Bored-trait

Posted on July 22, 2014 by marey mercy

Monday afternoon I decided to shoot some portraits and did a fairly quick makeup job to get some done. But I was terribly bored by the whole process, and less than thrilled with what was coming out of the shoot. So I decided to take my frustration out on my costume and photograph the destruction.

That’s a wig I I cut a big hole in just to play around. Why wear them like normal when you’ve taken 8,000 + photos of yourself in them that way already? I’d also already seriously messed up my makeup by the time I took that shot, which was one of the last ones I took. Here’s a shot of the makeup before I destroyed it:

The eyeshadow was all glitter, but it was a rush job so it wasn’t all that thrilling anyway. And that’s the wig with the hole already cut in, and my real hair sticking out of the top. I actually kinda liked the way it looked when worn like this. One thing I’ve decided I don’t like, though, is shooting portraits against a white backdrop. I think I’ve mentioned this before, but it really does a number on my lighting and makes the colors weak. If nothing else, I need to learn some better lighting techniques when working against white. Working with gray or black backgrounds is easier for the type of portraits I like to shoot; much more dramatic results with better color and contrast. I am not skilled enough to know why, that’s just my observation.

Here’s one more, taken when I decided to rip into the black top I was using and just basically mess with it as much as I could beyond wearing it like, you know, a shirt.

That would be me sticking my head through a sleeve, or attempting to anyway. My husband walked into the office at this point in the shoot and I told him I was attempting to give birth to myself through it, which made sense at the time. I still like the description, as it does rather sum up what I was trying to do. Without getting whiny about it, I’m bored again.

Even though I found the shoot frustrating and didn’t enjoy taking them at the time, I found some nice ones to process, and in looking at them now I’m reminded a lot of the old portraits I used to do, back when my camera was incredibly old and I had no lighting or backdrops or costumes or makeup skills, and my lenses were so crappy I couldn’t take anything but portraits (full-length shots were out of the question). Back then, I’d throw on a t-shirt and a wig and grab whatever was nearby and just make it work. And I’d keep shooting until I hit on something interesting, like ripping up a wig or a shirt, and I’d just go town with that idea. Part of the problem is I’ve done it all by this time (including wearing tops the wrong way and ripping up costumes, although ripping up a wig was new) and so I get less excited about doing it again. But some of the photos actually were interesting, so it wasn’t a loss even if I felt unenthusiastic at the time.

I did sign up for an online class to learn how to create composite shots the proper way; as educational an exercise as it may be for me to take a little photoshoot trip back in time, I also need to keep moving forward, and I just can’t get there on my own. I really want to create more whimsical and fantastical stuff, which takes me beyond what I can do here in my studio. I’ve reached a point where, without knowing more, I don’t even want to try, because I don’t want to deal with the frustration of trying to figure it out on my own. So I hope these classes can help with that. In the meantime, I may do more playing around with the simple stuff like I did here. The end results weren’t that bad after all.

Flower Trip

Posted on July 15, 2014 by marey mercy

More flower macros! Today I decided to share some comparison photos as well; the first set shows the difference the FlashPipe made on the macros when I was focusing in really tight. Without using an external flash, such shots were too dark:

I’ve used the Speedlite on macros before, and it definitely helps, but because of all the weird angles I’m using to get the shot I want the light kind of bounces all over. With the FlashPipe I get a nice soft diffused light that’s much more even, and definitely brighter than taking the shot without any flash:

My next set of comparisons shows how using the RadLab plugin for Photoshop helps edit a SOOC photo into something more magical. Here’s the original shot:

And here’s the shot after I adjusted the contrast and used RadLab filters to brighten and enhance color and detail:

Big difference! So even if in the final shot you can’t tell how RadLab might have helped, it definitely does. Of course all this could be done without it, but for someone with limited Photoshop skills like myself the plugin sure makes things easier.

