Poetry - Last refuge of the bearded, cricket hating sodomite

So, the whole do-dah about porn on dA is back again with a news article and a load of journal entries by various dA celebrities.

I like to keep my head down on such matters, not least because those that usually do the complaining are often... well, pretentious, judgemental and their work is usually contrived, contrite, sterile and lacking any imagination. But as it tends to be technically brilliant and fits the mould, it tends to be very popular with the kind of people who 'know' the difference between art and porn.

Anyway, I noticed, and even exchanged comments with a few people who are technically brilliant, popular, AND feel the same way I do. I'm relived, I'm not alone!

Really, the whole issue of porn on dA hasn't really bothered me. Until this week where I started following several of the camwhores, reading their journals, comments and following the links they provide. It's pretty obvious that there is no real pretence at 'art' in many cases, they just come to dA to swap pictures of genitalia and to meet up for cyber-sex. There are other places for that.

And it explains some of the weird notes CP has gotten.

Speaking of weird notes, I had an interesting exchange today. To cut a long story short I got a note from somebody saying they were a poet, which said that like him, I obviously appreciated bare feet. That he liked my work and was going to come back.

Well... anyone who has read my journal will see that I state quite clearly that I don't get the whole foot thing, but that I found it (along with all kinks and fetishes) very interesting and it was a theme we were going to explore, which we did. Around half of my foot photos are specific requests.

So when I get a private note from somebody assuming that I share their appreciation for feet (lets face it, it's a fetish) when I do not, I felt it only fair to let them know the true situation.

This chap took offence because I told him he was mistaken. In his reply he reminded me again he was a poet and that I shouldn't tell new fans that they are 'mistaken'.

Well, I'm not a poet. In fact, English isn't my first language (I'm far better at html and javascript) . When I decide to say something, I try not to mince my words, and I value honesty above all else.

And don't get me wrong, my only problem with fetishes is that I don't have one. I only wish I did, it would make life more interesting. I have no problem with anybody who likes a nice foot, and I encourage them to run with it (forgive the pun), enjoy it, be open about it, look at and take photos of them... and if they really must, write poetry about them.

But fuck, I hate poetry at the best of times! Poetry about feet holds no interest for me, and I'm not going to pretend I share an affinity or common interest.

I am what I am, if you take offence at that. Your loss.

I have to say, this exchange confirmed my prejudice about poets... they may be the only people more wussy and pretentious than fine art photographers.

*The title is a line from a comedy sketch by Armstrong & Miller, Mitchell & Webb.

A Little Photoshop Magic

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A lot of people ask about photo manipulation or photo correction, so I thought I'd give a little example as this one was rather interesting, and a little further than I normally go.

As mentioned before, we both came down with stinking colds, she didn't put on any make-up, and I wasn't trying very hard, especially with the lighting. But there were a couple of photos we really liked, the first was a good composition and we liked the hands.
But the second photo had a nice look on her face... but the hands weren't nearly as nice.

The solution is rather simple, combine the two images. It can easily be done in Photoshop, Gimp or similar programs, although I used Photoshop on this occassion.

So I started off with the JPG images as they were straight off the camera (No I didn't use RAW). I put the second image over the first and then turned down the opacity to 50% so I can see when I move it using free transform. A little rotation, a tiny bit of scaling and I was able to match the arm from the elbow to just below the wrist.


Oh really by ~DannyBillArgent 

Then all you do is use the erasor tool with a soft edge and erase the part of the top image which you don't want. Once happy with this I flattened the image and saved a copy as a JPG (Which I know isn't best practice.)

Next I opened up this flattened copy in CameraRaw to ajust the colours. This photo has a bit of a problem in that the light in front of her is white, the light to our left is blue, and the light above/right is yellow. As you can see her hands have a pretty good skin tone, but her face and chest have a yellow cast. This makes editing rather tricky, but basically we colour corrected the photo for the forground and saved a copy. The colour corrected for skin tone, saved a copy, and then colour corrected for her hair colour and saved a copy... because when we took the yellow/orange out of the skin, it also took it out of the hair.

All you have to do then is follow the same proceedure again in photoshop, loading each copy onto a layer and erasing everything but what you need.

I then added some more layers, first job was to paint in an overlay to remove her very red nose... as I mentioned she had a cold! There were layers for blusher, mascara, eye-liner and lipstick -- there are dozens of online tutorials for doing this if you are interested. I also added an overlay to give the background a bit more blue.

Finaly, I added a layer mask to tone down the saturation because I purposely turned up the colours in CameraRaw by using Vibrance and Saturation. I like to turn up and then tone down later... it's just the way I work.

Once happy I saved a copy, flattened the image and then saved another copy.

And we are almost done, we just now have to apply the standard filters that I usually have to use because my camera is so old! Firstly I use the heal tool to get rid of all the white dots which are caused by my sensor having seen better days. Next I used despeckle filter as my images tend to have loads of noise.

Next I apply a sharpening filter which is done by duplicating the layer, applying a high pass filter, then an unsharp mask. Then setting the layer property to overlay and ajusting the opacity until it looks right.

