Office Race

Posted on June 1, 2014 by marey mercy

My first goal towards creating a studio out of my office was to get this big, old, cheap Sears bookcase that takes up half a wall cleaned out and out of the room. I told myself I would get that done this weekend, and on Sunday I finally got up the energy to give it a go. It took longer than I expected, because while cleaning out the bookcase I realized I had to find somewhere to put the stuff I cleaned out of there (the stuff that wasn’t total junk anyway) which led to me having to clean out some other drawers and cabinets to make room for it. I don’t think I realized before today, because I don’t generally pay attention much to my surroundings, just how much useless crap I’ve accumulated over the years and strewn all over the house, as well as stuffed into cabinets and drawers. Every available space here within which junk can be placed is full, and I’d wager that 97% of it is useless. So there’s that.

I ended up throwing out 6 bags’ worth of said junk, along with the bookcase, and let’s just say I achieved two goals today – getting rid of the bookshelf and getting back into a workout routine – because at the end of the day I was tired and quite sore all over. But goal #1 is accomplished, and every time I walk into my office I do a little happy dance to see that open space against the wall, which I’ve already used to move my umbrella stands against instead of having them hovering over my computer desk like they were before. At one point today I got really overwhelmed thinking about all those overstuffed drawers and cabinets and bookshelves and feeling the need to de-clutter the entire house, but I calmed myself down and reminded myself I’d do a better job of it if I stuck to the plan and took each step one at a time. I don’t want to burn out by taking on too much too soon, and forgetting to celebrate each little victory. So, here I am with one more wall of free space, a sore neck, and a sense of accomplishment. Yay me.

Un-insert big ugly bookcase here

My next goal is to get rid of that little cheap black and white love seat that is basically a dog couch – I’m going to take it up to the school for the students to sit on in the learning center next year. Hope they don’t mind sitting on a dog bed for relaxation! I’m hoping to get that done some time this week. I’m not sure I even need a truck to move this thing; it was delivered to my doorstep in a box, so it isn’t exactly heavy, just might be too bulky to fit in my car. We’ll see. And yes, I am sorry to separate Penny from one of her favorite resting places, but my mind is made up and this room will be a photo studio, so we’re all going to have to make sacrifices. Moving on.

I also edited two more photos from Friday’s shoot:

I have no idea why I was making that face, but y’all know I like to find shots where I don’t look anything like the other 5,000+ shots of myself I’ve stared at over the years, and this one fit the bill. It kind of looks like I just spied a tarantula crawling up the wall, but I thought the expression lent an air of mystery and humor (and maybe even drama?) to the portrait, so here’s hoping I was right about that.

This next one was really frustrating – I liked it enough to run it through Photo Ninja and Photoshop, but once I started tweaking it in Snapseed I couldn’t get all that into it. It was boring me, and I felt like something was missing. I liked the focus a lot, though, and way the light played on the hair, so I kept working at it.

Even when I uploaded it to Pixlr and started trying out different effects and overlays, I couldn’t hit on anything that gave it the pizzazz I wanted, and I was about to abandon it entirely when, as a last resort, I decided to try out some borders, thinking I could edit the heavy frame out as I’d learned to do recently and just keep whatever textures the border might impose on the image. And just like that – BAM! It all fell into place.

See what I mean? The difference is subtle, but the visual interest the specks and smudges create give the portrait a grittier feel, as well as adding some warmth and light to the shot. I cropped out the dark black borders so that they weren’t so obtrusive (this was actually done using three different borders layered over each other) and was just left with the touches of texture and color that made me happy. Now I really love this shot!

Got to go in to work today, but we’re on summer hours now so I only have to be there from 9 AM to 1 PM. I’m planning on editing more from this set as well as move more furniture, so another busy week awaits. Happy Monday everyone!

