Red China Dress Set

Posted on December 20, 2015 by marey mercy

Remember that red dress I mentioned in a previous post? Well, it finally arrived – and as soon as I got a free day to myself I shot some photos in it. They turned out amazing, but I’ve only had to edit three of the shots so far; the end of the semester was flat-out awful (at least as far as my stress level goes) so I’ve not had time to post, visit other people’s blogs, share anything on Flickr, or do much of anything except work and cry the last three weeks so it’ll take me awhile to catch up. Sorry!

In the photo above I was sitting on a small stool, but obviously I managed to edit out of the shot. The dress moves beautifully, although it is a heavy linen and a bit stiff; it’s also lined, so it was actually a pretty nice deal at $60. The shape of it is also strange, so it created some beautiful movement shots. I can’t wait to edit more – but first, let’s back up and take a look at a few more photos I edited from my silver wig set a few weeks back:

I could easily edit more from this session as I loved the colors and the movement of the wig; in fact, I found two or three more wigs from the same company in this color and ordered those, too, along with some other fun colors I intend to play around with soon. One of them is shorter but still wavy, and then I bought two long straight ones. I also got this one jumping shot from that shoot:

This one’s a bit of a composite in that I added more hair to it from another photo; the Robin wig I’m wearing here is lovely but it’s quite light and low density so it doesn’t create a lot of movement in shots, and I often take two photos of the wig in motion and blend them together to give the illusion of more hair as well as something more interesting to look at. I’m also wearing a lot of my Oh My Gauze stuff here, which as usual photographs fabulously (oh, and my shaggy Free People cardigan I paid WAY too much for last year but have worn repeatedly since and therefore don’t regret it).

Believe it or not, this is also from the same shoot; right at the end of the session I threw on a few other wigs and messed around a little, but I was already tired and uninterested in continuing to pose so nothing was much good at this point. But one night recently I got the itch to edit something, so I pulled this one up and gave it a go. it isn’t bad, but it’s not thrilling either, so I jacked around with the colors a LOT to get something going that I liked. It’s still just OK in my book, but at least it’s worth looking at now (at least I think it is).

Now back to a few more of the new red dress:

In some of the photos I was actually leaping while in others I sat on stools or chairs which I edited out later; this one was an actual leap. My feet were sticking out at the bottom but I removed them in Photoshop, and I added a little texture to the background just because the black against that bright red looked a bit too stark. But you can definitely see how nicely the dress moves here.

I’m cheating here, because this is actually a pose I’ve done before, but I liked the shape it created so I edited it anyway. I was actually sitting on an ottoman but it looks like I’m pulling off a nice little plie or something.

That’s all I have for now; tomorrow I am supposed to go out to IAH with my father to watch planes, so I may have some jet shots to share soon. But there’s lots more where these red ones came from, so you’ll be seeing more of those in the future too. If I don’t get back to blogging here before it happens, Merry Christmas to everyone who celebrates it! Even though I’m off I’ve got a busy week ahead with doctor’s appointments and visits with friends, so I’ll be back here when I can.

(Oh, and for anyone who has access to my private blog, I wrote a new post that you can find here. It’s mostly about work and friendships – you know, the usual).

Quick Silver

Posted on November 29, 2015 by marey mercy

As I mentioned in my last post, I finally got a chance to put on the full face and take some portraits while I was on vacation last week. So here they are:

That wig cost about $35 and is called Elveen, by Janet Collection. After a few hours of shooting, the synthetic fiber was starting to frizz and dry out noticeably; I have to comb through a wig every few shots when posing in them because they get thrown around and messed up so much, and brushing isn’t good for even a high-quality synthetic fiber, much less a cheaper one like this. On the plus side, though, the fiber here is heat-friendly so I could probably use a blow dryer or curling iron to smooth out some of the frizz. I wasn’t looking for longevity anyway; I was just so curious about this lovely color that I decided to try one. It is gorgeous; at least for photos. Although as a so-called “ethnic” wig, the lace front is way too dark for me. Moving on.

Many people who’ve seen these photos have commented on the interesting makeup choice I made here; truth be told I didn’t intend to take all my photos in this wig and had several other costume changes planned, involving far more colorful stuff that would work better with all that orange and gold. However, I got the wig on and started snapping, and everything was just working in it so well that I decided to stick with it; I didn’t end up shooting much in the other wigs and costumes I’d picked out at all.

This was one of the others I intended to use more – glad I didn’t

I was really surprised that even the makeup application process went smoothly; I found a stock photo online with makeup that inspired me and decided to copy, and even though i didn’t completely go in the direction of the photo, everything from contouring to shading and even applying false lashes went off without a hitch, turning out almost exactly as I planned and without any major screw-ups to correct.

