A traumatic event happened at Dragon*con. I saw the most beautiful woman dressed as one of my all time favorite costumes. I had seen her literally two floors away at another hotel and she was gone by the time I got to her floor. Two hours later, I ran into her again in one of the darkest places of the hotel. I excitedly asked her if I could take a picture and she consented. I snapped one picture, knew it was going turn out blurry, so I asked for a second. She agreed to that too, which let me tell you, at Dragon*con, that is a rarity.
My second picture didn’t come out much better as you can see.
The thing I love about this costume is that this is a big woman, who is wearing a big outfit and that is why it works. I saw so many skinny girls dressing up as heroines, and they looked like teenagers in their parent’s clothes. Sure, the spandex showed off their flat stomachs but they no curves. This lovely lady’s dress was in proportion to her and it made all the difference. She looked like she was poured into that dress. You can’t tell in this photo, but she had very pale skin that contrasted wonderfully with the sparkling red dress, just like the ‘real’ Jessica Rabbit.
What really depresses me about this photo is that I could have made it better. I could have used a flash because of how dark it was, I could have very politely asked to move to a better area, or maybe there is some setting on my camera that could have compensated for the weird dimness. I don’t think there is a magic bullet cure for this kind of picture as much as I think if I had more experience, I would have been better equipped to deal with this situation. I was nervous, I was excited and I fucked up the one picture I wanted most of all.
It also bothers me that I didn’t approach her and find out if she is local so that I could take more pictures of her. I keep swearing I’ll get cards made but it is another one of those things I never get around to. I wonder if I need two sets of cards, one for being a pornographer, and one for being a photographer. Right now the two are pretty intertwined but man, for someone like this, I could learn to do portraits.
Ages ago when I was writing Thigh Vs Thigh, I had a weekly posting schedule. That meant every weekend, I had another Amy and Bethany story up. Man was that a grind. I wrote science fiction, a lot of action, some magical stories and a shit load of sex scenes. I don’t remember why I forced myself to do such a schedule, but I noticed four months in that I could almost couch up a story with two minutes notice. I never realized that you could teach yourself creativity with repetition.
So, terribly annoyed with myself, I have started taking pictures every day. Every fucking day. Days that I don’t write, I make myself get up for thirty minutes and take pictures. I don’t leave the house without that camera any more. I’ve stopped limiting myself to pictures of people and now I take pictures of anything that strikes my fancy. No, I take pictures of anything I don’t think I can get a picture of. I chased a butterfly yesterday trying to get one non-blurry shot of the fucker. My wife was blown away by my pictures but damn it, the fucker is moving in all of them.
So take my advice. If you love something, you have to do it. Whether it is writing, photography, or your spouse, you have to keep at it. It is just as relentless as working out. You have to get in those X minutes of day where you train your brain to turn on at a moment’s notice.
Start now.
2 Responses to “Every Fucking Day”
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Depends on the digicam you have. On my el-cheapo, (ok, maybe the low-end of mid-range) I have a setting called “slow-synchro flash”. It’s usually used for taking pictures at night, and forces the shutter to hold open for a fraction longer than usual, then flashes at the end of the picture. This allows more background light into the CCD for the background to show up, and then flashes to illuminate the foreground object. For example, see this photo taken during our Seattle trip last year. Without using this setting, I wouldn’t have gotten the night skyline.
If you have a better model where you can control the aperture (the ƒ-stop), opening it up can compensate somewhat for lower light.
Remember, Ansel Adams once said, “Quantity equals quality.” I believe this applies as much to porn and sex as it does to photography.
Now that is a lovely Jessica Rabbit. :) While I never take pictures of anyone, I do notice that most of the people who get requested at GenCon are basically the skinny ones; kind of annoying since larger women are just as beautiful.
As for keep doing things, I completely agree. I write (a lot) mainly because I love doing it. I also program a lot and because of that, I’m a good writer and a good programmer (well, I think I am. :P) Now, drawing (which I want to do), I’m not so good at, but that is because I don’t try do to it ever day, day in and day out. I know that, but I just haven’t pushed it with everything else I do.