Lightening Up

Posted on May 31, 2014 by marey mercy

First of all I apologize for the rambling mess that is this post; it’s late and I am struggling to keep my eyes open, but I wanted to post some shots from today’s spontaneous set before turning in. So forgive me for being less than eloquent here.

I got off work early and decided to play around in makeup and take portrait shots, then the best pic of the 500 I took was one where my face doesn’t show at all – go figure.

I love that top for photos, even though the cropped aspect of it is problematic. Sure I look OK in this photo, but there’s plenty of others were I most decidedly do NOT, which is why I tried to take all my photos of the head and shoulders only; I just missed the mark in some of them like the one above. But the asymmetry and vibrant color really make it a good photography top, exposed skin notwithstanding. I actually cropped this one to share it on Facebook because I’m not totally thrilled with the amount of skin I’m showing here; it’s just that the shape my body made in conjunction with the curls and the one-sleeved top was very visually appealing, so I prefer this longer version to my Facebook one (which has cropped out the entire abdomen area. I’m a bit of a prude about skin-showing, what can I say).

Anyway, there’s the makeup. I think I did a pretty good job. I really wanted that yellow to pop, so I loaded up on it as well as on eyeliner and brow pencil (as usual). I even added a little cleft to my chin, but it may look more like I smudged off my makeup right there. not sure.

This next one was a mistake – I meant to reduce the exposure of my Speedlite but accidentally increased it instead, and this shot was blasted out from the flash. I decided to try and edit one of the shots I took like this before I realized what I’d done, but on its own it wasn’t quite right.

The highlighted areas are all too flat and there’s a lot of purple tint to my skin, so I uploaded this one to Pixlr and came up with the following:

Eh, it’s a little campy but I like it all right. I have a lot more to process as I was actually playing around with light a lot in this set – using reflectors and off-camera Speedlites and what have you – and I took over 500 photos (!). But I ran out of time and energy tonight to edit any more than these, so more coming over the weekend I am sure!

Lens Appeal

Posted on May 29, 2014 by marey mercy

I’m not going to go on about my new Canon SL1 again, I’ll just share a few photos to show pics with the 55-250mm I bought for it.

This is an EF-S lens, so I thought meant I wouldn’t be able to use it with my 7D, but apparently I can. I’m not sure why I would do that, though, when I already have the L-series telephoto to use with it; I guess it could come in handy if I need a zoom but the weight of the L-series becomes too heavy. Other than that, the real reason for this one was to have a zoom lens for the SL1 – it definitely adds weight but overall the Rebel still feels light with it on.

I have to agree with people who comment on the cheap-ish feel of this lens, but once I just put the thing on the camera and start shooting with it I can get over it. It only put me out $180 so what else should I expect but lots of plastic, which on the upside keeps the weight down. And it took pretty nice photos as well.

Since all I did was wander around the backyard again, I don’t have a whole lot of thrilling pics to share. I mostly just wanted to test it out and see if it would work – which it will. The last photo I’ll share is one showing the maximum zoom, I took it of a bird’s nest (or something, I think it’s a bird’s nest but what the hell do I know about nature) in one of our front yard trees; the shot on the left is at 55mm while on the right the lens is at 250:

Not bad!

So there it is – the new toy is fully loaded and ready to roar. I took it up to the school again today and used it to shoot some portraits of our head football coach, who won the Coach of the Year award for our school’s division. It performed beautifully, and if I’d remembered to send myself a copy of the picture I’d share it with you here, but I did not. So you’ll have to trust me when I say it took fabulous shots.

The students’ last day of school was today, so tomorrow will be interesting; just all of us winding down and transitioning into summer. There’s a faculty party tomorrow night but I never, ever attend social events at the conclusion of the school year. I’m already done, and prefer to go straight home after the last day and rest rather than spend yet more time talking to people with whom I work. I’m just never in the mood for it. So hopefully I can get some more pictures done soon – I’m wanting to get dressed up and levitate again, but just haven’t had the time these past few weeks. I bought a few vintage pieces I’d like to try on and try out, but they may have to wait awhile longer.

Terminal History

Posted on May 15, 2014 by marey mercy

At last, I have edited more pictures from my trip with my dad to the 1940 Air Terminal Museum. It’s the site of what was the original terminal for Hobby Airport, which opened in, not surprisingly, 1940.