The photoshoot went the same way; well, at least until I took off the silver Elveen and tried some other hair choices – nothing else worked as well, and I was starting to get tired and bored by that time so my heart wasn’t in it. I tried a few leaping and levitation shots, but I’ve only processed one so far because by the time I got to that point in the shoot (I always save the jumping and movement stuff for last, since it tends to mess up the makeup) I was way too sloppy in my execution for anything to look stellar. Plus, it was really the silver stuff I was interested in processing, and I knew that by that time, so I probably shouldn’t have bothered. I did process one though:

But back to the silver wig. After some straight up makeup and hair shots, I wanted to play around and create some holiday looks, so I dug out the Christmas stuff I bought last year at Pier One and decided to mess with it a bit:

When I processed this one, I was annoyed with all that orange and gold glaring at me – although it did really work visually, I wanted to compliment the silver hair and sweater more than all that bright color was able to do. So, I actually used a black and white filter to change the makeup and layered it on over the original shot. Notice I even managed to pull off the stripey eyebrows – yeah I told ya, the makeup all worked out well for some reason this time.

I was just goofing around here, obviously; I don’t think you can tell but I used Pixlr to add in a bunch of patterns to the ornament. If you look closely you can even see tiny birds flying around in there – those came compliments of a Pixlr filter. And yes, my nails were fabulous.

One thing I noticed when working with these photos was how nicely neutral the silver was; I could really manipulate color in all sorts of ways and create different looks entirely. The only issue that created was skin tone; I struggled in most of these to keep my skin from going too gray, and in some shots I don’t think I pulled it off very well, but hey, I tried. Skin tone is always a bitch in photos anyway. Here I obviously added a lot of blue, and I even stole the sparkle from the center of the magnolia in my hair and placed it over my real eyes.All that glittery-goodness was added to the sweater in Photoshop, although in real life it does have a bit of shimmer.

This one wasn’t working for me at all, mostly due to the skin tone issue, until I pulled it into Pixlr and attempted to cover it with some sort of overlay that might disguise the splotchy, odd-colored skin that was bothering me. I often do that with photos I can’t get quite right (I did the same with the one photo with the short blonde hair); I figure if Pixlr can’t save it for me, it probably isn’t worth saving. This overlay was from a very geometrically-shaped collection that I almost never use, but lo and behold this one gave me exactly what I was looking for. It added just the bit of interest I felt it needed, as well as covering up my skin a little and distracting the eye so perhaps no one will notice it’s weirdness.

I also struggled with lips in this set; mine are quite thin and dry (I often widen/thicken them in post) so this is nothing new, but I made matters worse by choosing to use gold glitter lip liner as lipstick and then outline it with orange – you can see it in the first shot above where I didn’t edit that mess out. For most of my other shots, I changed it in some way, because it looked pretty sloppy. In the photo directly above I just did my best to change the lip color to orange all over, and then soften it. This photo is my favorite, by the way – it’s a composite of three different shots of the wig since there’s no way it has near this much hair. And the wreath wrapped around me is a Pier One prop I used last year, too.

As always, there’s more from this set I want to edit, and it looks like my red dress from China is set to arrive today, so there will, of course, be more coming soon. Although I may not get to the red dress photos until Christmas break. We’ll see!

Wigs Over Houston

Posted on November 16, 2015 by marey mercy

OK, not really – it’s WINGS Over Houston, but I figured, with the wigs on the site and all…you get the idea.

B-25 – The Yellow Rose

Going back to October, this year’s Wings Over Houston Airshow was Oct. 17th, and I went with my dad (as usual) and my boss/friend from work. She’s a former employee of US Airways (now part of another airline, can’t remember the name right now) and loves airplanes, too, so it was fun to share the experience with someone else.

MK959 Spitfire

I told myself that since I wasn’t very satisfied with my aerial pics last time, I’d focus on shooting the planes during the viewing hours of the show, when you can get up close with them before they take off. However, once the planes got in the air I couldn’t help myself, and since I knew a bit more this time about what settings to use on the camera for decent shots, I managed to get some really nice ones this year. I also made sure to try for shots that would be more unique or interesting than the typical stuff everyone else snaps – the two above were taken during a war simulation, and I particularly liked the effect the smoke from the faux-bombs created.

The Breitling Jet Team – from France

The Thunderbirds were there this year (instead of the Blue Angels who performed in 2014) but my friend and I were wise enough to leave before the final show; my father and I spent over an hour in the shuttle line the year before since we left with everyone else, and since there were two performance jet teams this year, I still got to see some high flyers before we took off. It was a good idea, since it meant we walked right onto a shuttle instead of waiting in line forever.

