Portrait Portions

Posted on July 24, 2014 by marey mercy

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bored-trait

Posted on July 22, 2014 by marey mercy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!

A Few More to Share

Posted on March 23, 2014 by marey mercy

I’ve processed about 20 of the photos from last Monday’s shoot, and my energy and interest is starting to wear down. Still, 20 shots isn’t a bad payload at all, so it’s all good. The levitation shots didn’t work out at all, so that cut down on the end results considerably, but I do still have some nice jump shots to process that won’t involve too much beyond the basic editing, so in the end I bet we get closer to 30 out of the whole thing, which actually may be a record for me.

Here’s a few more I’ve worked on in the past few days, which actually isn’t many because I’ve been doing other things, including getting obsessed with Mad Men about six seasons late so I’ve been binge-watching that, plus getting my hair done yesterday which took a ridiculously long time to look basically no different after I was done (roots touched up and a simple trim for $200 and it took almost three hours because my stylist was running all kinds of behind), plus my father-in-law has been in the hospital getting his gallbladder removed, so lots of other stuff going on.

I have to say, Candace’s son was amazingly well-behaved while we shot photos for three hours, but he was a little shy in front of the camera, doing more giggling than actual posing. Still I did get him to jump about five times, and this was one of the best ones (he didn’t quite grasp the concept of looking at the camera while leaping). What can I say – super-cute kiddo, and I’ll have a few more to process of him later (although he was part of the 85-mm lens switch without changing camera settings fiasco, so most of his portraits came out blurry).

And there’s one of his mom – too bad they’re not a more handsome family. huh (/sarcasm)? This was one taken with the 85mm too, so I futzed with it enough to hide the blurriness, hopefully.

And there’s another one of Tamara, for good measure. You know I love hair flying about! I had to bring my own fan though – that’s one thing the studio didn’t have.

This is one of many cool leaping shots I still need to process, although obviously I did process this one. I just remembered I still have lots of yoga shots to edit too – so it looks like I’ll get another good week of editing out of this shoot. Not bad for the $70 or whatever I ended up paying for the studio, and I can feel my interest and energy coming back just thinking about the nice photos still available for processing!

Spot Blogging

Posted on January 2, 2014 by marey mercy

Today I stumbled across a little Rogue spotlight I bought about a year ago to attach to my Speedlite; I’d only tried it out once before forgetting about it. At the time I wasn’t very interested in what it could do as I’d also bought a small softbox and got way more into using that than this little thing. So after coming across it again, I decided it was time to play around with it and commit more to learning how to use it.

Spotted!

The detachable spotlight also came with a sample gel filter to put over the spot for color effects; it was an orange one, but I’d definitely like to get more colors at some point. I stuck the gel on the spot and ended up doing the bulk of the shots with it in. The results were interesting – I actually used the orange gel on the shot above, but edited a black and white version also to show the spot effect without any color distractions. Here’s the actual shot using the orange filter:

Pretty damn warm – believe it or not, I actually REDUCED the color in this shot when editing. That’s some serious orange.

Apparently this came with three different grids to create tighter or wider spotlighting, but I could only find two. Figures. Of the two, I much prefer the wider spot to the tighter one, so it’s the main one I used.

The spot/gel combo didn’t do much to wash out the wrinkles in the backdrop, so I added a texture to the photo in an attempt to camouflage them

I thought that shot might be lacking a little, so I added some more filters to it in Snapseed, just for the hell of it:

Totally cancels the effect of the orange filter, but I thought it gave the shot a spooky vibe

But I still felt the shot was missing something, so of course I ventured over to Pixlr to play with it further. I discovered recently that if you access the “adjustment” tool in their Express editor, there’s an “upload image” option which allows you to superimpose another picture over the one you’re editing (more hours of fun on the way, as is the norm any time I discover something new) so I gave that a go by uploading the same image over it, enlarging it a bit and reducing its opacity, then throwing in some light leak, smoke, border and texture filters to finish it up:

Even spookier!

