpressive this one is, to me if not to you anyway. I could barely make out the registration number on this one. And don’t be fooled by that sky either; this was the rare plane that came around behind us a bit, where the sky had patches of blue. Most of them zoomed right overhead where there was nothing but gray cloud cover.

That, my friends, is as close as I got all day, and of course I was zeroed in on that thing to maximum capacity to get that close. Mostly I got dark little silhouettes against a gray background, but using my Flightradar24 app and the metadata on my photos, I was later able to identify some of the planes I shot, even though they are indistinguishable from one other in the photos. Aside from loads of United planes (since IAH is their home base), I shot one Delta, two US Airways, two American Airlines, one Frontier Jet, and one SkyWest. I’m not too bummed about missing good shots of Delta or American Airlines planes, since I can get photos of those at HOU and already have some, but I’m seriously bummed you can barely see the photos I took of the Frontier Jet and can’t see details of the SkyWest at all.

Barely worth sharing, but there it is. And those clouds in the sky are fake; I Photoshopped them in just so the background wouldn’t be completely gray.

I just don’t know if it’s worth it to try and go out there again; after this experience and the length of the drive it’s certainly going to take a lot to get me to try when I can be at HOU in half the drive and won’t be out an entire day if I can’t get any decent shots of planes. The best I could do with what I shot today was seriously edit the hell out of them to make them worth looking at. Not at all what I wanted to be doing this evening, since my goal for planespotting is to take very sharp, clear, realistic photos of planes in motion, but since that wasn’t possible, well, I made some “plane art” with the crap I had to work with.

Kind of looks like a painting you’d see at a “starving artist’s sale.”

This is how the majority of my shots turned out – black silhouette shot directly overhead. The only thing that made this one interesting was the red lens flare, which was NOT Photoshopped.

I’m still so bummed about Saturday because I was really hoping a good planespotting photo haul would re-invigorate my energy for photography. I feel a little kicked down by the photography gods not to get the enthusiasm injection I really needed, but enthusiasm is something I’m sorely lacking across the board lately and I don’t think I can blame it all on bad pictures. I’ve been glum and lacking in energy for awhile now, and feel dissatisfied most of the time; it’s an overarching blue mood I’ve dealt with before but haven’t had to contend with for some time, although in looking back I see it’s been building for quite awhile, a couple of years in fact. I’m struggling more than I usually do to get myself turned around, and am wondering if it might be chemical or hormonal. Whatever it is, it’s unpleasant, and I’ve made some appointments to get medical input and possible assistance. I’d like to wake up in the morning with enthusiasm again, or at least not with a sense of boredom and dread (and please don’t tell me I need exercise and better nutrition, because I am aware of all that already and have been down all these roads before, so I already know how those components fit into the picture). I suppose the only reason I’m sharing this here today is due to my disappointment with a trip that was supposed to help lighten my mood and ended up doing the opposite, and chances are I’ll delete this last paragraph at some point due to embarrassment or irritation. But for now, it is what it is. Moving on.

Oh, and in case you were wondering (I know I was), those Port-O-Potties were surprisingly clean. At least that’s something!

Zombie Bomb

Posted on September 9, 2014 by marey mercy

A few more pics from Saturday I thought I’d share:

Some great news about this pic – Pixlr has finally answered my prayers and created a desktop version so that I can use it to edit .TIFF files! I am totally thrilled about this, as it always bugged me to have to edit JPEGs, which already have reduced quality. There is a free and a membership version, and so far I’ve just been using the free one, but I fully intend to become a member because I want to support Pixlr as I think it’s great. So, this photo was the first time I used it on a TIFF file. I think there’s some muddy shadows in the lower left-hand corner which were a result of some sloppy work with the burn tool in Photoshop, but the lighting effects I added in Pixlr were terrific and really added to the shot. And there’s that awesome faux fur vest I got for peanuts at Nordstrom last winter! I can’t wait to wear it when it’s really cold outside. Here’s one more:

Surprisingly, the shots I took using the short wig, which is actually not a costume wig but a real one that is made to be worn in the everyday, came out much better than the other two campy costume wigs I wore during the shoot. My first one, a long silver one, didn’t create one successful shot, and the orange wig only generated one or two shots of interest. But in this short, fairly normal-looking one I got a ton of shots that I liked. Perhaps it’s because the makeup needed to take center stage and the other two wigs competed too much with it, or it could be because I found the other two particularly difficult to wear (the orange one in particular is really heavy and annoying) and wasn’t posing as well in them because of that. For whatever reason, the short wig worked best so I have more of that one to work with.

All in all I’m pleased with what I got out of this shoot, especially considering I started the whole thing later, after a full day of running around, which is something I usually don’t like to do. I didn’t get all the makeup on and start shooting until around 5 PM, and that’s normally when I’m finishing up. But I’m all for trying to break myself out of my routines whenever possible, especially with my time being more limited right now.

365 Southern Living Home Tour

Posted on September 7, 2014 by marey mercy

I haven’t posted any 365 photos in awhile, so here are some more, plus a few I took that didn’t make the cut.

Most of these were taken last weekend, which we spent at my father-in-law’s house. I’ve looked back over recent posts to see if I’d already shared any of these, because it feels like I have, but I can’t find anything so maybe it’s just that I’ve shared most of them on Flickr already so that’s what feels familiar. The above photo is detail of a huge wreath that hangs over the fireplace; Doug’s mother had it custom-made at some point and as you can see, it’s pretty massive. I mean, that is NOT a small birdcage attached to it!

Everything my mother-in-law did as far as home decorating was thoroughly researched and planned to the finest detail; Doug said she was always walking from room-to-room, investigating every nook and cranny for what might be the next thing that needed sprucing up. Unfortunately, she died after Doug and I had only been married a few years, so I did not get to know her as well as I would have liked, but that was certainly true of her in the years I knew her. In fact, right after she died, Jimmy said a huge delivery of new drapes for the living room showed up at the house to be installed, and he’d known nothing about it. And yes, she was very old-school about home decor; custom drapes hang over every available window. I don’t even think people “do” drapes anymore, do they? And nowhere in that house will you see a window blind; it’s all sheer curtains, plus drapes with tassled tie-backs, and those fancy custom overhangs across the top of the window that I don’t even know what they’re called. She was full-on Southern Living magazine, from top to bottom. And in just the few photos I had a chance to take of the house last weekend, I came to appreciate how good she was at it.

Every picture I took in the house looked so good, like, magazine-spread ready. The colors are so rich, and everywhere you turn are fabulous details. Like this table that sits in the entryway – Ruby (that was her name) found this huge piece of driftwood on the beach in Galveston, somehow managed to lug it home, then had it custom-treated and painted to be the base to a glass-top table. Doug says it’s had many different glass tops over the years, and has also been painted several different colors, including black and gold. And of course, the vases and figurines resting on top of it match the walls and marble floors to perfection.

That one wasn’t a 365 shot, but you can see her attention to detail in the way the silk flowers match the vase. And when I say she paid attention to details, this next picture reveals that better than any other, I think:

It’s not a great shot by any means, but note the custom silk fabric hiding the cord that hangs the chandelier from the ceiling! I mean, who does that anymore? In fact, who ever did that? Well, Ruby did, that’s who. Also note the fabric walls, which are padded and soft. Something else I’ve not seen anywhere else but her house.

The picture was painted by Doug’s sister, and of course adding the silk bow behind it is all Ruby. All the framed paintings hanging in the house have some sort of little detail added to them, a swatch of fabric draping the top, a bow hanging behind. Note the way the silk matches the walls in the living room and ties the two rooms together (this is hanging in the entryway). I honestly don’t think I’d ever appreciated all these little touches until I walked around taking photos.