In 2014 I saved my camera strictly for photos of planes in the air and didn’t even take it out when we were wandering around viewing the planes, but since this year I wasn’t planning to take any aerial stuff anyway I took my camera with me to the touring area earlier in the day, and got some nice shots there too:

Standing beneath the wing of a C-17; one of my favorite shots of the day

I took my telephoto lens again this year, but am considering taking the wide-angle next year; it was hard to get all of the planes in my shots while we were walking around with the zoom lens, and it wasn’t the most convenient lens for these types of shots. We stood in line to tour the inside of the C-17 and my lens was pretty much useless inside it; I could not even get a shot of the cockpit once we got in there because it was so small – and we stood in line for over an hour to get up there! I did get a shot of the stairs leading up to it, though:

I also got a few shots of one of the servicemen standing in the cockpit and looking out the little round window that overlooks the huge cargo area where we were all waiting in line, but with the lack of indoor light and my inability to get my settings right, all the shots of him looking through it were crappy and blurry. I processed one of the shots, though, and just edited the hell out of it to disguise the fact that it’s a bad photo – I had to process it, because the dude was looking right at me in the shot.

There was also a nice big United 737 that I took some snaps of; I tried to keep all the crowds of people out of these shots so it might appear that I was actually just getting super-close access to a plane on a runway instead of at an exhibition; for the most part I think I pulled it off:

Another thing I wanted to try this year was taking pictures of interesting people, as well. There certainly are a lot of them:

Yes, “interesting” is one way to describe these guys

I love it when I get to piggyback off someone else’s staged shot; this veteran was posing for someone else so I snuck up behind them and snapped the same photo:

That’s actually a composite of two shots I took of him; in one, a woman walked into the frame right as I snapped the shot, and her body covered up half the flag. In the other, she wasn’t in the frame, but his features were not as clear and the shot wasn’t quite as focused, so I layered that less-focused shot over the better one and erased the woman’s body out of the frame. And there you go.

Last shot for now – I snapped this one quickly while we were waiting in that hour-long line for the cockpit of the C-17; I snapped a bunch of one-offs through the open cargo doors since there wasn’t much else to do and nothing I could get decent photos of inside, and right after I took this one I looked at it on my LCD screen and realized it was a nice one. How much more alike could these two look anyway?

Yep, definitely related

I processed this one in black and white because the color just didn’t add anything to it. I especially like the young guy’s shadow on his dad’s (I assume) shirt. They were probably looking up into the cargo hold at all the people standing in line inside and thinking to themselves, why on earth would those idiots stand in line so long just to spend two minutes inside a stuffy cockpit? Well, because we can, dude. That’s why.

I edited most of these shots over the past two days; that’s how busy I’ve been and have just now gotten around to really editing these photos. I’ve decided I need to start dedicating myself to editing at least one photo a night since I’ve got such a backlog of stuff and what I’m really craving is a good old portrait-and-jumping photo session. I don’t want all this other stuff to get completely forgotten, though, so I’m trying to work through it all now. Still lots I’d like to edit from this set, as well as my trip out to IAH back in September, so more planes to come.

Next week – vacation! I can’t believe it’s Thanksgiving already. A whole week off, and I’m going to try and take my portrait shots then.

Plane of Pools

Posted on September 19, 2015 by marey mercy

Stupid title, I know. I was just trying to think of something to incorporate the two completely unconnected subjects of this post. Because last week, this happened:

I’ve never been so happy to see concrete in my life. The next step is to clean the interior of the pool and prepare it for the plaster, which will happen today – I’ve been envisioning some really crazy self-portraits in the empty pool wherein I don a ball gown and a snorkel, but unfortunately I’ve caught the first round of crud that circulated around the school last week (in my case, it’s an upper respiratory infection, but I know others who came down with strep throat) and I feel lousy. I’m not sure I’m going to be up for taking photos for the day or two that the option is available to me, so it may be a sorely missed opportunity, but one I’ll have to let go if I’m still sick. Boo.

I stayed home from work today and went to the doctor for meds, and when that was done I processed more airplane pictures. At first I wasn’t to thrilled with the shots I got last Sunday at the new location; they definitely don’t allow me the super-close proximity the official observation spot provides, but they do allow for a lot more variety, due to my ability to shoot the planes coming all the way up the runway:

I’m farther away, but getting to snap the planes taking off over buildings or just lifting off the runway is pretty cool, and means I get bored less quickly while processing the shots:

Of course, I did have to hang out in what appeared at first to be a fairly suspect location to get them:

Looking back from the dead-end where I parked

For most of the time I was there, I was the only person at this spot:

My car at the bottom of a hill that provides a nice vantage point to see the planes

But occasionally other plane-spotters stopped by, although I was the only one who went to the top of the hill:

So overall, it was a fine place to hang out, although I was pretty nervous at first, thinking it had to be a bad idea to spend time alone at the end of a fairly deserted road behind an airport. I felt plenty safe soon enough, once I realized it really wasn’t as deserted as I thought it was, and appeared in fact to be a little plane-viewing spot for a lot of people with kids who were trying to entertain them and out of ideas, I guess? Moving on. Next time I’ll bring a blanket or something to sit on up there, though, since the grass was pretty high and brushy and it wasn’t too pleasant the times I tried to sit down.

