Thursday, May 17, 2012

Moonlight

So, recently I dyed my hair black. I've always liked the contrast of really pale skin and really dark hair. For a while in college my hair was black. Then I left behind my rebellious days and metal mania and chose cheery colors for clothes and hair. But lately I felt like the neutral nature of black hair (and that CONTRAST!) would be a good fall back. I kinda missed it. It's fairly close to my natural color, which was a dark brown. It matches my eyebrows exactly (which were always black-brown, weird). I got the foaming Garnier Fructris dye so I could dye my hair entirely by myself for the first time ever, and I decided I LOVE that stuff. I didn't even need to get Bear in gloves to help me! Hooray!

Then I decided to put on my wedding lipstick and take some photos. Documenting the transition, I guess. I took them in my bathroom in incandescent lighting, but I decided I wanted to edit the images to evoke moonlight. After all, my recent nocturnal state of write write write until the sun comes up kinda called for it.

I determined to learn how to really edit heavily in Lightroom. Usually, I use Lightroom as a streamliner for mass amounts of photos taken in the same lighting with the same settings for clients. Boom. Fast and easy. I have never tried to really edit drastically before. This is the first attempt at that.

I dropped the saturation of my skin (the summer sun exposure I try to avoid makes me insanely pink in an instant; I am a vibrant shade of rose at the moment. Ugh.) and smoothed it out a lot. I enhanced my eye color a little and changed the overall white balance. In some images, I completely altered the background (which was originally my shower curtain). All images were taken at arm's length with the D90 outfitted with my 50mm lens at f/2 (if I remember correctly). 50mm lenses are NOT meant for such close proximity, but I was honestly too lazy to switch lenses. I am THAT bad. Anywho, this is the result:
  sp-2 selfportraits sp-3 Fun!

I've spent a lot of time in the past few days contemplating storytelling and what it means to me. I have ALWAYS told stories. I kept journals since I could write (not legibly, I may add). I drew pictures and made comics. Then I took photographs. I started to think about my current project and my brain kept chanting "what if, what if, what if".

What if I combined my story with a photo series? Could I do that? It would be a challenge... The liklihood of getting this novel published is slim to none. I have never attempted this "writing a novel" thing before, at least not seriously (although I have a drawer full of partial manuscripts and short stories and poems, some of which were printed in anthologies). My attention span has always lulled and something shiny would distract me. This time, I am determined to see it through. And it may be a terrible idea, but if I like it and beta readers like it and nobody wants to push it to publication, there is always the option of self-publishing. Authors everywhere are cringing. I can feel it. The good thing about that avenue, is I know where I would publish and that I could incorporate a photo at the opening of every chapter. So, I guess I am saying: I am learning new things, exploring new challenges, and I want to do ALL THE THINGS in my head.

How are you, Internetz?
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3 comments:

  1. As I was looking at the photos, I was thinking it would be a great cover for a book! I really like the idea of a book with photos at the beginning of chapters, it would be different for sure!

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  2. I was gonna actually formulate words to leave you an actual comment about how good you are at that expressionless-self-portraiture, and how I struggle with self portraits.

    I know you're extremely busy, and I wanted to remind you that I miss you, but completely understand, and not in that secretly resentful understand, no, I tOTally understand. I have taken on my own just-for-fun project. Project is a good word since it involves unnecessary 'work' and research and documentation. I'm no journalist, but I can't let another year go by without doing anything about it.

    Hope you can join me for some of the 'documenting'.
    It's all going on the blog.

    Can't wait to catch up.

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