But now, onto the things that represent my father-in-law:

This is an old bottle of liquor on a bookshelf in a spare room. I’ve heard of Rock and Rye before from stories about Doug’s grandfather; he loved this stuff, which is rye whiskey that had a piece of rock candy in the bottom of the bottle to make it sweet. Sounds absolutely horrid to me, but I guess this is what old Southern boys from Central Texas liked to drink back in the day.

That bookshelf was stuffed with old treasures I photographed but haven’t had time to process: an abacus Jimmy hand-made for his daughter, a boat made out of wood with a boat propeller fashioned out of a soup can lid he made for Doug, and this little gem – a handmade cigarette roller. Jimmy showed me how to use it, but it made no sense to me so I just photographed it and nodded while he talked. I took a few pics of this sitting on the bookshelf too, but in the end I liked this one because it shows Jimmy’s well-worn fingers holding it up.

This was a paperweight sitting on an end table and I snapped it really quick, but later I liked the tones in it and worked in editing to accentuate them. I don’t have much to say about it except that I like it. Now for a few quick 365s that weren’t taken at my father-in-law’s house.

OK now, this shot is messy because this was the split second that it started to rain outside. I didn’t even realize when I snapped the shot that I’d caught the rain falling down, it happened that quickly. I ran inside to prevent my SL1 from getting wet, which is why the shot ended up a little blurry. It wasn’t good enough to share for the 365 because there was one I took of leaves after the downpour that I thought was better, but I like it nonetheless for catching the very first raindrops of the storm.

This is the one I used for Day 39. I think it stands for itself. A nice shot using my little SL1 – taken in a hurry because I had to get the shot before humidity fogged up my lens again.

So, there you go! A catch-up on my 365 shots for what turns out to be a Happy Monday for you, I hope.

Ghoul Days

Posted on September 7, 2014 by marey mercy

I said I was gonna ghoul myself up a bit, and I sure did try:

My inspiration for the makeup was drag queen Sharon Needles; I pretty much attempted to steal her look, but as usual the end results weren’t an exact match. I added blue shadow under the black to give the eye makeup more dimension, and although I tried to copy her lips I didn’t quite pull it off. Other than the makeup, I didn’t have much planned for this set but to look ghoulish and make strange faces, so I did several wig and costume changes while messing around with the lighting so I’d have more to work with when editing.

I used Photoshop to change the eye color as I do not possess the commitment level to purchase zombie contacts and get accustomed to sticking them in my eyes. I even tried to put a little gap between my teeth, but I’m not sure you can really tell. And let me just say that black lipstick is a bitch to wear in photographs because it fades and bleeds easily and the results are often sloppy, so I had to get creative when editing to conceal the mess as much as possible.

And speaking of messes, one more creative idea I had for this shoot is something I’ve wanted to try for a year or so. The inspiration is taken from a CocoRosie video called We Are On Fire; in the video, the singers jump around in slow motion while this strange liquid that looks rather like blood flings out of their mouths. It’s not gross or gory at all, rather, in the slowed-down motion of the video it looks interesting and creates some unusual shapes. I’ve always wanted to try it myself, and today with my creepy face I decided it was the right time.

There was some Hershey’s syrup in the refrigerator, and even though it was expired by about a year (don’t judge) I figured it would do. I dumped some into my mouth, hit the remote, and attempted to fling it out by whipping my head around, but it was too thick and nothing happened beyond a little spilling down my chin. This left me with a huge viscous wad of expired chocolate in my mouth, so I went to the bathroom and spit it into the toilet, which seemed to be the most logical place since it was a pretty big mouthful. This will be important later.