I then used Snapseed for final sharpening and to enhance color a little further, as I felt the yellow was a little blown out in the original shot (the downside of using the flash). So here’s the final version:

This next one is a bit similar to a shot I shared in Sunday’s post; but that one was taken without the Speedlite/FlashPipe combo while the one I’m sharing today used those two additions. So as a reminder and further comparison, here’s the shot I shared Sunday:

And here’s the same flower (different angle though) taken with the external flash and FlashPipe (as well as water spritzing):

Both are nice, but the effect is totally different. Again you can see how the color gets blown out a bit by the flash, even after all my edits (this is a final version, achieved using the RadLab filters and Snapseed).

And here’s my last one for today. Definitely a favorite – final version only:

More flowers later, I am sure. Another busy week ahead, and then next week I must start getting back to work at least once a week to prepare for the year. Enough time to do a full self-portrait set complete with costumery still eludes me, but I’ll get to it when I can.

Mild Flower

Posted on July 13, 2014 by marey mercy

I’ve had a chance to edit a few more flower photos, but only a few, so here we go.

I really struggled with the color on this one; that yellow flower in the background looked very dark and muddy and it was distracting. I ended up using Rad Lab filters to take the saturation way down, which did the trick, but it washed out the pink flower too. In the end I still liked it, and the softer tones worked, but it was much brighter in the original. The yellows worked better in this one:

One thing I did differently when using the macro lens this time was to place the subject, the vase of flowers, on the floor so I could sit down and crawl around while photographing it, as well as being able to stand above it easily. This helped me get good angles but more importantly, it kept me from getting tired due to all the stooping and bending into strange positions I had to do last time I used the lens, when I had the subject on a table. I also attached the 7D to a monopod to hold it steady and rest my arm a little. Both strategies helped. I took most of the 500 or so shots with manual focus, too, to control the focal point better. I think all these things helped make the shoot more successful than my last attempts at using the macro lens.

About half the shots I did were taken with my umbrella lights only; but when I tried to get really close-up they were coming out too dark, so eventually I attached this little piece of magic I purchased recently called a FlashPipe – it’s a cylinder made out of some sort of plastic which slips over an external flash to give out an even and soft diffused light. I’ve used my Speedlite when shooting macros before, but it is hard to control the light when aiming in so close or leaning in at weird angles; the FlashPipe did a beautiful job of filling in shadows where I needed it without overpowering the subject.

This next shot is one I took with the FlashPipe; I have more to come using it and I may do some comparison shots so you can see the difference it made (I also spritzed the flowers with water at this point for added interest). But for now I just have this one:

The nice shadows and sharpness aren’t all due to the FlashPipe there; I did use RadLab and Snapseed to add contrast and detail as well as tone down the color, which was a bit too bright initially. But still, it did a wonderful job illuminating such a close shot without blasting out the subject or creating odd shadows. And it only costs about $30. Of the three I processed today, this was definitely my favorite – I’m thrilled that I finally got some genuine macros out of that lens!

In case you missed it when I mentioned it above, yes I did take over 500 shots of these flowers that Lana sent me as well as the ones I bought from the grocery store (Lana’s were pink and yellow, the grocery store ones are blue, orange, and green). So there will be more coming as I’ve just scratched the surface here of what I took.

Flower Powered

Posted on July 13, 2014 by marey mercy

Would you believe that a day after getting out my trusty new super-tall step ladder to hang my old white backdrop on the wall the cool brick one from China came in? Figures. But as it turned out, my friend Lana sent me flowers Saturday, and given the day I had Friday it was a welcome and much-needed surprise. So thanks Lana!

Since I had the white backdrop up, I decided to use it for macro pictures of the flowers; these shots wouldn’t have worked against the printed brick background (at least I don’t think they would have) so it was probably best I hadn’t hung the other yet. These even inspired me to zip up to the grocery store and get some more to practice on, but I’ll show those later.

I used my macro lens, my two umbrella lights, my Speedlite on my 7D, and for added fill light in later shots I used a new gadget I bought recently called a FlashPipe – again, I’ll talk about the FlashPipe in a later post, as in these shots I’m sharing today I wasn’t even using it yet.