This photo looks a lot like the photo on the website, the difference being I took this one. Also my dad is in the window. Other than those two things, it’s the museum sign, yep.

I was so excited to get out the back door and onto the tarmac that I didn’t take pictures of much else, but here’s a longer shot of the entrance:

I have to tell you that as I look at these photos of the front entrance, all I can think about is that I locked my keys in the car when we were there, and we spent a ridiculous amount of time standing around in that parking lot during the heat of the day waiting for AAA to show up and break into my car. Except, once that happened, we discovered that my keys were not in my car at all, and had fallen out of my purse somehow and gotten lost somewhere in the museum or behind it where all the planes were. So my dad and I, along with all the museum volunteers, spent an hour or two scouring the place looking for my keys, only to have me discover while talking to a volunteer and glancing down into my purse that they were actually stuck in a side pocket the whole time. Mind you – this is after AAA showed up and broke into my car. I was too mortified to tell anyone, and kept it a secret until I got my dad alone so we could share a good laugh over the absurdity of it (the whole time I thought they were lost I kept repeating “this doesn’t make sense, I never lose my keys!” over and over, turned out I was right). Then we both decided not to tell the volunteers a thing about it, walked out to my car and pretended to dig around in the trunk some more, and came back in claiming the keys had been buried under the trunk lining. Good times.

The museum’s foyer, restored to its original appearance. The museum hasn’t been open long, and does not yet have the funds to restore the second floor, so it is off-limits. Also, I think all of those people are looking for my keys.

One funny thing about the lost-keys fiasco was how one-track-minded the volunteers were about the whole airplane thing. Most of the volunteers and visitors were male, slightly older than middle-aged, and plane enthusiasts of one stripe or another. Many were photographers. There were a few married couples with small children wandering about, but overall it was an older male crowd. And me. It was also one of the friendliest groups I’ve been around in some time – full of information and ready to share. I had people suggesting good camera settings and spots to take pictures as well as offering background of different planes that were on the runway, like these planes, which are apparently planes from other countries that flew into the airport and were confiscated for one reason or another:

But back to the lost keys: so there we were, my dad and I, on my cell phone trying to call AAA and figure out the address to the museum. At this point I’m a little panicked because I don’t yet realize, of course, that I do have a way to start my car and get us out of there, and I’m wondering just how long we’re going to be stuck at the airport. Then in the middle of all that a man with a camera slung around his shoulder came over, exclaiming excitedly that a Frontier Airlines jet was about to queue up on the runway, and it was really rare to get a glimpse of one there, and I really should grab my camera and get ready to take pictures. I kept explaining to him, no really sir, I am on the phone with triple A, you see I HAVE LOST MY KEYS and am trying to find them, so no I really do not want to go take pictures of a Frontier Airlines jet right now, thank you. He totally did not get it. It was something else my dad and I laughed about later, how when a good jet came up the runway, no one cared about anything else in the slightest. Of course, when I looked up their airplanes on Google, they do look pretty cool, and I’m rather sorry now I didn’t just go outside for the ten minutes it would have taken to snap the photos and continued with my car key search afterwards, especially now that I know my keys weren’t lost after all.

One of the planes you can view from the tarmac behind the museum

We also missed out on the opportunity to walk with a volunteer down to “the hangar” as they kept calling it, to view some planes up close and personal that I gathered were kind of a big deal, but again, car keys.

It was such an enjoyable day, and I’d really like to get back there again. Of course, there’s the whole car-key humiliation to deal with, but it’s been awhile now so perhaps they’ve forgotten. I think the fundraiser this month is titled “Learn How To Fly Day” so I probably should sit this one out as I’d most likely lose the keys to the plane and ruin everyone’s day. But I gotta go back sometime to get a photo of a Frontier Airlines jet, if nothing else.

One of the many planes I will not be flying

Fab Pants

Posted on May 14, 2014 by marey mercy

Because I take and process so many photos, I am often pressed for what to title them so that I can keep track of them on my hard drive. I have to do something with them other than just use the numbered data they are given when uploaded to my computer, so I tend to give them whatever title pops into my head first when it’s time to save an edited file. The title that popped into my head when working with the shots I took Saturday was “Fab Pants.”