I figured adding a little water to the syrup might help me spit it farther, so I took another swig of chocolate sauce, a little swig of water, and hit the remote a few times while trying to gracefully sling the liquid about in a ghouly, arty manner. When I thought I might have gotten a good shot or two, I spit what was left of the chocolate into the toilet again, and went back to look at what I’d gotten. And ohhhhhhh dear. Let me just say, that chocolate sauce with water added does NOT look remotely like blood. It looks like – something else I won’t mention, and there it was dribbling out of my mouth in a bunch of photos. It was so incredibly disgusting I deleted the shots while they were still inside the camera. Just looking at them almost made me sick…and to make matters worse, it was about this time my husband decided to take a little trip to the bathroom and lift up the toilet lid…his screams of horror could probably be heard around the block, as I’d forgotten to flush after spitting all that chocolate sauce into it. So there you go. If my photos weren’t sufficiently ghastly, I bet that story will give you shivers. You’re welcome.

Last shot for now, but more to process later:

Photoshoot Leftovers

Posted on September 5, 2014 by marey mercy

A few more shots from last weekend that I’ve processed over the course of the week:

I thought this was another successful levitation attempt; I am getting better at the shadows for sure.

Not super-thrilled with this one; my face looks pinched and I’m not in the frame properly, but I did like that I’m in a leaping pose I’ve never captured before. I was actually jumping backwards off a stool that I edited out of the shot.

A much better jump, and is that dress amazing or what? Bought from the Kissing Tree as is most of my vintage finery. There are a few more leaps I made in this getup that I might process because it took great photos, but honestly, I’m already bored with this set and ready to get into something new.

Because I’d spent a long time on my makeup, I took a ton of portraits, but actually didn’t like most of them. I’ve gotten really boring when it comes to portraits and am in need of some new inspiration for them; I realized later that lately my makeup has always focused on being pretty, which limits what I can do once I’m taking the shots. I plan on taking portraits Saturday afternoon, and I’m going to go some really macabre makeup to try and inspire some better portrait posing. There’s only so many times I can give “pretty face” to the camera and feel original, and I’m rather done with it for awhile. We’ll see if spooky can conjure up any more interesting images.

But I do LOVE the colors in this wig:

Hopefully more later! Happy Saturday everyone!

Dress of Success

Posted on August 31, 2014 by marey mercy

I finally got a chance on Sunday to drag myself up and take some photos! About three hundred and fifty, to be exact. Not sure how many I’ll process, but I’ve done a few so far, including a shot for my Day 32:

Processing one of my makeup test shots has kind of become one of my traditions, if that’s the right word, so I decided it would be the perfect addition to my 365 project. I had a few costume and wig changes throughout the shoot, but as it turned out I only edited shots from one of the outfits. I’ve not done any full-length or jumping shots in awhile, so I was initially more interested in processing those. I finally got to wear this great ball gown I bought from The Kissing Tree Vintage off eBay way back in May, and the skirt is just marvelous – or should I say was marvelous, as I stepped on it a few times during the shoot and ripped it a bit. Sadly, most of the vintage gowns that come through my door have come here to die.

Maybe you can’t tell, but I was actually balancing on a little stool in this photo, then edited it out so it might look like I’m floating, but I’m not sure that comes across. I’m also not sure it matters. And by the way, that is one of my favorite wigs.

Anyway, it’s the next photo that I’m really excited about. For the first time, I actually managed to visualize a composite photo and then bring it to fruition almost exactly as I pictured it in my head. I’ve had the idea for a few months but have been scared to try it, based on my past disappointments with creating composites, but after watching a few videos from the composite class I purchased online a while back, I felt I had a bit more of a handle on how to do it (although not much more, since I only ever watched a few of the videos and never completed the entire class). I thought the key would be to keep it simple, and try to get as much right in the camera as possible, so to start, I took a fairly basic photo of myself standing on the little stool.