I really like the movement in this last one, and in spite of my itchy photoediting fingers I forced myself to keep the adjustments to a minimum (so hard for me to do):

I’m sure you could get this entire effect using software after the fact, but it’s great fun to experiment with vignetting effects and filters right in the shot. Taking thousands of photos a month using one’s self as the subject does get boring (believe it or not, yep) so any time I run across something new that makes the actual taking of the photos more interesting (taking the photos is never my favorite part) I’m all for it. Plus, I do believe the more you ‘get right’ in the actual shot, the better – it just feels better in the final result.

Seriously considering zipping right over to Amazon and buying those other filters. Loads of colors for $30 and totally worth it. But it’s way past my bedtime and I have a busy day ahead, so the sooner I get off this computer and force myself to get sleepy the better. And I know I still need to share pics from as far back as a week ago (Christmas Eve) but I get so excited about my newest shots that ones I took previously and failed to upload right away sometimes get lost. I’ll get them all shared soon though; once work starts up again I won’t have so much time to take photos and get backlogged.

Pink Outtakes

Posted on December 9, 2013 by marey mercy

I only have two outtakes from Saturday’s shoot, but they are pretty good ones.

This first one is deceptive – I actually know what was going on here; I was getting pissed that my Speedlite was overheating so early in the shoot and was intermittently not working. So I was staring at it trying to determine if it was going to work at all, dammit – and that’s when this shot went off (and yes, the Speedlite worked for this one). Why it looks like I am so happy as to have gone brain-dead is beyond me (unless it captured my moment of joy at seeing the flash start working again).All I do know is that I look like I just got goosed, or spotted the world’s most amazing firework display:

Somewhere during all my photo editing, I decided to deal with the white balance problem by using a high key filter on these shots. Yes it makes me look monochromatic, but at least I’m not yellow anymore.

My next one was taken when I was trying to blow a lock of hair out of my face. I thought this would look cute on camera. It’s not cute, exactly, but it is, well, something:

I honestly can’t decide if that is the best or the worst photo I’ve ever taken. Part of me wants to make it my new profile picture on Facebook, and part of me wants to burn it.

Those are the only two amusing outtakes I have, but I will add this one, which is from the other set of photos I shot Saturday. I used this amazing new dress I got from ModCloth (one of my favorite stores) that just felt like it needed to be danced in, and one of my custom gray wigs from Amore. I took these shots not by dancing, as I have learned that such shots only come out looking good when one is an actual dancer (with a normal, non-dancing person, dancing shots come out looking like grand mal seizures). I took them instead by looking up photos of real dancers on Google images and trying my best to imitate those shots. I pretty much failed, but I did get some interesting pics out of it.

These are the only two of this set I’ve processed so far (and yeah, I added a texture to the background of the first once, couldn’t help myself):

No dancers were harmed during the shooting of these photos. Trust me.

I think next I’ll post Part 2 of my headband wig review, plus I have two new headband wigs I photographed Sunday that I need to type up reviews for. So much hair, so little time!

Evolution of a photograph

Posted on November 4, 2013 by marey mercy

I thought I’d show the evolution one of my photos from Sunday’s shoot went through, because I personally found the process interesting. This photo didn’t end up at all where I thought it would, but I do like the results.

When choosing which shots to process, I decided to play around with this one in spite of its flaws, because I found the pose and facial expression to be compelling (if it’s not snobby to say something like that about myself; I don’t consider me “me” when editing my shots anyway, I’m just the subject of them).

I wasn’t sure I’d be able to do anything with this because of the makeup problem here – it was not applied THAT badly, but at this point in the shoot it had gotten a bit smudged, and that combined with the lighting I was using accentuated it. In this shot, I wasn’t using the softbox I normally use for portraits, because I’d already taken it off the flash and wasn’t interested in putting it back on (this was taken right at the end of the shoot). Without the softbox, I get a much softer light on the face, which is a prettier effect for portraits, but it creates its own problems – especially on a middle-aged face. For example, when looking in the mirror I do not see dark circles or major wrinkles under my eyes, but with the external flash attached to my camera and bounced off the ceiling, they are definitely accentuated (the bounced flash also creates a lot of shadows on the face, which on one hand adds a lot of interest, but can also highlight wrinkles and flaws, unless you’re a spring chicken, which I am not). So, when I choose to use the bounced flash, I almost always end up needing to use Photoshop to get rid of things it accentuates that are not appealing. This is why I normally choose to go with the softbox, as it hits my face with a lot of light, which erases lines and shadows, but it’s filtered enough that I don’t get that awful “hey I used a flash in this shot” light blowout that occurs with an in-camera flash.