I don’t have many to share in this post, because editing them was time-consuming for reasons not related to the photos at all (my computer was being sluggish and difficult, and I had to re-boot a few times). But suffice it to say Simon felt he had to get in on the action, and I had to document that:

This last shot is actually of the teeny little purple flowers you can see in the Simon shot. I think I got some nice magnification and focus here:

I also used my Dirty Pictures filters on this one, not sure which I prefer:

I’m leaning towards the Dirty Pictures version, but let me know what you think. I know this post is brief, but it’s late and I’m tired, so I’m going to hang it up for now. Much more floral-ocity to come – but to close this out, enjoy a little video I made of Simon playing around behind the white backdrop. something he always does. As usual I forgot to turn my camera into landscape mode, so it’s a silly little strip of a video. But it is kinda cute.

Bee Positive

Posted on July 10, 2014 by marey mercy

It feels like forever since I last had a full-on photo session, but it also feels like every single day this summer has been spent waiting for some appointment or other, which gets in the way of setting up for a real shoot. If it’s not contractors or other home repairmen, it’s some appointment I’ve got set up for myself somewhere, and all this waiting around to wait around some more has got me in a bit of a foul mood. Oh, and we have bees in our walls too:

Yes, they are honeybees, and yes, we are having them relocated this Friday. This is one appointment I had to sit around and wait on this morning, in order to set up the next appointment I’ll sit around and wait on Friday morning. Sigh.

As far as photography goes, I got tired of the black backdrop that hung on my photography wall for over two months, but was waiting until we got the walls painted to take it down. Then we decided to replace the carpet first, so I finally took the black one down and and got a contractor in the house to get an estimate on painting our interior, which, by the way, I’m still waiting to get two days later. The truth is, no matter what’s going on in the rest of the country, the housing market in our part of city is booming at a ridiculous rate, and there isn’t a housing contractor alive who moves quickly when it comes to dealing with a relatively small job like ours. Basically, no one needs our business, so if we aren’t willing to be a pain in the butt about getting service we’re going to be ignored. And I’ve been dealing with broken toilets (yep, that happened too) and air conditioners and bees the past two days, so I haven’t called the painter back yet to find out what the cost will be to get our house done.

In the meantime, I ordered this fairly cool-looking brick wall backdrop to hang for now, since I’m tired of both my black and my white one, and I’ve been – you guessed it – waiting since last week to get it in and hang it so I can shoot again. After a few days without it showing up on my front door, I checked Amazon.com (where I have a Prime membership, so most things I order from them I get in two days) only to discover that this particular backdrop I bought is shipping from China, something I failed to check before I placed the order. So, I am not going to be using any cool new backdrops anytime soon.

In light of this discovery, I’m currently washing my white backdrop and am going to hope most of the wrinkles fluff out of it in the dryer, and I’ll pin that one back to the wall so I can at least get some photos done soon, even if it is with my boring white background. I’m still not sure when I’ll get a chance, though, because this afternoon I noticed our refrigerator is leaking and I’m sure I’ll have to sit around and wait for a repairman to take care of that too. Oh and I almost burned the house down trying to use the new stove we had installed a few weeks ago, because the knobs on it are NOT intuitive at all, and in no way mirror the actual layout of the burners, so I am constantly turning on the wrong burner when trying to cook – unfortunately the burner I mistakenly turned on had a burner cover on it that heated up and started to melt. Luckily I caught it before it started a fire (the burner covers were some sort of cheap plastic and are purely decorative, well, rather, they were) but it was smoking something awful and stunk up the house for hours. Good times.

So yeah. At some point in all of this we still need to get the house painted, although the way my mood is lately I’d just as soon put it off until next summer; I’m pretty much over the home repairs for this year. The stress may do me in – that is if I don’t kill us both while using the new stove first!

Favorite Shots

Posted on June 24, 2014 by marey mercy

I got off my duff yesterday and filled out and scanned model releases so I could upload some of my self portraits to Getty Images, which got me to thinking I could do another “favorite shots” post like I did last summer. However, that turned out to be more of a chore than I anticipated; holy crap do I take a lot of photos! For my first gallery I’ll just focus on portraits and people:

In looking over all of that, it’s hard to believe that all happened in one year. It seems like much longer ago that I shot some of those…moving on to, well, everything else (you can click any photo to see it full-size, by the way – and I’m not sure why some of the thumbnails are bigger than others):

Living area at 4447 Rusk

The old McKinney home’s front porch – this house was stunning

A shot of the den and the side driveway

Welcome to Eastwood

And to think these are just faves! Part of me wants to go through my external hard drives and clear out everything but my favorite shots – it’s recommended by a lot of photographers to keep me from getting overwhelmed, plus it makes it easier to find those photos when they’re needed. But man, I have soooo much stuff I just don’t know. I probably should at least weed out the non-processed shots, but again, so much time. I’ll add it to my list of things to do someday. As it is, I finally took “upload more self portraits to Getty Images” off my someday list, so there’s that!