Then, without changing anything about the position of the camera or the lighting, I took the pink foam Target wig I got last year and placed it on a tripod at different areas of the set where I wanted it to appear as some sort of floating, magical thingamabob:

There was a time where I would have thought that all I had to do was take one picture of the wig, then layer and re-size it into different parts of the original photo, but I’ve learned my lesson about that. This time I knew that if I moved the wig around and placed it where I wanted it to be, then layered all four of those shots into the original, each wig would be in the proper lighting conditions in relation to the entire set and would look more realistic. I hope I’m articulating that properly, but poorly-explained or not, it made a big difference. I was able to layer all four pictures of the wig into the original shot, then spent a good deal of time dodging and burning to add shadows and create the illusion that all these little pink lumpy orbs were floating around me (I found a nice little tutorial online about adding shadows that finally made that particularly tricky step a little easier – although I still think I need work in that area). After a lot of fussing with color and shadows, I finished up by adding a texture layer to the gray background using my RadLab plug-in to help conceal any editing flaws that might be evident to a trained eye – and then, voila! It may not be perfect, but it’s a hell of a lot better than anything I’ve tried up to this point, and it does look almost exactly like what I envisioned:

And by the way, since my plan to paint the walls of my office fell to the wayside, I finally bit the bullet and bought a rather expensive backdrop called a Diamond Cloth from an online store called Backdrop Outlet. I’ve been eyeing their backdrops for awhile; they have different levels of quality, and I went with the Diamond Cloth since it was the cheapest version. It still was NOT cheap at almost $100, but I have to say it was worth it. The fabric is rather thin, but completely opaque, and it was HUGE. I hung it all the way up to the ceiling and the bottom STILL rolled out to cover almost my entire office floor! I was able to wash and dry it right out of the box, and although it still had some wrinkles when I hung it, they did not show up too much in the final photos. I’d forgotten how nice shooting color is against gray, and am very happy with the purchase. The store has literally hundreds of backdrops, many different textures and prints, but being me I’ll probably stick with solids for the most part since that seems to be my “thing.” They also make big, fancy fake floors you can roll out over your own to jazz up the look of your photos, but again, this stuff isn’t cheap, especially when I do such wide shots that I have to buy the biggest sizes. Moving on.

Much more from this shoot later – there’s an entirely different vintage gown, a burgundy-and-pink wig, lots of portraits, and jumping still to come.

Portrait Portions

Posted on July 24, 2014 by marey mercy

A few more photos from my recent portrait session here, but first, I have to mention the spike in traffic I saw on my blog yesterday. Keep in mind that for me, a spike in traffic means I went from about 30 views a day to almost 200, so overall I still don’t need to quit my day job or anything, but what the hell, it was still a big jump over my usual numbers. What did it was the Stitch Fix people finding my blog post from yesterday, and creating a pin on Pinterest of one of my photos (the one with the aztec cardigan). The Pin sent people to my blog to check it out, and here’s what happened to my stats:

I think you can tell where the spike is (and no laughing at those sad numbers, BTW). Always interesting when something like that happens, so I thought I’d mention it. Moving on to the shots – I have three more self-portraits to share, all taken after I’d starting destroying my costumery and makeup:

I edited the hell out of this one to reduce my skin tones and up the contrast; not sure I like the way it came out but at least it was something different.

I like this one better, and as I mentioned in my previous post about these shots, I really liked how cutting a hole in the top of the wig and pulling my own hair through it worked. It almost does look like a dye job on my actual hair instead of a wig (or half-wig as the case may be – and yes, half-wigs do exist. They just don’t work at all like this one). The last one utilizes these great costume glasses I got off Amazon a while back – in my current Sopranos-obsessed state they reminded me of Junior Soprano:

I Rad-Labbed and Dirty-Picture’d the hell out of this one to bring the light down and add some interest. I think it worked out well.

Speaking of glasses, I ordered new ones for my day-to-day life this afternoon and will of course take pictures of them when they come in. Oh and I’ve also discovered the joys of toeless socks, so I’ll have to write about that sometime too, won’t i? There is nothing I won’t write about here, after all, so please try not to go giddy with anticipation waiting for my yoga sock review. Happy Friday everyone!

mareymercy.

Art, Horror, and Other Obsessions

Category Archives: Photography