The Books

Luis, for those who don't know, is by far my most avid reader. Fred's persistence makes him a real close second. Luis will be played by Antonio Bandaras if a movie is ever made of my blog. I will be played by Hugh Jackman, Angela by Rachel McAdams, Michelle by Shania Twain and Jon by Denzel Washington. Fred, who I have no clue what he looks like, will be played by.... hmmm.... I guess Clint Howard. My two girls will be played by CGI characters created by James Cameron.

I got sidetracked. Luis mentioned a book I was reading. It is a studio lighting book. So here is a list of the photography books I keep on my desk.

Posing for Portrait Photography by Jeff Smith
Master Posing Guide for Portrait Photographers by JD Wacker
Posing and Lighting Techniques for Studio Portrait Photography by JJ Allen
Lighting Techniques for Low Key Photography by Norman Phillips
Posing Techniques for Digital Portraits by Jeff Smith
Adobe Photoshop CS2 User Guide
Photoshop Restoration and Retouching by Katrin Eismann

The last one is the one I refer to the most. The Low Key is the one I am currently working through.

This January has been my best January ever, and actually one of my better months ever. I had two sales last night, must have been near midnight, because one was for Saturday, one for Sunday, so my streak is 7. My best February is 53 back in '08. These numbers only refer to Shutterstock.

Low Key photography is my favorite style.

I am still learning the lighting for it. I love the moodiness of it.

Six degrees of seperation. It's a theory that everyone is seperated from everyone else on Earth by six steps. The people I know are one step from me. The people they know are two steps away. The people they know are three steps, etc etc. The reason I bring this up is because I acted with Jeremy Sisto. Now I find he was in a film with Nathan Fillion, the star of Castle. So I am two steps from him.

So it's time to get ready for church. Talk to y'all tomorrow.

Pants of the Ground

I have been so tired lately, I have not felt like blogging. Got home yesterday and tried to take a nap, but between the two girls and Angela, it was impossible. Woke up too late to blog this morning, and worked a little later today, so this is my first chance. Looking at my stats, Fred tried four times to read my blog, but alas, nothing but the post about Jon and his flower pot bbq. Sorry Fred, I'll make it up to you... somehow.

Oscar nominations will be announced Tuesday. I will try to create some kind of survey or such that you can enter your choices in for a chance to win a framed 8x10 of the photo of your choice from my Shutterstock gallery.

Had someone else searching for Hasselhoff Potatoes find my blog. So I thought maybe if I title my post "Pants on the Ground" I'll get a million hits.

Did my taxes, and yes I owe, but not even close to what I thought I would.

Here is an old, old photo of mine. I think I took this back when I was still shooting film. I used a double lens, with one reversed. The close ups are pretty cool, but you have such a shallow depth of field that the slightest movement of the camera can change the focal point. You also have to manually focus, which I have mentioned before is not my strong suit, but I have gotten better over the years. I have recently tried to duplicate my efforts, but the lenses I have now are different, and I don't see the same quality.

This is a dead fly I found in the window. I should attempt a roach. Maybe that is an idea.... hmmm.....

I'm not going to take up too much time here. I watched "300" again last night, along with all the making ofs. Visually probably the best movie ever made, though Avatar is close. Still get choked up at the end... "My Queen... my wife............ my love......." The kid that played the son of Leonidas was horrible, stiff as a rock. The kid that played the "teenage" Leonidas was pretty good. Everyone else fit their roles perfectly, especially the narrator. "This is not going to be over quickly. This is going to hurt. I am not your queen." "Clearly you don't know our women. I might as well have marched them up here, judging by what I've seen." "Have you noticed? We've been sharing our culture with you all morning." Stelios: "It is an honor to die at your side." King Leonidas: "It is an honor to have lived at yours."

Anthony Ladd just came back from California for a shoot. Came back with some awesome photos. Here is his AnthonySP fan page on Facebook.

And a correction from a previous post statement. I mentioned Jon's blog gets 150 hits a day, it is actually a site he runs, Classic Holiness Sermons, that receives the 150. Jon's blog is apparantly only read by his wife, her dog Cinnamon, and a highly trained chimp at the University of Texas. Sorry for the error.

Flower Pot BBQ Smoker

Jon has done it again. This time with a homemade bbq smoker made from a... flower pot. He got the idea from his favorite cook (and mine) Alton Brown. Here is the video of Alton explaining bbq...

Jon really fits in the south here. BBQ, Atlanta Braves, sweet tea and grits.

But back to photography. I have some ideas floating around in my head, and hopefully by mid-week next week, I will have accomplished a few of them.

In the meantime "District 9", excellent, the main actor, Sharlto Copley, does an excellent job. However, it has a LOT of the "f" word. But action-wise and story-wise... it was great.

"All About Steve" I have only gotten about 1/3 of the way through, and so far... horrible. Had a funny moment or two, but otherwise not good at all, and Sandra Bullock looks bad.

So, short post today, spending my time reading photography books about lighting, so I'll be back tomorrow.

Greece

Welcome Greece. You are the word.

Love me a good gyro, but that's a blog for another day.
Was going in depth on my statcounter page, and found that Twitter and Facebook are the two most popular links to my blog. I had two people find me by searching "Jeanell Norvell" on google. David Hasselhoff Potatoes is by far my most popular post, and was even found with two searches, one for photos. Fred is still reading, he must be subscribing, which is why I didn't see N.C. on my daily stats. The cross processing tutorial is my most popular "tip". "Split Personality" is my most "stolen" photo. And yes, people watch Castle after linking from my page.
Last night was "New Recipe Tuesday". It was Angela's turn. She made an awesome slow roasted sirloin roast. Green bean amandine and slow cooker cheesy potatoes. I made dessert, cherry coffee cake.