Some Time to Com-Plane

Posted on June 24, 2014 by marey mercy

OK, so here’s the rest of my airplane photos! I’ll start with what ended up being my favorite one, but I’m also going to throw a little whining into the commentary that has nothing to do with airplanes:

Even though I failed to get the entire plane in the frame, this was my favorite shot from Saturday. I think the sky really makes this one. It was pretty cloudy, so in some shots the sky was flat and white, but there’s some nice drama to the clouds in this one.

I’m never as interested in the far-away shots, but lots of people do take them and upload them so I thought I’d process a few and see how they fared. My poor little airplane pics do not generate much interest on Flickr, but I’ve noticed the photographers I follow who upload nothing but plane photos don’t get many comments either. I guess there’s not too much to say about them really. It’s a pretty narrow interest, so you either care or you don’t. Having said that, let’s upload more photos none of you care about!

Another JetBlue! I actually took some time last night to upload some plane shots to my Getty Images page, as well as several other shots that do not require model releases. I have 19 for sale through my account right now, and have only ever sold one; it looks like I can upload as many as 50 each week so I really need to make it more of a habit to do that. My goal is to update my model release this week and submit some more portraits too, but they are such a pain to fill out. Still, the one shot I sold was a portrait, and it was my portraits that initially got Getty interested in my work, so yeah, I should get on that.

More private planes

There’s nothing really stopping me from filling out model releases right now anyway; in fact, I am feeling rather bored the last few days and it’s bumming me out. I think it’s because we are doing so much work to the house that involves a LOT of sitting around waiting for people to show up, which makes me anxious and restless. It seems like every day there’s some new appointment I’m sitting around waiting on, if not having to rush out and fulfill. Lots of doctor stuff too, and in fact, I need to call my GP back and tell him the steroid treatment was a fail because as soon as I was done with it the arm started hurting again. But then that’s yet ANOTHER appointment for me to kill time over. Bleh.

Oh look – another Southwest!

Another big frustration right now is the carpet installation. Last week Doug and I went to the showroom that did our last install, took home some samples, picked the carpet we wanted, went back to the showroom, signed a contract, and wrote a down payment check. Then a few hours later, while I was out shooting planes, the salesman called me and said he was ‘concerned’ about a few of the measurements and wanted to come by the house that evening to double-check them. I was busy at the time, so I just said fine as he claimed he was trying to ‘save us some money’ if possible. He came by later that day, re-measured, reassured us everything looked good, then left. Then Monday afternoon he called me on my cell to inform me that the original measurements (the ones that were used to install carpet last time without any problems) were completely wrong, and had in fact left out our entire master bedroom, so our total cost was actually ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS MORE than the quote on our contract. Sigh.

I do like this one, even though it’s a little private number

We demanded to see the original measurements as well as the ‘new’ ones that included the ‘missing’ bedroom, and the salesjerk promised to scan and email all that to us by the end of the day. Of course, we received nothing. So now we get to call him back tomorrow and fight with him to get what we are rightfully owed, which is carpet for the house at the price given to us on the damned contract. I don’t know why things always have to get so nasty when it comes to dealing with home repairs; we try to be upfront with people and pay our fair share without demanding unrealistic discounts or accommodations. But no matter what we do, some snake tries to cheat us out of more. I don’t get it, and I swear customer service in this regard is getting worse every year. There was a time when, IF a salesperson made such a huge mistake as to mis-measure an entire house (and that’s a big if as I think the guy is just trying to swindle us) he would have honored the original quote he gave us because the mistake was his, not ours. But no longer. Now everything is a fight and if you as a customer aren’t willing to get ugly, you get ripped off. So, ugly it will be. Sigh. And we’ll probably have to cancel the down payment check to this showroom and start all over somewhere else. Now you know why our current carpet is in the state it’s in. Every time we try to get it replaced this is the sort of dishonest dealings we have to navigate, and I get angry and disgusted and give up.