Then every shot from that set that I process I just number; so far I’ve got a “Fab Pants 1” and a “Fab Pants 2.” This is all I’ve had time to edit since I last updated, but I wanted to share it so I had to reach a bit to come up with a blog post, hence the rather lame rambling I’m doing right now. By the way, for anyone who’s curious – I actually had my leg up on a chair when taking this shot. Then I used the composite technique to remove the chair when processing. I’m getting better at this whole thing, I think. Even added some decent shadows this time using the burn tool in Photoshop CS5.

I also thought I’d share that I suffered my first optical tragedy during Saturday’s shoot: I always wear a spare pair of glasses when I’m shooting self-portraits because there’s so much putting on and whipping off of the spectacles that I worry about stretching out my real pair. I have several spares to choose from but I use the weirdest ones since I care about them the least. I will usually keep the glasses on until right before I hit the remote, then I toss them onto the floor somewhere for the photo, and sadly, on Saturday after posing for the shot above my left foot came down right smack on top of them and broke them. I knew it would happen someday, and as I said it’s fortunate that they were a pair I didn’t like very much – although they looked great in photos, they were too harsh on my face to wear them out of the house, and my husband always said they made me look angry. I don’t think he’ll be sorry to hear they had to go.

By the way, it appears that Fly Fest 2014 has finally wound down, a torturous six days from when it started, with just a few stragglers hanging about that have yet to leave the party. Here’s hoping that’s the last aspect of the cycle of life currently breaking down inside our bedroom wall that we have to deal with.

Kinks and Links

Posted on May 9, 2014 by marey mercy

The kinks in my title refers to getting them worked out of my arm again with good ol’ Sandy. And Sandy? Has had enough, y’all. Of her husband, mostly. Today’s OMG moment came when Sandy was working on my right shoulder and suddenly started giggling. Then she kind of put her head down on the massage table for a moment and said, ‘You know, I’m really not a bad person, but…” and for those of you who know Sandy, you’ll be surprised to hear that she did not conclude that sentence with a mention of squirrel-shooting (actually you probably won’t be surprised, because Sandy would never consider herself a bad person for shooting a squirrel). What she did conclude it with was the statement that Thursday morning her husband had been feeling “frisky” and for the first time in her life, she told him, “You know what, no. You’ve been doing everything the same for forty-plus years, and I’ve had enough. I AM NOT IN THE MOOD.” I was little flabbergasted Sandy’s been married forty-plus years and this is the first time she’s ever told her husband to put that thing away, but I’m beginning to suspect Sandy has a tendency to exaggerate. And is it sad that the first thing I thought when Sandy told me this story was, “I can’t wait to share this on my blog”? The links in my title refers to one link, actually, not several, but I wanted to be parallel so I had to make it plural. Forgive me. The point is, a feature has been published about my photography on the Pixlr blog. They do an occasional segment called “Follow-Worthy” which features a photographer they consider to be, well, worth following. And apparently I made the cut. Supereric from Flickr, who writes for the Pixlr blog, contacted me earlier this week and sent me the questions, and now he’s got the blog post up and running. So without further ado, I’ll quit talking here so you can go read what I’m saying over there: Follow Worthy: Marey Mercy. A big thanks to Eric and the folks at the Pixlr site for doing me the honor. I’ve shared that link with everyone I can possibly brag to about it, so I hope they saw a nice increase in numbers. You know – because I know hordes of people and all.

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:

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:

Takes on a Plane

Posted on April 20, 2014 by marey mercy

As I waded through all my photos from Saturday’s outing to some planespotting sites at Hobby Airport, I had a few thoughts I’d like to share, and I’ll throw in a few more photos to boot.

I’ve realized I have zero interest in smaller, private planes. Yes, they can also fly, but the sheer size of a commercial jet or a military plane is what makes that act so impressive to me, I guess, while those little planes or private jets are so small they fail to wow me. I suppose what I’m saying is, when it comes to planes, size matters – at least to me. Plenty of little planes flew in to visit the museum’s fundraiser, and a few zipped past the observation areas when I had my camera out shooting airliners,so I snapped a lot of them – but I can’t bring myself to care enough about them to get them edited. Sorry.

I also noticed that when shooting the airplanes taxiing or taking off from inside the airport, all the heat coming off the ground distorted the image of the plane. Some of that can be cool if it’s strategically placed, like in the shot above where the heat can be seen distorting the picture from underneath and behind the plane, but when the whole jet looks squiggly it’s a problem. Not sure what to do about that in the future, but if I just shoot them in the air the problem is solved, so that’s one way to fix it. My photos, for the most part, didn’t come out as crisp as I would have liked them to be, but the truth is I only needed one really good shot to feel like I accomplished something with this sort of thing, and I think I got one this time out – it’s the one I shared at the bottom of yesterday’s post. For now at least, a lot of what I shoot will be sub-par, but if I end up with one real winner I’ll be happy.