Beach Patrol

Posted on May 4, 2014 by marey mercy

The benefit of hanging out with my family when on vacation is that they don’t care at all if I spend the entire time taking photos and edited them on my computer. My husband gets annoyed if I spend too much time doing that, but no one in my family cared so I got to snap and edit away. In fact, my dad is as obsessive about his hobbies as I am, so while I was editing on the computer he was trying to learn some James Taylor song on the guitar.

This was the neighbor’s beach house, actually; I took that one with my telephoto lens from our balcony as it was actually pretty far away. This was our house:

I took some quick snaps of the interior that I can edit later; it was a really beautiful house. I was deluded that it would take an hour to get there though; it was more like two hours. It was just me and my parents for a few hours, then my sister showed up with three of her four kids and their significant others. They’d had their senior prom the night before and seemed to really enjoy having a day on the beach. They wanted their pictures taken, and then after I took them they wanted to see them right away, so that’s a lot of what I have to share today.

My nephew and his girlfriend

My niece and her boyfriend – that date in the sand is the day they met. Cheesy, I know.

They dug big holes into the sand to sit in. They also dug cupholders.

I took those with my 17-40mm, but since I knew I’d want to take lots of pictures I brought along all my camera gear. I took a bunch with my macro lens, but have only had time to process one of them; it’s a good one though:

I forgot to bring my lens hoods so I started to get nervous about wandering around the beach with them because it was ridiculously windy outside. So windy, in fact, that all of the rocking chairs on the balcony were rocking without our assistance. Of course, I had to film this:

http://youtu.be/MgeTLvS4bBE

Here’s another I took with the 70-200; I liked how the bird looked like he was tilting in the wind.

I’ll finish up with this one, and tell one sad story: at one point in the afternoon, I was sitting at the dining room table which sits in front of the long row of windows overlooking the balcony and the beach; I looked up just in time to see a Beach Patrol helicopter fly by right in front of our balcony. I literally could have licked it if I’d been on the balcony – OK not really, but if I’d been outside with my telephoto lens and been able to take pictures, it would have looked like it. Sadly, I missed it, and it never came back by. Ok so here it is – it’s Sunday morning and my parents have Fox News on, so I have to hurry up and post this and get the hell out of the room, so sorry if this isn’t the most well-written post ever:

Porch Song

Posted on March 20, 2014 by marey mercy

Since yesterday’s post was all shots of Candace, today I’ll share some photos of Tamara, the other model from Monday’s shoot. But first I want to share one of Candace I forgot to share yesterday:

There was the slightest bit of color in those trees, so Candace tried her best to trudge through the weeds and stand in front of them; this angle was the only one I could get to and manage to get any of the purple buds in the shot. It’s weird, but I kind of like it. Moving on now to Tamara:

There’s the big-ass hair wreath I got for a steal off Etsy; it matched this old ball gown nicely. The sleeves on this dress absolutely make it; they are long and light and flowy and take wonderful photos, so I blew the fan on her and told her to just wave her arms around while I took some shots.

I did less processing to this second shot, although I still did some – I kept the color more true to the original though, and didn’t use any filters. I rarely smile in my own shots as I tend not to look natural when smiling for a camera, so I’m always glad to get a nice shot of someone with a lovely smile – and this one came out great.

I also loved this next one, but it came out a bit yellow in spite of my ExpoDisc, and try as I might I couldn’t correct it without something else going wrong, color-wise:

Notice this one was taken on the fabulous front porch I was so excited to use. Another thing you’ll probably notice is that I barely took any shots using it. There are a few reasons for that: first of all, when I got to the space the woman working there informed me that they actually don’t allow any outside shooting due to liability issues. I guess my disappointment was evident, because she ended up agreeing to let me shoot on the porch as long as I didn’t tell anyone (which of course I just did, oops), but quite honestly after shooting inside for two hours I was pretty burned out and not all that excited about using the porch – I’m sure the fact that I knew we weren’t supposed to shoot out there probably affected my attitude as well, as I am generally a rule-follower and wasn’t anxious to go take pictures somewhere I wasn’t supposed to. The other reason was that the night before the shoot a slight cool front blew in, and it was a little cold outside, so Tamara wasn’t all that game for hanging out on the porch anyway. In the end, this is one of the few shots I took out there that I liked, but I really loved it, in spite of the yellowness.