Bit of a digression here, but this example to compare the two. This first one is using the softbox on my external flash (I shared this shot yesterday as well):

The softbox allows me to aim the flash right at my face – great for eliminating those dark eye circles and other wrinkles, but it’s definitely a “look.” I consider it a high-fashion look, but that’s just my little name for it. While the softbox won’t create too many shadows on the face, it does create a lot of background shadows that are very sharp and dramatic, which can work well, but it isn’t always what I want.

Now here’s another shot from the same shoot, taken without a softbox and with the external flash bounced off the ceiling:

TOTALLY different look. The overall effect is softer and more dimensional, I think, than the one using the softbox – but I did have to do more editing to my face to get rid of the dark circles that magically appear when using this lighting.

Anyway, back to the original shot. The bounced flash created a bit of a mess around my eyes, so I managed to use PS to edit most of that out. The end result was this:

I also got rid of the freckles on my arms, I don’t care one whit about them in real life, but in photos I find them distracting.

Much better, but still a bit of a problem. I pulled the shot over into Snapseed and gave it a go; I was pretty sure I’d need to go black and white with it, since all that color around the eyes and the smudged makeup on the nose was going to be bitch to even out without it looking weird, but on its own the B&W wasn’t appealing to me – it still needed more oomph to work. So I ended up using a red B&W filter on it, which gave it a crazy glow, then added a “Grunge” filter with texture to give it an antique-y feel, and well, here’s the end result.

Now I really love it. I don’t think I’ve ever used a red B&W filter before as it makes everything overly bright and glowy, and I’ve never known what to do with that. But it worked here to eliminate the problems of the shot as well as contribute to the tense mood I felt the expression created. It looks nothing like the original, but it fixes the flaws of that one while really ‘coming into its own,’ so to speak.

I don’t think I’ll ever get bored with editing photos and playing around with filters. It’s the same freedom and magic to me that coloring held when I was a kid. Now if only I didn’t get so absorbed in it that the kitchen stays dirty for hours and I get to bed way too late. But one thing at a time, I reckon.

A few more shots to share tomorrow!

Right on Target

Posted on November 3, 2013 by marey mercy

Got up about 7 AM Sunday morning, enjoyed a leisurely cup of tea, then got to work on taking photos with the pink Target wig my friend Chadwick sent me from Chicago. Setting up the studio took about 30 minutes, including breaking down the office and converting it into a studio space, then setting up the camera and lighting, then it took an hour so to apply the makeup. All in all, I was ready to shoot by 9:30 and completely done by 11:00 AM, which may be a new record for me. I’m sure the extra hour from ending daylight savings time helped (and am I the only one who does not get up in arms over the whole daylight savings thing? To me, it indicates the start of a new season, so I enjoy it both coming and going), plus I’m not including the reassembly of the office into all of this. I didn’t clean up until late afternoon as I immediately got absorbed in editing the shots, as I always do.

Overall I am pleased with this set. I really went on a marathon today trying to process as many shots as possible, but as usual I couldn’t get them all done. The portrait shots came out better than the jumping and movement ones, because I forgot to change the lighting setup when I switched from close-ups to full-body shots, and as a result the lighting is off on those (too bright and the focus isn’t very crisp). But when I spend as much time on the makeup as I did with this set, and the portraits don’t come out nicely, that’s a real pisser – so I’m happy enough to have gotten some great shots that accentuate the work I put into my face.