Next I applied a contrast mask which is done buy duplicating the layer, desaturating, inverting, bluring, and then setting the layer property to overlay and ajusting the opacity until it looks right.

I often apply a colour map, but on this photo I had already taken care of the colours in CameraRaw. so maybe I'll explain that another day.

Lastly, I used the heal tool to remove some wrinkles and soften shadows on the hands. Total time taken was about 4 hours... although I spend a lot of time fiddling about and trying different stuff, which in my opinion is the best way to learn Photoshop.

Lovely legs

Giant by ~DannyBillArgent 

So I'm editing video by day, and editing these photos by night. My cold has gotten worse, and CP has developed a coldsore - so we'll be taking no photos for a week or so, which is a pity as we had plans.

We weren't completely happy with the last set of photos and wanted to reshoot some of them, which we were going to do over the next few day. But still, I have some photos that I can put up, the one I was working on last night is quite interesting as I grafted the head from one pic onto the body of another... as so many people have been asking how you do photo editing, I think I may do a brief Photoshop tutorial on it and post it here.

Sodding Typical

Well, Friday came and went, and we were both struck down by colds. Not so bad for me, but CP couldn't stop sneezing.
We took some photos anyway, but she couldn't wear make-up and had a very red nose... so it didn't go as well as hoped.

Her favorite pic, it requires a little editing.

Plus, with her not being particuarly into it, and me feeling stressed, I can't say I made the best of the camera and lighting. So, out of the 100 shots I took, I'll maybe get 5.

However, it's not all bad. The shots we did take, although not great, did show lots of potential. We can learn from them and hopefully do a few more sessions over the coming weeks. CP certainly seems to have been plesantly suprised by the results as she thought she would look as bad as she feels. She didn't -- she looked great in some of them. Shame I had problems with depth of field, focus, blur, poor background, and the ever present problem of noise due to shooting in poor light with a very old digital camera.

Here's to the future... I may not need to twist her arm!

Looking forward to Friday

As previously mentioned, we managed to get CP a really nice pair of DM shoes last week, today I took her shopping for an outfit to go with them, which we managed quite easily. Working from the bottom up, we got a load of pairs of tights.

So you can probably guess which fetish we will be shooting on Friday night. Lots of stockings, tights, legs, boots, shoes and feet.

I'll also be getting some rope, but we may not have time for that -- hopefully Sunday . :)

So she is having her hair and nails done tomorrow, which if nothing else, will mean she is in a good mood. The kids being on school holiday really got her down after about 4 weeks so we haven't done much photography, but they have been back at school now a while and things are getting back to normal.

My other model went for a scan yesterday... she doesn't seem so interested now she is pregnant, and to be honest, neither am I. So I'll have to keep my eye open for another model --  I have had a couple of models contact me... but I do this for fun and I'm not interested in paying anyone.

Sex, Religion and Politics

While browsing dA last night I noticed that a picture was in a group for Christian artists. So I took a look to see if their were any atheist artist groups... sure enough there was.

It's interesting, but I don't think I'll be joining any time soon.

Sure, I'm an atheist, but it's normal. I don't think I need to join a group for atheists any more than I need to join a group for people who have their hair cut. In my corner of Europe, I can go months without so much as hearing a mention of god, religious people are the minority it seems and they keep it to themselves for fear of ridicule.

Likewise with art and nudes. For me it's normal, nothing to be ashamed of. So why should I join the #respect-us kind of groups for models and photographers who do nudes?

I'm English, British, and European, -- just because dA seems full of Americans who are religious puritans, doesn't mean I should act differently.

Don't get me wrong, I strongly believe that art should be political, and more importantly, challenge social attitudes. But I'll challenge the social norms of MY society, I don't much care what Americans think.

SteamPunk Resources

With so many events and so little time
"Here is a handy list of places that can do all the hard work for you."

Steam Punk

Following on from our little arts and crafts session, I started looking at stuff to make. I have been interested in doing some kind of situation photography, I like the Film Noir stuff, and I like stuff thats recreated to look like it's shot in the 1960s-1970s. But I like making stuff, she likes Victorian clothing... SteamPunk seems like the logical conclusion.

I'm not really a science fiction fan so never took much notice until now, but it's great stuff. I'll start looking into making a pair of goggles... which appears to be the only place to start! Time to get some paper and a pencil and start designing -- it should be interesting because I really need to design around odds-and-ends that I can find.

Just by chance, we went antiquing at the weekend and I saw lots of old iron-mongery, old clocks, cameras and militaria which I think pushed me in this direction. My father sometimes deal in antiques, and my stepfather deal in antique guns, so there were always lots of books laying around the house, I should have quite a good grounding for this kind of thing.

Arts and Crafts

After a family do, we managed to off-load the kids on grandma, however it was 5:30 by the time we got back into town. To cut a long story short we decided that we could spend the evening sitting at the dining table doing some crafts together.

...so off we went to HobbyCraft and bought some gear and then headed back home.