Right at the end of the shoot, Tamara pulled a prop chair onto the set and just started posing in it very spontaneously, which I liked but unfortunately most of the shots are a mess because I was just sitting on the floor and feeling tired and sloppy so the framing is all wonky. This one came out great, but in looking over it now, I think I may have overprocessed it:

I thought there was something interesting about this shot, her expression is stern in a very vintage way, but the pose is so relaxed; I really liked the contrast. Also proud of the fact that her boots were actually black, but I managed to tint them dark blue without it being obvious. Oh, and throughout the shoot she was complaining about her being too flat, so I actually fluffed it up using some Photoshop trickery. Here’s the pre-Pixlr’ed version, though, which I’m starting to think I like better:

In looking the two over now, I think the Pixlr version has too much going on. What do you think?

The purple series

Posted on October 6, 2013 by marey mercy

Oh Lord have mercy, I have a ton of these I want to edit. I think I might actually do it this time, instead of saying that then getting bored after processing 4 or 5. I’ve already processed 14 of them – using a backdrop that required no editing and sticking to the basics when processing helped to move things along for me. Plus, when I’m all dolled up in costume I feel no one wants to see 30 pictures of me in the same outfit just moving my arms a different way; with the purple sheers, it’s more about the shapes the fabric make than anything I might be wearing, so I think that gives this set more longevity. If that makes sense.

And by the way, I woke up with sore shoulders from all the steaming I had to do the night before to get the wrinkles out of both the backdrop and the sheers. I did get my husband to move the backdrop all the way up to the ceiling, and after all the work I did on it I am just leaving it up for now. No way am I folding it back up right away and creating more wrinkles! So, when I turned my studio back into an office I left the backdrop up and kept the pictures that usually hang there off the wall. The more I get into this photography stuff, the less office-like my office looks, and the more it transforms into some crazy photographer’s messy, chaotic work space. Oh well.

For reference, here’s how wrinkled everything was right out of the boxes – I took some test shots Saturday night, and yes I was in a pair of swim shorts because it was so freaking hot that day – but you can see how much better everything turned out after steaming (although according to my husband I have damaged the sheetrock by steaming the backdrop right up against the wall; didn’t have the heart to tell him I’ve been doing that regularly for the past two years):

This entire set needs Botox.

I did do a few outfit changes, although they were slight, so perhaps I’ll try to upload over the next few days by collecting the different looks together – but in many of them, you can’t tell what I’m wearing anyway. For today’s installment, I didn’t have much of a ‘costume’ on with the sheers at all, just black tights and a black leotard, and a black wig cap to hold my hair in place. (Moment of vanity here – the leotard was a weird fit on me, as things like that always are due to my long torso/short legs body type. The way it was pulling on me made me look much thicker around the middle than I actually am; my waistline was pretty much disguised, and I readily admit that there are a few cool shots I passed over because I looked, well, chunky. And yes, I did try to edit my waist into the shots, but you could tell. Moving on.)

I love how tall this one made me look, and the balance of the feet peeking out on one side, and then the opposite hand. Totally accidental on my part, of course.

Love the shape this one created.

This reminded me of an octopus, or a flower. The two do have things in common, you know.

For fun, I’ll go ahead and throw this B&W in here. The photo itself wasn’t all that thrilling, but I did like how I came out looking like some sort of sad, gothy sea-creature, so I thought a little monochrome might add to that mood. Throw in some overlays and textures via good old Pixlr, and there you go. Nice and spooky for Halloween.

I did make a collage of all these with the idea of sharing them in one shot, by the way – but I do not like how small it makes each picture. I prefer to share these full size, or as full size as they ever are when I post them on the blog. For a true high-quality copy you can check out my Flickr page, but I only post one photo there per day.So much more to come from this set!