I’m going to share with you a little secret about posing for portraits that I picked up from an online member of a wig message board awhile back: before taking close-up shots with bright lighting like this, I shave my face. I do this because I have a lot of peach fuzz (getting more as I get older, too – thanks nature) and with the amount of bright light that I aim at my face, it all shows in close-ups. It’s always bugged me and I’ve done my best to edit it out, but when she mentioned the face-shaving thing I decided to try it, and I love the results. The woman who shared that she did this lives in Japan, where apparently this is a common practice for all women – peach fuzz apparently is a much bigger deal there than it is here, and is considered very unappealing. I got online and read up on the subject, and it turns out you can go to an aesthetician and pay a hundred bucks or more for a service called dermaplaning, which isn’t much more than a straight-edge razor shave. I use what’s called an eyebrow razor and my husband’s shaving cream, and do it myself (this actually is also great for shaping eyebrows, which is how it’s marketed). It makes the face smoother and the makeup blend and stay put – it looks so much better in photos and is actually the secret of many a supermodel. I don’t believe for a second that it makes the facial hair grow back any darker or more coarse, so no worries about it on my end (I’ve been shaving my little lady-mustache for years anyway; creams burn my skin and to go for waxing constantly is too much maintenance. Never had a problem with it). If you ever want to try it, don’t be afraid of those old wives’ tales about facial growing back darker if you shave it off. It’s baloney. And a good face shave is better than a scratchy old exfoliant anyway – that’s why men always look so fresh-faced after shaving. .

But enough about my face shaving:

Not totally pleased with this shot, but I edited it anyway because you can really see the eye makeup. My eyebrows have gotten sparse over the years, but they are still dark, so I actually used a long-wearing Lime Crime coral red lipstick called Suedeberry on them, then blended the pink eyeshadow into that. I got those false lashes on sale after Halloween at the grocery store, and as you can see they didn’t stay put too well. One of them is popping off there, but hopefully it’s not too noticeable. I can also see on my chin where either my skin was dry or my face powder wasn’t blended very well – that’s how harsh the lights I use can be. Makeup really does need to be flawless, because every little error will show. Not that anyone else would notice when looking at the photo. But I do.

A bit of a weird shot, but I couldn’t resist that shadow on my face that frames one eye. You can also see that I played with layers in this set – all of the shots were taken in front of my beige backdrop, but I changed the color of it to work better with the bright colors of the subject. Also, I got those paper butterflies at Party City over the summer, and finally found a use for them. Unfortunately the butterfly at the very top fell out at some point during the shoot, and I didn’t realize it until I caught it in Simon’s mouth after shooting was done. So I have loads of pics with one less butterfly (More about Simon later – this was his first time experiencing photo day and he was quite interested in what was going on).

Now this shot makes me happy. At some point I applied a bit of talcum powder on my face because it kept appearing shiny and I wanted my skin to look a bit lighter. I think that worked well here, and this is one of the shots I did not end up editing much, as tempted as I was to jack with it like I do most of my shots. I thought it worked as is, and just made a few adjustments. Oh and the butterfly isn’t actually balancing on my nose – kinda gross, but the butterflies were stuck to very thin, long pieces of wire that I was able to stick into the wig to get them to stay – here, well, I have the wire shoved up my nose. Just keeping it classy, people!

I admit to having run out of good ideas for portrait poses at this point, so I often end up reverting to some old standby stances and faces to get some variety. This is a goofy, half-surprised look I seem to enjoy making (probably in life as much as in photos). Sometimes I move the camera around to shoot my face from different angles, but from the sides in this wig you could see too much of the wig cap and my natural hair. These wigs are cool as hell, but not exactly easy to wear. In fact, most of the problems I had with this shoot were due to that wig – once I managed to get it on my head properly, I could not in any way shape or form put my glasses back on, so I had to focus the camera without seeing what I was doing at all, which is less than ideal. It also kept banging into doorways and lighting umbrellas and was just generally a nuisance for self-portraits. But it looks great. It had also, after about two minutes of wearing it, worn off all the makeup on my forehead.

Simon, however, had no such issues.