So I’m in a bit of a funk right now, because I’m usually so mellow and satisfied with my summer vacations and that isn’t how this one is turning out – but it is what it is, and just I’m rambling. Enjoy the plane pics people! Or don’t, whatever…

Plane Storm!

Posted on June 22, 2014 by marey mercy

Saturday morning I got up early to spend way too much money on new carpet. It’s ridiculous how much such things cost, but it is what it is. After that was done, I came home and found myself feeling a little down. I’ve been doing so much running around the past two weeks for the house that I haven’t really settled into the usual blissful lethargy of summer; I’ve been feeling antsy whenever I have a few free minutes, as if there’s some other errand I should be running. So as soon as I started feeling blue I decided picture-taking was in order, but I didn’t feel like gussying up for any portraits or jumping; in fact, I didn’t feel like doing any setup at all (I briefly considered more macro shots but couldn’t be bothered to set up the studio for them). I just wanted to grab a camera and go – so I pulled up my Flightradar24 app on my iPad and checked out the traffic at Hobby Airport. Lo and behold, there were a few planes scheduled to land that afternoon that were not Southwest Airlines planes (some JetBlues, Deltas, Americans, and a TransAir) and they were all coming in between 4 and 5 PM, so around 2:45 I grabbed my 7D and my 70-200mm and headed on out.

Hobby is about 50 minutes from my house, as long as traffic cooperates, which it did this day. I managed to snap the American airliner and the JetBlue, but missed the Delta and the TransAir – perhaps they landed on a different runway (Hobby is pretty small so the planes are hard to miss, but the observation areas only cover one runway, so it’s possible). I made sure to set my shutter speed higher this time, and my ISO lower, so I think I got better-quality shots this time out, not that I was unhappy with my last shots, they were just a little grainy and soft.

The sky came out nice in some of these too; there were sporadic showers all over the city as there always are this time of year, but none of them sprung up over HOU while I was there. It was hot as hell, but I just sat in the car with the engine and AC running and waited for the planes to arrive. For the most part I was not alone, and there was at least one other car hanging around waiting to take photos or video of the planes coming in. Usually I see people with little kids watching the planes take off and land, which is nice. And speaking of video, since I already have so many shots of Southwest planes, I experimented with taking video as they were landing. Some of the video was terrible, but I spliced two together here that aren’t bad; you can at least get a feel for how close the observation area is to the runway. It’s really exhilarating to witness:

Here’s one more of the American Eagle I snapped. Googling the registration number brings up lots of other photos of this plane; it’s cool to see where else a plane you photographed has been. Also, I have a friend who is a pilot for JetBlue, and she says she occasionally looks up the registration number of planes she flies to see if she can find any pictures of herself flying it (she can look it up by the date the photo is taken and know if she was the pilot). If you want to see some photographic history of this particular plane, try going here.

My one stupid mistake of the day (because apparently I have to make at least one) was not changing my custom white balance setting back to Auto; I totally forgot that the last time I used my 7D I had a custom setting, which was set using my studio lighting. So I had to mess with the color a bit to get it right when processing the shots. But other than that, I’m pleased with how these turned out. Lots of private places landing at HOU today too:

One thing about the shot above: I didn’t realize it was a propeller plane until it was too late to change my shutter speed. What you want to do when photographing a prop plane is slow the shutter down as much as you can so that you don’t “stop” the motion of the propellers, like I did here. When the shutter speed is slower, the propellers are just two circular blurs, which gives a much better impression of a plane in motion. Oh well. Also, these private planes fly in much lower than the big jets, so it’s harder for me to get decent shots of them over the barbed wire fence. By the time they’re right next to me, they’re already below the fence line. In the next shot, the fence was just below the frame:

All in all, I took about 500 shots and was back home by 6 PM. It was a perfect little jaunt for the day, and gave me plenty to work with for the evening. At some point I will have to venture out to IAH in the same manner; I hesitate because it’s a longer trip, but now that I know what I’m doing photographically (more or less) I’m pretty confident I could make the trip and have something to show for it at the end no matter what. Checking Flightradar was definitely a good idea as it ensured I was there at a time when traffic was high, and I was able to slip in, get my shots, and leave without too much hassle. The only disappointment was when I tried out the second observation area (at the other end of this same runway) and didn’t get any shots of planes taking off. One was taking off right as I pulled into the parking lot, which made me think more would be coming, but I got into place and waited for about 20 minutes to no avail. I’ve never been able to get shots from that lot, where the planes take off right over the heads of observers. It’s nice to have the other area see a lot of traffic, but it means I only get the same angles over and over and I’d like to get some shots going right over my head. More reason to try out IAH sometime soon too.

For now, I’ll finish up with a few Southwest Airlines shots, and share the JetBlues and a few more private planes tomorrow. You can check out some flight history of this last plane here. but there’s not much, because it’s a newbie – only two months old!

Antique Fatigue

Posted on June 21, 2014 by marey mercy

I’m not really suffering from it, but you may be by now. Anyway, here’s the last of the “antique alley” set I started sharing last week. I’m going to keep commentary short, because although I went to the doctor Monday about my continuing arm troubles and he put me on a round of steroids, as the dosage tapers off I find my arm already starting to hurt again. It looks like there are some steroid shots for me in the near future. There has to be some way to remedy this, because not blogging or editing photos is simply not an option. Moving on.

I didn’t know much about Brownie cameras before snapping this in one of the antique stores, but I found a decent webpage dedicated to them – this “Hawkeye Flash” model came out in 1950; you can read more about it, and other Brownies, here.

I apologize for this picture, but it was too good to pass up. I’m not going to provide any links to what Ken might be getting up to here; I think you can figure it out. And no, I did not set this shot up this way.

I couldn’t find too much information about this particular old radio (Allegro Telefunken Hi Fi) but the company, Telefunken, still exists and has a website. There are a few of these for sale on eBay though, anywhere from $200 up to $800. I think this one was on sale for $99 at the shop. I probably should go back and get it, but I can’t remember what store had it for sale. And now for some color:

By the way, with all of these shots I used with the burn and dodge tools in Photoshop to enhance shadows and highlights. I liked the end results, but as Beth pointed out in my last post, the changes really aren’t noticeable enough to bother making comparisons. Plus, making comparison shots takes more time, and my arm was hurting so I decided to go as easy on the clickwork as possible. I will say that in these shots though, the tools really helped bring some dimension to these metal signs, which were very dark and flat in the original shot. Especially the hot dog, which may or may not be obscene and/or racist…?

This one is clearly not an antique of any kind, but I liked the bright colors and how I captured the spinning wheels. These were all taken, of course, using my new Canon SL1 with my 40mm pancake lens, as were all the previous antique store shots. I also used that camera and lens to snap some quick pics of a few wigs I wanted to sell on eBay this week; it was great for that purpose also, and so much easier to use than the 7D. Still completely pleased with that purchase.

A few rambles: Some time soon I want to take shots in the little “antique room” we have in our house – our home is older, and has a formal dining area that for some reason I loaded up with antiques and covered in dark red wallpaper. It’s very pretty, but not really suited to the rest of the house (which at the moment isn’t suited to much of anything, but we’re working on that). For the past several years it has been used as storage for a Christmas tree and a huge tube television as well as other assorted items; but we paid a junk removal and recycling service to clear everything out of there and it is a living room once again. As little as it matches the rest of the house, I think it is a lovely setting for photos; it has a dark, Victorian vibe. So even though we are doing home overhauls this summer, including painting and taking some wallpaper down, I’ve decided to keep it. Who says a house has to make sense from room to room anyway, and a few interesting spots for photo ops in a photographer’s house isn’t a bad thing at all. I’d like to do a little shooting in there this weekend, but I’ve got to go order new carpet for the house tomorrow and a few other random things, so I might not get around to it that soon. We’ll see. I do plan to take before and after pictures of the house too though, for good measure. Happy weekend everyone!