I just sold this on Shutterstock. This is Tyron again. He is by far my most sold model. The day of this shoot, my auto-focus went out on my 50mm prime lens, so I was shooting manual focus, which I don't do often and so I am not very good at, my eyes don't want to focus quick enough to tell if subject is in focus. But here is one of my better photos from that day. He looks to me like he is getting ready to remove his shirt to fight you. I made a photoshopped version....

This was real early in my layers learning. For years I edited photos on a single layer, but I decided I needed to learn layers in order to increase my knowledge base. So this was my attempt to extract someone and alter the photo. I simply used the extract filter, cut him out. Duplicated him. The top layer (his cutout) was left unaltered. The layer below (his duplicate cutout) I turned to white and then blurred. The bottom layer I cross processed. Pretty simple. Tyron just loved this photo, and is the reason, I believe, he kept calling me back to do shoots with him.

Well, going to be late for work. So gotta go.

Indonesia... 17,508 Islands!!!!

That's a lot of islands. Of course, only 6,000 are populated with 231 million people. Indonesia is the fourth most populated country, just behind China, India, and the U.S.
So, welcome Indonesia, to the spectacle that is me. A reader from below the equator.

Luis has been absent for a few days. Maybe spending time with his new niece/nephew.

One of my favorite blogs (besides mine) is the Photoshop Disasters blog. A daily dose of the do nots of photoshop.

I have been tempted lately to move the Piedmont Park shoot to Hilton Head Island. More of a jungle, tropical look, which would be great for Indiana Jones style adventure shoot, and the second half could be beach shoots. I'll decide by end of tomorrow.

Had none of my photos accepted for Shutterstock. Kind of shocking, but after a look with rejection reasons, I could see why.

Did I talk about this photo yet? This is another of my favorites, and the pic most used by me as business cards, headers, promotional stuff. I actually got lucky with this one. I was walking into the kitchen one morning to get breakfast and I saw this golden square of light on the floor. I stopped for a second to think of something I could shoot in it. I started racing through the house and saw this baseball, which happens to be a foul ball from the Yankees. I dropped it into the sunlight laid on the floor and started shooting. I turned it various ways, but in the end got two great photos, seams facing opposite ways, which for the longest times were my #1 and #2 photos, I call 'em "Baseball Left" and "Baseball Right". "Right" has really dropped in popularity, but "left" is my #12 most profitable photo.

Which reminds me, I got to shoot a minor league baseball game once, right down on the field with the players. It was pretty cool. Only got one "useable" shot that day, which is my first photo accepted by Shutterstock. "First Base."

BTW, I post a lot of pictures here, the ones with watermarks you obviously can't steal, but if I don't post a watermarked version, you are free to use it. Please try to credit me, though, gotta keep my street cred up.

Tonight is New Recipe Tuesday. Angela is making dinner, some kind of slow cooked sirloin roast by the looks of it. Cheesy potatoes, and a charged-up green bean of some sort. The dessert will be provided by me, and I have been told I need to keep the cherries from a portion of it due to hatred from someone. Looks good in the recipe, I guess we'll see.

(watch the greatest movie of all time Slumdog Millionaire)

My Blog's Been Jimmy-Jacked

...Well, not really, I guess, I'm not really sure what jimmy-jacked means, but sounds neat.
Watched "Night at the Museum 2" last night. Wasn't too bad as far as sequels go. Couple of repeat jokes from first movie, slapping monkeys, "where's my gum dum dum?", etc etc. But all the main characters were back, even if just on the screen for a moment. A cameo from Darth Vader. Overall, nice little family film, good for a couple laughs and a few chuckles. And it had Amy Adams, which is always a plus.

Anyways, uploaded a small batch of photos last night and was surprised to wakeup and find they have not been reviewed yet, which is abnormal for Shutterstock.

I don't have much time, so this has been a very short blog. I will take a slight break here and finish up after I get kids ready...

Ok, got the kids ready and down to babysitter. Now I only have a few minutes to get myself ready, so I must end here. But first, another lightpainter, who does it on a big scale, Eric Curry.

Blog Post #40

I am actually working on some photos, so not a long blog today. Came across Mark Ruff and his time splice photography. Thought you'd enjoy seeing that. Looked at the 300 effect tutorials and they really don't give an effect I care for. Now if they actually looked like the movie 300, then I would use them, but they don't so I won't. The closest I found was an action you had to pay for. No thank you.

Haven't submitted anything today, but I am putting them into a file to batch upload tonight. So hopefully by the time I write tomorrow I'll be a little closer to 500.

Yesterday was my most read blog post in over a week. No new countries or states. Most readers now are regulars.

This is part of the skyline in Atlanta, as taken from my room at the Georgian Terrace Hotel. I stayed there years ago and I took several pics, but the one I had of the morning skyline was decent, but not great. When I went back a couple years ago, I ended up by chance in the room right next to the one I stayed in before, so I was able to correct my previous photo. This is the same place I was able to get my spiral stairs....

So anyway. Avatar is now #1 internationally, will overtake alltime worldwide by Tuesday. Be a couple more weeks domestically.

Watched "9" last night, and again this morning. Animation was spectacular. If you have wireless headphones like I have (thanks to Jon) the sound in incredible. The movie has very little music, or is subtle enough not to be noticed. The movie ending is a little weak, but I think the overall animation made up for it.

Tonight is either District 9 or Night at the Museum 2.