Speaking of Simon, as I mentioned earlier he was fairly curious about what was going on during this shoot. His main fascination was with my little remote, since I toss that to the ground after pressing the button for each shot. To him, that was a clear indication the item was there for his enjoyment, and he kept grabbing it in his little mouth and scampering away with it. He also got into swiping and biting at my skirt a bit, but not nearly as much as he got into pouncing on the remote.

Although clearly he got into pouncing on the skirt a bit too – as evidenced in this next gem, which was not intentional on my part in any way, shape, or form; in fact, I had no idea what Simon was up to until I saw the shot. I’m sure I felt him landing on my skirt and starting a little kitty-war with it, but at the time I had no idea I’d managed to capture his little ambush on camera:

Eyes on the prize, Simon!

My makeup also didn’t translate well to the full-body shots and I should have slapped on some lipstick for them. So overall, not too pleased with the full-length photos in this set, but that one was too good to pass up. Also, in this shot my right arm actually was in the photo originally, but the angle the camera caught it at was just plain weird, my elbow looked huge and distorted, and overall I found that arm to be a huge distraction. So I just edited it on out of there and figured I’d pretend my arm was behind my back or something. Much better this way.

More later!

More Maegan

Posted on October 14, 2013 by marey mercy

Edited some more of the shots I took of my niece yesterday, focusing on the ones she told me she liked best. Of what I processed, these are my favorites.At some point I’m going to take a few of the more unusual shots from this session and play around with them, but for now I am trying to get the photos that she likes finished so I can send them to her. Priorities you know.

I may have over-whitened her teeth a bit, if such a thing is possible.

I also may have overdone it with the fan, but I can’t help it. I love hair blowing around.

It was not a pretty day outside when we took these; in fact, it’s been rainy here the past few weeks which is unusual. My sister’s backyard is small, and has a huge building backing up right against their fence, but we made do. I was going to try and edit out the building and PS in some sky, but I didn’t think I was capable of doing a good job of it, plus it’s a lot of work for something no one else is going to care about. It’s a nice enough shot, but I do wish we’d chosen a more scenic area for it, probably somewhere in the front yard instead of the back.

I think this next shot is my favorite so far. It’s got most of what I like: the angle is slightly off-kilter, the lighting is good, the hair is blowing, and her expression is just goofy enough to be appealing without going overboard into totally silly. Although I am a fan of totally silly also.

Adorable!

Maegan

Posted on October 13, 2013 by marey mercy

I got up Saturday morning and decided I wanted to take pictures of someone other than myself. I texted one of my older sisters who lives relatively close by, and asked if any of her teenage kids were up for taking some photos. One of them was, so I threw a bunch of gear in my car and headed on over.

My niece Maegan, the one willing guinea pig.

My sister mentioned to me while I was visiting that she keeps waiting for the day I quit my counseling job and become a full-time photographer, but taking photos of other people makes me too nervous to really consider doing it as a career. Not just taking photos of others, but taking any photos where the end result is important to anyone other than me really throws me off my game.

Not that it stopped me from forcing them all to do jump shots.

First of all, when others are waiting on me to get the pictures taken, I become very nervous and rushed, which usually leads to poor decision-making, such as the framing of these jump shots here. They’re crooked, in many of them the subject isn’t centered in front of the fireplace correctly, body parts are cut out of the frame, and the color is really off (the color thing is more a result of processing than photo-taking, so at least that can be corrected). When it’s just me, I can get as picky as I want with every little detail of a shot, but when a shoot involves others I literally forget to care about such things, because I’m concerned with them getting bored or feeling uncomfortable while I stop to sort such things out.

Not bad, because the color and clarity are nice and they both look lovely, but it’s terribly framed. They’re twins, by the way.

There’s also the issue of camera settings, and the need to constantly adjust them throughout the shoot. It’s another area where I get nervous, rushed, and sloppy. I was switching flash settings as well as ISO and shutter speed throughout the shoot, and doing this is still unusual enough for me that it takes me a long time to get it done, while the model stands around and waits for me to figure it out (when it’s just me, I set everything up once and generally don’t have to change). And for most of the portrait shots I did here I used my portable softbox, which I almost always use for my own portraits because it does a wonderful job of eliminating shadows and lines on my 40-something face. Turns out that on an 18 year old, however, I don’t need that extra hit of bright light on the face, and the result of using it here was that her face was brighter and “flatter” than it needed to be.