Severed head in a bag, or discarded Carl’s Jr.? You decide.

I got to this spot around 11:30, I think, and while I mostly shot United planes, I managed to snap a few others before I was done:

I also had a chance to snap some planes landing on farther runways, and although they were too far away for the shots to be great ones, I did want to capture how close some of them fly over before they land, since it gives me a nice sense of scale:

And I managed to snap this little bright-yellow Spirit Airlines budget plane (I definitely was able to get better shots of planes landing farther away from me than I can at the Lee Road location, too) :

And then, of course, were all the United planes:

That last one really took me by surprise; the little hill I stood on overlooked two runways running parallel to each other, and for the most part they were all taking off from the runway farthest from my location. But this one used the closer of the two, and when it roared up overhead I was actually focused on a different plane and didn’t see this one coming. It’s positioning really gave me a nice shot of it’s underbelly passing over; with the landing gear already retracted. I guess it took off a longer runway, or something. Moving on.

SECURITY!

I planned to head for home no later than 1:00, since these runways were fairly busy and by then I’d already taken plenty, but at one on the dot it was as if United opened the floodgates (or plane gates, if you will) and sent an onslaught of airlines taxiing over to take off, and well, it was just too good to walk away from at the time. They must have been taking off two or three minutes behind each other, at the most, so I kept snapping until my 32G CF card filled up. That’s right – 2600 shots of airplanes, people. And many of them are worthy of processing this time! How will I ever get through them all…?

I mean JUST LOOK AT ALL OF THEM

Of course I’ve got more to share later, but for now this is all I’ve got. Time to go lie down and let that Nyquil I slugged about 20 minutes ago work it’s magic Until next time, y’all!

Sunday Shots

Posted on September 13, 2015 by marey mercy

I’ve not taken any self-portraits in quite awhile, but I have been taking photos here and there when I’ve had the chance.

In fact, now that I look back over what I’ve processed the past few weeks, it’s quite a few shots. A few weeks ago, while out buying groceries for the week, I stopped by the floral department and picked up some flowers to shoot, then spent the rest of Saturday taking photos of them. In the shot above, I was mainly trying to catch the reflection of the petals when the flower was lying on top of a plastic handbag liner I yanked out of one of my purses (it’s a piece of plastic you can insert into a handbag that lacks shape to give it some across the bottom – #themoreyouknow!). It was a challenge to get a whole lot of the reflection into the shot without getting into some really weird framing, but I guess it came out OK.

Simon ended up in a lot of the shots because, well, that’s how he rolls:

Sprocket and Penny got into the mix for a bit too:

I also saw some flowers that were wrapped in netting to keep their shape (no, I don’t know what kind of flowers they were) and I really liked the pink and purple color combination that created, so I took photos of them without taking off the wrapping, although that may actually look stupid. Still, I liked them:

I unwrapped them eventually, and took some super-macros of the petals:

Then eventually I ended up putting all sorts of crap on them, just to see how it would look:

That’s baby powder on the rose above, which I was hoping would look like snow. I also threw some glitter on the pink flowers, but I haven’t processed any of those shots yet. I took about 600 pictures of flowers, then got distracted by work and pool drama and ended up not processing nearly enough of them. For about a week there I didn’t process any shots at all, although lately I’ve had time to work with about one each night. This is the last flower shot I’ve had a chance to edit so far, but I know there will be more to come from this set later:

Then, at one point during all the pool construction drama, I looked in the back yard and this tipped-over, mud-covered wheelbarrow caught my eye; I thought it’d make a good picture, so although it was already dusk I grabbed my camera and braved a trip into the muck to get a few shots. My husband almost had a cow when he looked out the window and saw me crawling around back there, because he knows what a klutz I am and how easily I can hurt myself just walking into a room, much less wandering around a construction area with a camera. But, I survived, and got a few cool shots out of the deal:

I have a few more, of course, to process from this set (don’t I always?) but I have yet to get to them, either.

Now, if I thought Doug would have a cow about me scavenging around in our backyard with a half-constructed pool in the vicinity, he would have really flipped his lid if he’d seen where I was hanging out this past Sunday:

I drove out to my usual planespotting location at IAH Sunday morning, but when I got there I realized I’d mis-read my flightradar24 app in thinking the airport was utilizing that runway for arrivals, and in fact there were no planes at all flying in that direction. Since it was early and I was already out there, I decided to be a little brave and try to find a second planespotting location I’d read about – I’d always been wary to try it out before because I’d heard you had to call airport security to let them know when you were there, and that alone sounded sketchy enough to me to discourage the trip. Plus, it’s not uncommon for the areas around an airport to be less than ideal locations to start with, and since I’m always by myself when I take plane pics I’d been a bit chicken to give it a try. But I was feeling up for it this time, plus I’d driven all that way and didn’t want the drive to be a total bust, so I found the dead-end road that stopped right up against two runway fences, made the airport security call, and got to work.