I did take some time today, once I figured out how to find EXIF data on the new Flickr layout, to check out camera settings and lenses used on planespotting photos I admire, and it does appear I could have set a much higher shutter speed and reduced the hell out of my ISO and gotten better results – my shutter speed was generally about 1/250 and I had the ISO upped to 640, while most EXIF data showed shutter speeds of around 1/1000 and an ISO of 200. Oops. Makes me feel better to know this, though, because a lot of people in the know commented that I did, in fact, buy a great lens for this sort of thing, and I was wondering why I got so many soft shots. Not that I’m complaining; as I said, I got several really nice ones and more than a few that are still satisfactory even if they’re not stellar, but obviously I want to improve where I can and do better next time.

Also, aside from looking for clarity, I’m not yet sure artistically what to consider a ‘good shot’. I’ve always had an instinct with my portraits regarding what to keep and what to throw away, and can easily narrow down a set to the ‘best’ shots; but with these I’m rather overwhelmed. Just when I think I’ve got a handle on what I like, I venture out to the internet and find an awesome photo that breaks all the new rules I’ve just set up for myself – at first I thought I only liked shots of the planes in the air, but then I saw some awesome stuff taken on the ground; then I thought I only liked close-ups, until I saw some cool shots of the planes disappearing into the sky. I know it sounds like I’m being crazy picky and analytical here, but not yet having an instinct for how to cull the best shots from a set is really overwhelming – I either think everything is good or everything stinks, and I have no basic preferences from which to start choosing. I think that’s partly because I really didn’t think I’d be able to take shots like this with any level of success; everything about it is so far out of my comfort zone (taking shots in public, of fast-moving objects, in an environment where I control very little about the shot itself) that I never really believed I’d be able to do it. But it turns out I can – I have a lot to learn, yes, but even on my first outing I got some decent stuff, and I managed not to make a fool of myself while doing it. I kind of actually appeared to know what I was up to while I was out there shooting, and the fact that I might actually be able to get a grip on this surprises no one as much as it does me. I expected the shooting experience to be different, but wasn’t prepared for how overwhelming the editing would be. I guess you could say I’m a bit “in the clouds” about it right now. Moving on.

I was a bit surprised to discover a hangar going up in flames in the background when I processed this one

One more thing: I took some time this morning to search the internet for the registration numbers of these airplanes, and what I found was pretty awesome. For example, this jetBlue’s recent flight history is here, and you can see the actual flight on April 19th when I took this photo listed. There’s no real reason to find this cool, except for the idea that airplanes – and airports themselves, really – are all about connection, and journeying, and departing, and arriving; all sorts of magical human stuff that fascinates me about aviation in general. It never ceases to amaze me that humanity has figured out how to put these huge metal monstrosities in the sky, and take flight. So, being able to capture a second of that happening, to freeze it mid-flight then go online and find out where that very airplane has been, and where it’s going (as well as finding all the photos of it that have been taken by others over the years) is incredibly uplifting to me – no pun intended. I guess when I look at an airplane I’m still a little kid in awe of it all.

Tomorrow there will be no more plane photos to share, as I think I’ve exhausted all the ones I felt were worth editing. But I will show some of the museum, and talk more about how the day went in general. Stay tuned! Or don’t if you’re totally bored and pissed that I’m not posting about makeup and wigs. I’m sure I’ll get back to all that soon enough.

Plane and Simple

Posted on April 19, 2014 by marey mercy

2014 isn’t halfway over and I’ve already fulfilled my photography bucket list – I held a real photoshoot in an honest-to-god studio, and now I’ve taken pics of airplanes. I wonder what I need to do next? I have no idea, but I am happy as hell with the airplane shots I got today. All in all, I completely filled up one 32G CF card and put a serious dent in the second, much smaller one I brought along just in case. About 1400 photos in all, and some of them were exactly what I was hoping for!

