Pumped and in the air

Here's a secret: part of my desire to get into photography "for real" was America's Next Top Model.  I have been and continue to be fascinated how a bunch of skinny, awkward girls could look so ridiculously amazing in their photographs.  They even show you the videos of them taking the pictures but you can't tell at all how they're going to look.  The pictures at the end always blow my mind. I mention this dark part of my past because almost every season, they have the girls do a "jumping" shoot.  They jump, the picture gets snapped - easy, right?  Yeah. Why am I grimacing?  Because I'm jumping and I might hit something!  On ANTM (oh yeah, they use the acronym), they tell them to relax and keep their faces "pretty."  Simple enough. Are you looking at my crappy tiny apartment?  Stop looking at my apartment.  You'd have mismatched furniture too if you were... well, if you were too cheap to decorate appropriately.  I'm a minimalist! Ugh, this is painful.  So why did I take all these jumping shots?  Because all this awesome stuff has happened to me lately and it makes me giddy.  Also, I am crazy excited for my wedding photo shoot tomorrow.  I'm dressing up all my friends in their wedding gear and assorted finest and we're going to hit up Old Town and maybe a park on Duke Street for a massive photo shoot.  I picked out colors for the couples and I'm getting them bouquets.  Yesterday, I scoped out locations.  I could not be more pumped about it.  Pumped like this. Don't hate.  I'm not even posting the worst ones.  Some advice for jumping shots - wear a shirt that won't fly up.  Your belly will look really, really bad.  I have proof that you will not see. Okay, two more.  I want to point out that self-portraits are easy if you're not trying to jump.  You use the little remote release, the camera prepares itself and then clicks.  But if you're trying to jump, you're aiming to get the very top of your jump when the shutter clicks.  The timing can be tricky. But you have to keep going until you get - more or less - what you were aiming for. I'm quite a bit more calm today, but I want to send a big shout-out to the universe for sending so many good vibes my way.  Something strange is happening with me.  Even as I was writing this post, a lady from Preservation magazine with the National Trust for Historic Preservation writes and asks if she can use a photo I took ages ago.  I've had it listed under a Creative Commons license for at least a year, so yes, she can!  I feel like I have so much momentum and good energy whirling about me. And on a final note, according to my statistics, 100 people visited my site yesterday, which is twice as many as have ever come in a single day.  If you're there, leave a comment and let me know.  Tell me something great that has happened to you lately.

Attempted Sexiness

Around 10pm last night, I realized I hadn't taken a picture yet.  For the second year, I'm working on a Project 365, a surprisingly ambitious venture that requires at least one image each day.  Many times, it forces creativity.  Other times, I'm pretty sure I'm gaining nothing at all by picking up the camera and snapping what's for dinner.  Maybe it's working on me in ways I don't understand. In any case, George is out of town and that means it won't annoy him to take about 100 flash photos at 1opm.  Enter the "sexy" self-portrait. Sexy, right? Well, my husband will tell me it's sexy just as soon as he gets home, I'm sure.  In fact, I'll have you know that I took some other photos that you will never see.  I don't think the Internet can handle "full sexy" from me.  Plus, I'm a married woman!  How dare you suggest I expose myself online! I do lots of self-portraits.  I think it has a lot to do with the fact that I am always around and people are inherently interesting as subjects.  I also think it has something to do with the fact that I purchased a remote release when I bought my SLR.  If I was doing this on timer, I'd never do SPs. For the two images above, I mainly just adjusted the contrast some and removed a pesky light switch above my head.  For this one, I used some MCP Actions to bump the drama, big time.  A closer crop makes the image a bit more intimate, in my opinion. More space might have improved this quite a bit.  I've got a single SB-600 pointed at the wall to my right here.  It's resting on the table, which is pushed against the corner (so the wall to my right is maybe 5 feet away).  My tripod was in the car and I was too lazy to go downstairs and get it, so I rigged some table-ottoman-dish towel contraption to rest my camera on.  It mostly worked, I have to say. At the end of the day, though, I really prefer images that convey how I see myself.  I can feign all the sexiness in the world but this is how I really am: A little bit awkward, perhaps a bit unsure, certainly not full-on sexy.  If you see me doing that, I'm faking it.  (But it's okay to tell me I fake it really well.) For a while during this "shoot", I busted out some killer black heels that I have never worn.  But there's something about sexy with shoes off that speaks to being at home, being with a long-term lover, being unconcerned, vulnerable.  There's something inherently sexy about vulnerability.  So I tossed the heel shots. My sexy is for my man... and, well, my blog.

Trivia Night – Super Grain

My friends are dorks, what can I say?  Some of us are dorky in the socially awkward sense (hand up) and others of us are dorky in the huge-repository-of-random-knowledge sense.  The Random Knowledge guys destroy trivia nights all over this town.  The rest of us have a few beers and struggle to fill in the gaps. Last night we came in third at 51st State, which did not earn us any bar credit.  It's a very dark bar so I've jacked up the exposure, on top of ISO800.  I kind of like the grain - gives it a good gritty feel. On the street, the colors were really weird but kind of neat also. And because I love you (and me), here's a self-portrait I took while waiting for George to do some stuff at his work.  I'm not allowed in because he has one of those no-guests-allowed government jobs.  So I sat in the car and took pictures of myself.  It's a pretty standard situation. Also, you see those glasses there?  I bought them online.  They're supposed to be these nifty new "transitions" lenses.  Only they seem to have permanently transitioned.  They get darker in the sun and lighter indoors but they never seem to go all the way back to clear.  It really emphasizes the dorkiness.