These two runways are used mainly for departures, and they were pretty busy, although mostly with United planes – I didn’t get very many unusual planes this time. I did get some new angles than what I can get from the official observation lot, but the planes are farther away, so I was once again feeling the limitations of the 70-200 lens. It did the job, but I would have been happier had I been able to get closer. And the clarity isn’t the greatest either; I think I had the ISO setting too low this time. Still, the weather was nice, and it ended up being a fine place to shoot although, as I said, my husband probably would have freaked out had he known I’d driven to a dead-end road, parked the car, and hiked up a hill all alone to take plane photos! Actually, while I was up there I saw a lot of cars come and go; mostly people with kids taking a moment or two to watch some planes take off, but still. When I really stopped to think about it, it probably wasn’t the wisest decision. Not to say I won’t go back, of course.

I say this so much you can probably all say it along with me by now, but once again: this is all I’ve had time to process from this set so far, so there will be more to come. Although I haven’t been able to get dolled up lately for a selfie shoot, at least I do have a lot of photos to work with when I get a spare minute here or there.

Okay, tomorrow’s Monday, so let’s get back to it.

Photo Finish

Posted on August 8, 2015 by marey mercy

Work started back up last Tuesday, and quite honestly it was a welcome change. I actually started getting bored that last week off, so I wasn’t bummed out about having to go back. The first month of school is always a crazy one, so posts may be sparse for awhile, and I’ve not taken a lot of photos lately either – but I do have a few new ones to share. So let’s get to it.

This macro is from an older set – I believe I shot these back in February, or something.Yep, I’ve been digging into the older stuff again, since new photos are scarce at the moment. Still, it’s nice to go back through older sets and find a few more gems to edit. I take thousands of photos a year, so it’s good to let some older ones get some love.

The wig is Miranda by Amore, if you’re interested

I bought the mustache back in May, and just never got around to using it before now. I had ideas for using it that didn’t work out; so I basically just threw on different wigs and necklaces and made goony faces. It was a quick shoot – well, aside from the almost two hours it took me to apply makeup, that is. Speaking of which, I was pretty disappointed with my makeup in this shoot. For two hours of work, I sure didn’t turn out to look a lot different than I do in most of my photos. The goal is always to transform myself, but lately my makeup skills have plateaued, and no matter what I start out trying to achieve, the end result is coming out pretty much the same every time. Not that I’m displeased with how I look in general, but when I first started using drag makeup it was always thrilling to see how I turned out in the final shots. Now, not so much, because I pretty much know what I’m going to look like before I even start. If I were more skilled I could really use makeup to create completely different looks each time, but as I said, I think I’ve reached the limit of my skills in this area.

Hair = Angelica by Noriko

I don’t really care for this one all that much; the focus wasn’t as crisp as I would have liked and I over-softened my skin so it looks a bit phony. Plus the mustache didn’t look nearly as good as I’d hoped it would; for starters I spent so long on makeup that ended up disappointing me that I just was NOT in the mood to mess with spirit gum and take the time to apply the mustache properly, so it’s just stuck on my face with double-stick tape, which means it fell off a lot and in all my re-applying it went crooked in a lot of the shots. Aside from that, it just looks more fake than I wanted it to – too dark and those weird blunt ends look really lame. This one is a little better:

Another Angelica wig

But…it’s kinda too serious for the mustache to work. I was hoping to seriously emulate some of the lovely bearded drag queens I’ve seen, but meh. It just didn’t really work. I think if I edit any more of these, I’ll stick to the sillier ones, like the first one I shared. So far, that one’s my favorite. Oh, and I was playing around with my new pop-up backdrop I got in a few weeks ago; so now I can have a black or white background in a snap instead of having to hang something on my wall. I already had a gray one and I quite love it, so the black and white one was a good addition to my arsenal. Thinking of getting some of the mottled pop-ups, too, since they’re not terribly expensive, do not wrinkle, and are so easy to use. Not big enough to use in full-body shots, but great for portrait work!

I did go a little processing-happy with this one, but it seemed to work:

I was thinking a bit of Terry Gilliam-esque cartoonery with this shot; not sure I achieved that but it does look more like animation than a real-life shot anyway. And yeah, there’s the crooked mustache again.