My dad and I behind the aviation history museum

The aviation museum was great, and I got some photos of the space, but I haven’t processed those yet because I was most excited about the commercial jet photos. Once a month the museum opens up the back tarmac to incoming planes and serves food as a little fundraiser; it provides photographers a pretty close-up view of a nearby airport runway. That was cool, and my telephoto lens served me well, but honestly, the best shots were to be had at the ‘family viewing areas’ located around the airport.

One of the two airport viewing areas opened to the public around the runways

It’s late and my arm is killing me, so I’m going to share some shots and keep things brief for now, but I’ve got loads to say about the day with my dad. It was tons of fun and we are raring to hit up the much larger Intercontinental Airport soon, which also has viewing areas where one can take photos, so I can get shots of a bigger variety of planes. Since Hobby Airport is home base to one particular airline, almost all the planes I shot today were this company’s jets. I’ll see if you can guess which one it is after you see some of the shots.

One of the shots taken at the end of the runway right behind the museum

The runway behind the museum was pretty busy with planes taking off, and each time one taxied out to the end of it, it would turn around and face directly into my camera for a few seconds before turning off to the left and throttling up the engines. So I got loads of nose shots like that. Then one time this happened:

Have you figured out what airline it is yet?

I like the heat waves radiating out from the underbelly of the plane, and the placement of them, obviously. As the planes took off, the runway angled farther away from me, so I didn’t get any decent shots of them lifting off – I took a ton, but the plane is too small for them to be exciting. However, I did snap a few good ones as the planes sped by:

Even though most of them were blurry, I thought this one looked nice, and the blurring of the grass shows the speed at which it was already moving. The sky wasn’t all that pretty here, but as the day wore on it got better. Also it got hotter, and unfortunately I am now sunburned as I didn’t think to put on sunscreen.

This plane is called the “Kangeroo Crew,” and it partners with Texas Children’s Hospital to fly children in need to and from its’ medical facilities. It just happened to be taking off while we were still at the museum, and the volunteers there were all very nice men and women who were sure to alert me when an interesting airplane was about to take off – even if they had to chase me down to be sure I knew about it. Great people.

Believe it or not, there actually are other airlines at Hobby Airport besides Southwest, but to be honest, this American Airlines plane just wasn’t photogenic. The Southwest planes really stand out, and this one blends into everything so much that it provided very little visual appeal – at least, that’s how I feel about it. Still, I took pictures of it anyway, so there you go.

I really wish this shot had come out better; it’s a cool placement of the two planes, but it’s pretty blurry and the color was blah. We were at the museum during the brightest part of the day, so color was tricky. Still, almost a cool shot, and the only decent one I have of wheels leaving the ground.

Now, onto the shots I took from the viewing areas – these were where I could catch some real winners (and as is always the case for me, I’m saving the best one for last).

I did not manage to get this entire Delta plane into any of my close shots; they moved too fast and came in at an odd angle that made it hard for me gauge ahead of time how much zoom to use. So, this was the best I got, but look how close it is! Way better than what I could get at the museum. Check this one out:

I mean seriously! If the pilot had known I was down there, he could’ve waved at me and I would’ve caught it. These shots were taken at the end of the day, when I was sunburned and tired (due partly to the minor disaster of me locking my keys in my car at the museum – erm, sort of – more on this later) and almost out of memory on my camera, but next time I’m going straight to the viewing areas and hitting up the museum for french fries later. I have an app on my iPhone called Flightradar24 which tracks flight traffic all over the globe (but only if they emit from a certain type of transponder or something, still, it’s an amazing amount of flight traffic to monitor) and my dad sat in the car watching it while I stood outside with my camera ready; when he saw something heading our way he’d shout out where it was coming from and what it was, and in that manner we team-worked our way through the shoot. As I may have mentioned, my father is an airplane fanatic (although WWII airplanes are his thing) and he is as obsessive about his interests as I am, so he was totally game for all of this. In fact, I was the one who eventually conked out and had to quit – we were all about the airplanes from 10:30 AM to 3 PM.

And now, without further ado, the best damn shot of the day. This right here is THE EXACT SHOT I was going for – I didn’t care what type of plane it was, I just wanted to get this shot:

BAM! Perfection! At least in my eyes it is!! Notice how much nicer the sky is here, and well, that the rest of it is awesome.