Without the softbox, her face would have had more depth and the background would have been softer.

Take this shot, for example – I had the softbox off for this one, and you can see how much more dimension the entire shot has. This is one of the best I’ve processed so far:

For the hell of it, I’ll show you the original shot for this one – because it leads me to another stumbling block I have to taking shots of other people. When I showed up at my sister’s house, I’d bought along this bright blue fleece sheet I found on Amazon a while back. The mottled color makes it a nice backdrop, and I thought we could throw it up somewhere and make it useful. But once again, I got in a hurry and took the first solution that came up rather than doing things the best possible way, so we ended up throwing this backdrop over a curtain rod that was hung above three big windows facing her backyard. The end result of this was some really weird lighting and background shadows I had to correct in the originals:

You can see the dark line around the bottom of the backdrop; that’s where the windowsill was behind the sheet. I did an OK job of editing that out in Photoshop, but it was a bit of a pain.

I also brought along my big fan, which is why you can see her hair blowing around in that shot. It did look pretty bizarre with the two of us crammed up against the back windows of the den, with a fleece sheet hung over a curtain rod, my niece sitting on an old Pier 1 stool we’d brought in there from the kitchen, and me sitting on the coffee table right in front of her to get the shots. Real professional.

Oh, and I also brought wigs. No softbox on this one either, and it looks so much better.

I would have so much to learn and so much gear to buy before I could ever feel comfortable offering my services to strangers. As it is, at least I don’t have to worry about totally letting people down because I shoot them for free. There’s so much I’d need to learn how to do quickly, like adjust to different surroundings, learn how to shoot outdoors in particular, and also to feel comfortable directing people. My poor niece was floundering for what to do most of the time, and I felt creepy giving her instructions (“fling your hair around a bit” – I mean really, ew) as well as awkward. When it’s just me, I can screw around until I hit on some idea that I like, but with someone else just standing there waiting for me to instruct them or make suggestions, I lock up.

Fortunately, it’s hard to screw up when photographing a pretty teenage girl. Wait – does that sound creepy again?

I’m sure my niece and my sister will be totally happy with the shots, and notice none of the flaws in the photos that are bugging me right now. For example – my sister commented when we were looking over the photos on my computer, that she thought it was cute how her daughter was not wearing shoes. Good lord, I hadn’t even noticed that she wasn’t wearing any! She also had on this big red plastic watch that, had I been on top of things, I would have insisted she remove, because it was so distracting. And if we need further proof that others don’t notice such things – when I posted these photos to Facebook Saturday night, my niece downloaded one of them and made it her cover photo. Since Facebook reduces photo quality significantly when uploading, she not only downloaded a seriously degraded copy, but then degraded it even further by re-uploading it to the site. I admit I got pretty twitchy when I saw her Facebook page with this grainy, blurry version of her lovely picture there as her cover. Arrrrgh! I am working on getting the HQ versions copied to a flash drive which I can mail to them, so they have better originals, but I have a feeling she’ll never even realize she should change out the crappy pic with a better one. And here I work so hard to maintain clarity and quality…go figure.

Noooooooo

I certainly never noticed stuff like this before I got into photography myself, either. But looking at that photo above helps me understand why professional photographers guard their originals carefully and have strict rules about what can and can’t be done with digital versions of their work. I’d die if that highly pixelated photo got associated with my professional name because a client didn’t understand how to handle digital images. Not that it’s a real pressing issue with me, because again, I would not feel confident asking someone to pay me for photos until I knew I was capable of producing high-quality work and executing a shoot efficiently. And going out on location and shooting photos of someone else is such a completely different process to what I normally do, that I’m not sure I’ll ever be up for learning. Not that I didn’t have fun today; it just reinforced many of my reservations about going pro.

mareymercy.

Art, Horror, and Other Obsessions

Tag Archives: portraits