I’ve been way into portraits for quite a few months now and have not done much full-body work or movement shots, but my photography pendulum is swinging back in that direction. Spending so much time on prep work for these portraits has become tiresome, and I’m running out of stuff to do when posing again. No worries, though, it’s just may be time for me to find some other way to get inspired. I’m sure something will come to me soon enough. In fact, today I decided to head out to IAH for more planespotting, since that is always a fun photography diversion for me, but in the end it was too damn hot (we did, in fact, have a heat advisory today) so I blew it off.

The kids come back this coming Thursday, then it’s off to the races for the rest of August. I’ll get back to uploading wig reviews soon enough, though, so until then, take care everyone!

Hair-itage

Posted on July 31, 2015 by marey mercy

Ugh, terrible title, sorry. I’ve written so many posts with hair-pun titles, it’s either start to repeat them or just go for awful. I think you can see which route I chose.

And now you can also see that I finally got my hair cut and colored into some sort of STYLE. With the exception of the roughly 4-6 months I enjoyed having a perm, I’ve not had hair I actually liked for almost 5 years now. My initial goal was to keep growing until it was at least mid-way down my back; but as it grew I began to realize that my baby-fine hair was never going to look on me like one of my Angelicas or Brandis, and that going beyond shoulder-length was not the best use of what I’ve got. Then, once I decided to bob it off, I also decided I didn’t need to keep worrying about damaging my hair with a dye job, because it’s short enough that any damaged ends can just get trimmed off without too much trouble. Getting this effect took two tries, though; because the first time the dye didn’t take and the stylist left too much length (not her fault, I originally chose a style that was a bit too long). I went back two days after the initial cut and color and we tried again – and I have been thrilled with the results so far.

Finally I eliminated that awful shoulder-length hair-flip I had going on, and my hair actually looks like a real style. Chopping off a few inches really gave my hair the little bit of bounce it needs (and the dye helps as it makes my hair a little more coarse) and the color, I think, is going to satisfy all my wig-friends who are constantly reminding me that even though my bio hair really is that dark, when I choose wigs that closely match it the effect isn’t the best. In other words, your natural hair color may be dark brown, but natural just doesn’t look that good on you. It was really miss Robin by Noriko that sealed the deal for me – I loved those highlights in the Chocolate Swirl so much that it was the day I got that wig when I decided to color my hair again for certain. Moving on.

I have a few more edited photos to share, but not many – it seems that in the last full week of my summer vacation, I finally decided to get out of the house and venture out into the world, so I’ve spent this week meeting up with friends all over town and even doing a little shopping. This seriously has not happened all summer – for the most part, I’ve stayed up super-late (4 AM at most) and slept in late (getting up around 9:30) then sat around in my pajamas all day catching up on documentaries and editing photos or videos. Seriously. I’ve never done so much nothing for so long in my life, but I guess I really needed that sort of rest, because it hasn’t bothered me at all. Obviously I also filmed a TON of videos and took lots of pictures, but still – both of those things can be done in at least half of my pajamas (I may be wearing a lovely top in my wig vids, but below the waist it’s strictly sweatpants, trust me. And bare feet. With a rock plopped down on the floor between said feet, so I don’t start shifting while I’m talking and turning around to show the wig, which would move me out of focus because my camera has no autofocus. Ah, the glamour of the wig reviewer).

I did film reviews for my new Angelica, Seville, May, and Code Mono, so those will be uploaded soon. And I still have a Stevie by Amore that I got in the mail Monday and have not even taken out of the box – which proves I’ve been busy because usually, I will rip into those boxes as soon as they arrive. I think being happy with my real hair now is part of the reason, too, since I’m less consistently inclined to cover it up right now.

How short my hair was when I started

My birthday came and went without much fanfare, as usual, except as I pointed out to Lana I’ve been basically buying wigs with abandon all month and claiming “birthday present” with each purchase, as well as putting yet another Fendi Spy bag on layaway. And in case I forgot to mention it, another Stitch Fix came and went without so much as an iPhone photo, because I decided not to keep anything and I didn’t think I’d have enough time to take decent photos before my three-day window to ship them back passed. It was a nice enough fix with only one thing I didn’t like (a mini-dress), but with all the wig-shopping I’ve done this month I decided to just let the whole thing go. I do kind of regret the olive-green lace biker jacket I sent back though; it was really cute.

Modified version of an above photo – not sure why I like this weird edit, but I do

I’ll be honest, I don’t have too much more to add here and am just throwing in words as filler between photos. Thank you for reading.

This was not a leap – just Photoshop levitation trickery

Drag Days of Summer, Part Two

Posted on July 19, 2015 by marey mercy

OK, here we go with the actual photos! The ones I’ve had a chance to edit, at least, from Wednesday’s shoot. But first:

I actually have some shots to share from June that I never posted. First up is a few more with this fab striped skirt I got from The Gap – it really photographs well!