Much more to come, including shots of the museum and a JetBlue airliner, which everyone at the museum made a very big deal out of when it lined up to take off, so it must not be a plane that regularly flies out of this airport or something. My telephoto lens made me proud (lots of planespotters at the museum confirmed I’d made a wise choice for this kind of photography in buying it) and my dad and I had a real blast and are ready to try it again. I’m just going to have to remember to wear sunscreen next time, and to not (sort of) lock my keys in my car.

Macro’ed Up

Posted on April 18, 2014 by marey mercy

First of all, I got confirmation at work today that next year I can move out of counseling and into a teaching position at the school. So yay to that. And also:

My macro lens arrived! Like my last eBay lens, it shipped quickly and seems to be in good working order. I wandered around the house and backyard this evening attempting to take close-up shots. The lens was a little tricky to work with, but mostly because I haven’t done any reading about the best way to use it; I just threw it on the camera body and started walking around snapping photos of things. Mostly I had a hard time getting the lens to focus, and I had to put my Speedlite on it to get enough light which made my camera pretty damn heavy; this may be my heaviest lens yet.

That’s a shot of the chandelier, BTW. I am pretty happy at this point with my lens collection; I think I’ve got a nice variety of choices to use in different situations and for different effects. At some point I’ll line all my lenses up for a photo of them, but I’m not in the mood tonight. It’s late already and I’ve got a full day ahead tomorrow.

This is a shot of the beveled glass in our front door. Apparently we need to clean it; didn’t notice that until processing the photo.

And this is some sort of decorative geegaw that was stuck into a floral arrangement. Damn, it’s also dusty. I’m going to have to do a better job cleaning if I’m going to keep using the macro lens around the house. Oh, who am I kidding. I’m going to have to do a better job paying someone else to clean my house if I keep using the macro lens around the house. #firstworldproblems.

This is a bracelet that was hanging on a jewelry box that sits on top my vanity. I have loads of bracelets and earrings that I never wear, so at this point they’re more like decorative accessories for my bathroom counter. Not as dusty as the other stuff though, so that’s a positive.

As far as jewelry goes, I’m not much for anything other than necklaces. I don’t wear earrings at all anymore, and even my so-called wedding ring is a simple band from Tiffany’s – I love it because it has a tiny band of Tiffany’s blue running through it, but it isn’t an official wedding ring or anything. I had one I wore for 13 years, but I developed an allergy to the nickel in it and had to replace it. When looking for a new ring, I couldn’t generate enough interest in anything I looked at to feel inspired to spend thousands of dollars, so I went with the sterling silver band with Tiffany’s blue and am fine and dandy with it. It only cost $150. Much less than this macro lens I’m using. I realize that at this point it would make sense to have a macro shot of my faux wedding ring, but I didn’t actually plan this little digression in advance so I didn’t take any. Moving on.

Well, what can I say? This is my favorite so far. Penny is hard to catch in front of the camera.

Getty-ing There

Posted on April 17, 2014 by marey mercy

I wasn’t going to write a blog post today, but after getting back from my weekly appointment with crazy massage lady Sandy (this week we discussed recipes, mostly, and home decorating, and lots of complaints about her husband) I decided to finally check out the links Getty Images has been sending me the past few months, detailing the changes they’ve made to their Flickr Contributor program.

I may have mentioned here before that I was accepted into the program a little over a year ago. My photos are here. When I was first invited to become a contributor, I checked the website constantly to see if I had any sales, but I never did, so eventually I forgot about it. But a few months ago Getty ended their partnership with Flickr, and started emailing contributors to let them know how they were changing our connections to their site. I kept getting the emails while I was at work and unable to really check into it, but about an hour ago I remembered about the messages and clicked on over to my Getty Contributor page to see what was up. Well lo and behold – I actually had money in my account. Turns out that just a few weeks ago I sold a copy of one of my photos, and on April 25th I’m getting $155.00 deposited into my PayPal account – it feels like free money! The photo Getty sold was this one.

Also, I no longer have to wait until Getty contacts me asking for a certain photo they saw on Flickr that they liked – I can just upload photos directly to my account and someone from Getty will review it and decide whether or not to take it. This is much easier, except that I have to fill out a model release for every single photo that has a human in it, which is a pain. But I’m going to upload some non-human stuff as soon as possible and get model releases from friends I’ve photographed so I can upload more portraits and jumping shots to my contributor page.

So, I’ve officially made my first sale. And I didn’t even know it.

mareymercy.

Art, Horror, and Other Obsessions

Tag Archives: Photography