Making stuff is kinda 'my thing', I have tons of tools, glues, tapes and just about everything you could ever need. But I'd like to bring out the other-half's creative side, and have been trying to encourage her to take up a hobby so that she doesn't get so bored during the daytime.

The pasties wot I did dun.

So I decided to make some pasties. She has a DVD from the Ministry of Burlesque which shows you how to make nipple tassels and fascinators. I thought this would be a good start as they are fairly easy. Previously, I had forced her to go into charity shops and pick out a garment that we could chop up and make into pasties so we had some red felt and black sequins to make one set, and a blue blouse with embroidery to make a second set with.

I have to point out that this is an exercise purely to get her doing something so she can see how easy it is -- and so that we can spend some time doing something together.

As it turned out, she decided that she wanted to make some stuff to go in her hair instead which is great. And as it turned out, by the time we had done dinner and had a few glasses of wine, we were both very tired so we didn't get much done. I did finish a pair of pasties and this morning she finished a flower to go in her hair. It was a flower that was on a hair band, she chopped it off and glued it on a hair clip and then decorated it with some beads. Easy, done in 10 mins.

She loves going to charity shops and hunting down bargains, and hopefully if she can start hacking stuff up and making things, this will add a whole new dimension to that hobby.

Dr Martins Boots

I took the missus out today, she wanted to visit the charity shops in my old home town, which is rather posh, and thus the charity shops often yield some rather nice swag.

Unfortunately, they seem to have gotten wise recently and are researching the value of the stuff they are selling... £20 for an ash tray, £85 for an old telephone. It's more expensive than ebay.

Just when I was beginning to think that her bargain hunt would be a dead loss, we stumbled on a pair of Dr Martins in her size, very good condition, just £4. She's been on at me for ages to get her some Dr Martins and I was going to get her some for xmas, now she has some that are already broken in (If you have ever had Docs, you'll know why this is a good thing).

So the goo news is that the missus is happy, the bad news is that I'll have to think of something else to get her for crimble... I was thinking of some stockings and a short skirt to go with the Docs, but unfortunately that's not the look she had in mind. It's a shame because it would look good on a photo shoot.

I'll have to twist her arm.

Zombie Sazza Photography

Zombie Sazza Photography

The website of Sarah Takahashi, somebody I follow on DeviantArt. Beautiful pictures from Scotland -- I like her work.

It seems like a cool place to host a website for free too.

I'm talking to myself

...it's the only way to get a decent conversation!

The forums on dA are terrible. Seems like no matter what you say, you get contradicted by some nerd or 20 year old know-nothing. It's just one big pissing contest to  prove who knows the most about photography and has the least social skills.

Oh, don't get me wrong, the answers there given are highly knowledgeable about photography and cameras, but they seldom usefully answer the question asked, and they prove once and for all that photographers generally know nothing about art.

As somebody once said, talking to photographers about art is like talking to Dog the bounty hunter about fashion... sure you'll get an opinion, but you'll not learn anything useful.

Tattoos

The missus wants a tattoo.

I have no real objections but as Iv'e been a graphic designer for over twenty years, forgive me if I'm going to be a bit fussy over the quality of the artwork!

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The weather is going to be crap all this week. My guess is that it will be next summer before we do any serious outdoor nude photography -- I like sunshine.
However, her-indoors has been playing with henna and now is a lovely natural looking redhead. That could look good in the Autumn, although I think it looks striking on a green background. I'll have to see if I can twist her arm.

Scouting for Girls

We took the whole family for a walk on Sunday to a location I wanted to scout. It wasn't as good as I remember, and certainly not as quiet. It was about a mile walk to get there and along the way was some wonderful countryside. Shame we missed the summer!

I really should get a Twitter account for posts like this. I think i will.

Plenty of plans, but no plans to do them. Hopefully now the kids are back in school things will settle down to normality and I can take some photos.

Experimental post

I'd like to talk about my work, problem is that it does contain nudity, which is no big problem as far as I'm concerned but it means that I probably can't post thumbnails to it because it's marked as mature content on dA and I don't want to break any terms and conditions on blogger.
So here goes...


Statuesque by ~DannyBillArgent on deviantART

I'm used to photographing cars, so using a worm's eye view seems natural to me, thats all I did with the photo Statuesque. I took a load of photos while the model posed. I like this pose because it was sorta right, but sorta wrong too. I had some work to do blurring out the artex on the ceiling, I generally used the smudge tool on Photoshop where the pattern showed, which was mainly down the left side of the picture.
One of the lamps I used was a bedside lamp with a violet lampshade, this gave some of the picture an unusual cast and so I went with it, adjusting the colour temperature in CameraRaw, and that was it. All done!
Essentially I had an old camera and some household lamps. The location was our dining room, I photographed upwards to avoid shooting any furniture. The model was nude because we didn't have any clothes that she'd want to be photographed in... she just slapped on a bit of make-up, and this picture was the result. I'm quite pleased with the result, considering that it's basically a product of circumstance. If we had a studio and some nice clothes I may have produced a very different picture, but making do and working with what you got is kinda fun.