That was actually what I call an “unjump,” meaning an attempted jump shot that I timed wrong and did not capture properly. Both the unjump above and the next one are also composites – the top half of me is from one shot while the bottom half is from another:

In both cases, I just didn’t like something that was going on in the top half (I think in one my hair was completely covering my face and in the other I just didn’t look too graceful) so I did my best to layer two different shots together. Took a long time, but I think I pulled it off OK.

Also, not gonna lie – in the shot directly above, the shadows were hitting my face in an unflattering manner, causing my nose to look unnaturally big. So, I used Photoshop to make it thinner. Then, I realized my eyes looked wonky with the thinner nose, so I worked some more magic to move them a leeeeetle father apart from each other, and thus balancing them with the nose. Have you ever heard how if you try to get plastic surgery on one part of your face, you often have to alter another to make it look right? Well, that’s kinda what happened here, only, not permanent. Still, in the end I look a bit less like myself than normal, but whatevs. I already had a torso from one shot and the legs of a different one, so why stop there, right? Moving on.

Here’s another shot I took of Robin when I was messing around with her after making my video review:

As in the last shot I shared, this one is also two different pics of the wig combined to give it more interesting movement. And lately I’ve been experimenting with some softer light filters than I’ve ever used before; I’m in a phase of feeling less insistent on absolute clarity and trying out softer looks. Who knows why. Always something to change up.

This is a shot I took of Brandi during the same shoot where I took the Robin pics (obviously, since the clothing is the same). Brandi is much more full, so I didn’t need to layer two photos together to get that much movement. One more from this set, this time ridiculously Pixlr‘ed:

The original pic was out of focus, but I really liked how it looked in spite of that; there was a really nice shape to the flowing hair, so I chose to work with it anyway. I think I may have over-done the Pixlr overlays, but they have added so many cool ones lately I kind of can’t stop tinkering (I love the ‘mermaid’ and ‘candyminimal’ ones in particular). Speaking of overdoing it with Pixlr:

I’d really started to get bored with June’s shots by this time, and dug back into the ol’ archives to find something else to edit. In the end it felt a bit boring, so I ran it through the Pixlr grinder also. Another old one I worked with that I did NOT Pixlr-fy was this one:

That’s one of my favorite photo wigs, even though I tried to trim the bangs myself and really jacked them up. Not too noticeable when I’m throwing the wig around, fortunately.

Okay, so now on to the most recent stuff:

I already mentioned the makeup process I went through for this shoot, so can we talk about this sweater now? I got this from my favorite online store for vintage costume-like goodies, The Kissing Tree. Whenever I’m feeling a little bored with my current stash of costumes I go check them out (usually at their eBay store), and when I came across this thing I knew I’d found my next purchase. It is perfect for portraits because there’s so much going on, it can be used in many different ways even within the same shoot without it really looking like it’s the same sweater every time. It has a great feathery collar, and I love love LOVE clothing with texture; the sleeves are not only striped BUT they have little fabric balls AND beads AND rhinestones – fabulous! Just moving my arms around in interesting ways make very unique pictures – like this:

Then, for added fun, it also has that huge heart right in the middle. I didn’t actually use this sweater in nearly as many ways as I could have in this set, but I love any article of clothing that lends itself to a lot of different looks just by positioning the body in different ways. And at $34 it was a steal. The only downside is that it’s a sweater, and a heavy one at that, so for taking photos under bright lights in July in a small studio with tons of windows, it can get pretty hot, but I just stuck on some shorts and did the best I could – most of the shots I took were portraits; I spent two hours on that makeup and I was determined to get the most out of it! So for most of the shots wearing shorts that in no way matched the top was fine.

To maximize the shoot, I also made as many wig changes as possible:

See what I mean about that sweater? This photo doesn’t even look like it’s from the same shoot! And there’s that softer lighting again. One thing I did differently this time was really neutralize a lot of the color in the RAW files so that I didn’t get some of the blown-out brightness and discoloration I tend to get when processing, but I think that resulted in my face looking too white later. That, and the fact that I used too much highlighting on my face when applying the makeup. Anyway, that led to me having to add some detail into the shots using shadows and filters, and I think I leaned towards softer light effects to help soften the face overall. If any of that makes sense. Also, my blending wasn’t great so I spent a lot of time smoothing out that eyeshadow, and I messed around with my nose a lot in most of the shots. I found that enlarging my nostrils just a bit really changed how I looked, so I did a lot of little tweaking like that here and there just to accentuate the drag-effect I was going for. Kind of the same technique I used for this one:

My face came out REALLY white in this one so again, the softer light helped to add some dimension and detail back to my face. And who knew that Rene of Paris Caitlyn would make such a great photography wig? I almost sold it, but in the end I decided against it because t was inexpensive and I thought it MIGHT be good for photos – that sure was a good call, because I LOVE how it looked in this set. I’ve been gravitating towards short wigs lately for photoshoots anyway, especially when I’ve just spent two hours on my makeup; they are so much easier to work with when posing, and they stay out of the face. I can’t get all that good flowy motion I love, so there’s always a tradeoff, but especially with the summer heat the shorties are definitely a good option to have.