Catting About

Posted on June 16, 2014 by marey mercy

Well here it is the middle of the month, and already I am overloaded with photos. I’ve been shooting, if not every day, at least every other day, and the backlog is insane. But I may only have a few weeks off this summer, so I might as well shoot and edit and blog while I can. So let’s get to it.

While jumping about in new clothes Saturday, Simon eventually decided to try and get into the act. Well, he wasn’t trying to get into the pictures so much as he was trying to: a) crawl behind the backdrop and create a big visible lump in it, b) steal the remote after I pressed it and tossed it on the floor (mission accomplished on that one – one of my two remotes is now MIA), and c) attack my skirt and/or feet while I jumped about. I figured if he was doing to get into so much mischief while I tried to shoot, he could at least do me the courtesy of a little modeling.

He somewhat complied

And yes, I know those little white specks (which are mostly glitter from a previous shoot and Simon’s cat hair) are on the floor again in these photos; I noticed it after I re-sized these and saved them to the blog, so although I went back and edited the originals, I didn’t bother to edit them in the re-sized versions. Sorry. And, lesson learned about the need to seriously clean the black backdrop before shooting. Moving on.

As far as the photo goes, I’ve been learning a little about the burn tool in Photoshop, and how I can use it to enhance shadows; I think it made the movement in the skirt more pronounced here. Those little half-sock thingys are from, of course, Free People, and they are great for photos. I think they are considered some sort of yoga sock, but I wouldn’t really use them for that – I got them because I really don’t think my bare feet look good in my jumping photos (I am not a dancer, so really it’s that I don’t know how to point my toes very well while trying to leap about and I they often come out looking sloppy) so I thought this little half-sock might help distract from my less-than-perfect toes. I think they worked out great for this purpose. Damn that Free People, they really do have absolutely everything I want right now (I also bought some yoga socks with little cut-out toes in them [!], they look great in photos also. I’ll show some pics I took wearing them later).

Let’s talk about this next shot a little. I actually got two shots of me leaping while holding Simon; in the one below, I managed to get some nice height while carrying him, so it was definitely the better shot:

He looks thrilled, doesn’t he?

But as you can see, my hair was all in my face and the expression I was making wasn’t that great either. I much preferred my head in the other shot I took while holding the cat…

…but the leap was unimpressive. So, I pulled both shots into Paint Shop Pro and layered one over the other to combine my top half with my bottom half into one perfect jump.

I know this is the sort of thing a lot of people can do easily, but for me it’s still a chore to pull off, which is why I don’t do it more often. If it didn’t take me so long I’d have more perfect jumps out there, for sure. But I really have to care enough to take the time involved to do this. In this case, it was worth it, even though Simon looks like he’s about to bail on me (he was perfectly fine after the leaping, I promise).

This skirt, by the way, is NOT from Free People; it was purchased at this cheesy boutique called “Everything Bling,” or something like that – a store that is always blaring country music and has loads of rhinestones and lace. Yet every time I go in there I find something cool, so perhaps I shouldn’t be so harsh on the cheesiness of it. Clearly it caters to me on some level. I bought this one in both black and beige and I do wear them everywhere because they are tiered and twirly and fabulous. I always wanted to get photos of it and hadn’t had the time until last weekend.I took a bunch of photos in this skirt, but the focus was off in most of the shots and I felt like they came out soft, so I didn’t process many of them. I did edit this next one, but I don’t really like how it came out; still not sure if I like it at all. What I do like is how it shows the great movement of the skirt.

I added blur since I felt it was a little soft and figured I’d make it look intentional. I even tried pulling this into Pixlr to see if I liked it better, but I’m not sure I do.

I dunno – I’m still meh about it. I did like this next one, though, if for no other reason than because it’s a particular leap I’m always trying to pull off and not accomplishing, and I managed to kind of do it here – kind of a little ankle-kick while leaning slightly forward (my technical dance terms, don’t you know). It would have been better if I’d been in profile, but when you’re as uncoordinated as I am you take what you get.

I hope you all noticed, also, that I took all these jump shots in my natural hair. We’ll talk about the four months’ worth of regrowth at the roots later, mmm’kay? Anyway, more yoga toes tomorrow!

mareymercy.

Art, Horror, and Other Obsessions

Category Archives: Photography