They don’t look as good for jumping, though,but it was pretty hot in the sweater already so I stuck with Caitlyn for my leaps – which really weren’t leaps but levitations:

For this one I was leaning over a stool, then I layered that over a blank shot I took of the background so I could erase the stool out of the shot. This was mainly tricky because of the hand I was leaning on in the original:

That hand was a real giveaway; it did not look at all natural when I was “floating” and made it obvious I’d been leaning on something, so I went back to my other shots from this point in the set, and found a hand I thought I could layer over the original one. However, THAT hand had all my fingers spread apart, and it was an absolute bitch to essentially cut and paste properly without the edges of the fingers looking really unnatural and obvious. I am not sure why it took me so long to give up on that hand and just go find another one; I think I spent something like four hours working on this photo and a good two of those hours were dealing with that stupid hand! In fact I gave up for the night eventually and returned to it the next day – at which point the solution became obvious, which was, duh, go find another hand.

Funnily enough, the hand I used ended up being the original hand from the next shot I processed; I didn’t notice that until I was editing this shot and working to erase the stool and had to maneuver around the hand again and thought, hey, this is as easy as it was working with that hand in my other shot – oh hey! It’s the same hand! Hi, Hand!

So now you can scroll up to the first levitation shot and see the same exact hand in that one as is here. Isn’t that completely uninteresting? And aren’t you glad I spent an entire paragraph and half talking about it? Of course you are. And in this shot, I was once again posing on a stool in the original, and used the same blank backdrop shot to layer over. My lips were also wonky in the shot, and in trying to fix the wonkiness I made them huge, then decided I kinda liked how they looked and kept them. Oh, and shadows. They’ve been a bitch for me ever since I started trying to edit them into levitation shots to make them look real, and I finally figured out a strategy that works for me. Instead of using the burn tool with a fairly small brush and drawing an outline around myself, I just make the thing HUGE and slap it over the entire subject several times, then erase the shadows from my body and reduce the opacity, and BAM. A nice shadow every time!

In yesterday’s post, I mentioned that I was playing around with lighting throughout this set, too (remember, I spent two hours on that makeup and was determined to get as many different looks as I could out of this shoot!). In most of the shots I had my Speedlight attached to the camera and bounced off the ceiling for some nice soft light, but occasionally I’d attach a light bender to it and aim bright light directly at my face for a different look:

Much harsher shadows behind me, and a lot less shadows on my face with a much brighter light. It’s a harsher look, and overall I don’t care for this effect as much as I do the softer ones, but for something different it’ll do.

And to sum up for now (who knows how many more of these I’ll edit – I have a few wigs and looks I haven’t even processed yet) here’s one last wig change:

That wig is called “Sava” and I think it was made by Vanessa Wigs. I’ve gotten more photographic use out of that $20 wig than many of my costlier ones; it’s interesting, it’s easy to wear, and it works with so many different looks, believe it or not. Great wig. And those are some older Zenni Optical glasses I got and kept even though they are no longer the right prescription, because they’re awesome.

Whoo I am all out of words! Which is great, because I’m also all out of photos for now. More to come though, as well as some new wig reviews: Camille by TressAllure (which is really Shilo by Noriko, but with a lace front); Miranda by Amore; Stevie by Amore; Kenzie by Noriko; an updated Code Mono by Ellen Wille; a Seville in Macadamia-LR by Noriko; a May by Noriko; and another Noriko Angelica (also in Macadamia-LR). Sheesh, did I really just admit to buying all of those?! As I may have said before, it’s my birthday this month, so I partied it up a little early with my purchasing. School starts in two weeks anyway, and I know my wig reviewing will either calm WAY down or possibly grind to a complete halt, so I’m getting it all in while I still can! Never fear though – I still have oodles of old vids to upload, so that should continue to either annoy or entertain you through the first semester, at least.

Oh and also – my July Stitch Fix will be here Wednesday, so that’s happening too. What can I say, folks – stay tuned!

Plane Plan

Posted on June 14, 2015 by marey mercy

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

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

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

Welp, there it is.

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

#F-GSQA – Air France Boeing 777-200

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

#N509NK – Spirit Airlines Airbus 319-100

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

#N618NK – Spirit Airlines Airbus A320

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

#N703ABV – Avianca Airbus A319

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

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

#N281SE – Piper Malibu Meridian

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Just Shoot Me

Posted on April 5, 2015 by marey mercy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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