Perfectly Themselves II
These pictures would end up in The Fail Trunk in my basement if they were any more than just digital images. However, because of the failure of these images, I have figured out the error of my ways and now know how to light Jen and Derrick so that I get the images that I want. Perhaps a re-shoot is in the future.
This picture is the first in a 6 part photo series. I don’t know if this was the exact pose that I wanted, but it is kind of a Gorshe family trait where they do something I really like in the test shots. A point that I will make again in 4 weeks when I post a picture that involves Jill and a fog machine. I’m not certain that this was a test shot because my memory isn’t what it used to be, but either way this picture will be the picture used as the first picture in this series.
Here are a couple of other pictures from this photo shoot:
Yesterday was April Fool’s Day. Today is World Autism Awareness Day. Cousin Amy sent me a reminder that to show support for the cause I should wear blue today.
You can bet dollars to donuts that I am wearing blue today. The day is still young, so if you aren’t wearing blue now, you can go home and change before you go to your Supper Club or whatever it is that other people do on Friday nights.
I indicated in the first Personal Photo Project entry that the weekly Personal Photo Project wouldn’t always be designing and taking a new picture. This is one of those occasions.
This time the project was cutting and mounting and hanging Psyched Up (Not Out) on the wall.
To get a print this large made isn’t chump change, so I enlisted the aid of Teresa because she has a much steadier hand than I do. I didn’t want to be on the hook for buying a replacement print if I butchered the cutting job.
Teresa cut the picture down to the dimensions of the window. Then I mounted it to a piece of foamboard, that Teresa had also cut. I placed the picture in the window and strung wire across the back of it.
It was a big enough spectacle that Carla, Johnathan and Alexis came over to witness the picture being placed proudly upon my wall.
Or it is possible that they stopped by because their laptop was broken, but I’d like to think that it was because of the picture hanging ceremony.
I now have a wall of Jill Gorshe body parts! I think that this is where that picture series will end. I’m not sure if Jill would be game for adding to the collection, but I guess if I figure out what needs to go with her foot and hand, I’ll test my powers of persuasion one more time.
Those with astute memories might recall the flowers from RWPE – Plants and from The Digital Bouquet. They might even wonder what happened to those flowers. The project below is part of that answer.
Although it is happenstance that this picture ended up being released to the general public on this day, it is also apropos.
A few other pictures from the “Even Though We Love It” Photo Shoot:
I took these pictures one cold February morning. I was going to take more pictures the following morning, but one of the neighborhood rabbits (I’m guessing) had other ideas. Something ate these flowers before I got a chance to revisit them.
Obviously this Personal Photo Project was completed well before I trimmed down and became a dirty naked-face. I kind of miss the guy in this picture.
Jay actually took the original image. Then I did some photo stuff and made a new image. Photoshop was not used in the construction of this image.
Jill did say that I looked very wise and distinguished in the second picture. I have to confess that my wisdom is almost legendary. It kind of walks hand and hand with my modesty, which is also legendary.
My mom came over to my house a couple of days after I made this image and was horrified to find broken mirror all over my dining room table. She asked how the mirror got broken.
“I hit it with a hammer. Well actually Jay hit it with a hammer and then I hit it with a hammer some more.”
This made her even more horrified. She pointed out that breaking a mirror was bad luck. I was horrified to be related to somebody that was this superstitious.
Willy chose the name Shattered Dreams. He likes naming his portraits. He also named Grizzly McAlpine:
Shattered Dreams was taken during a FNSC at my house after we feasted at La Carreta and knocked down Tab Cola.
Willy texting like a teenage girl.
Of course this was probably one of the nights where my furnace was on the fritz, so Jay cuddled up in my Snuggie and donned a mullet wig to keep warm.
It might just be me, but I think this look isn’t half bad for Mr. Janson. I’m so glad Jen gave me this wig, but I think I might just have to pay it forward.
When I took this picture I went down quite the long journey of family history in family Bibles. One of the most important things I discovered was that I was born special.
The Bible in the picture belonged to my Grandma Bennett. My birth announcement was taped or glued to the front of her Bible. I wasn’t the first grandchild born. I wasn’t even close to being the first grandchild born. However, I am the only grandchild that had a birth considered worthy of having the birth announcement glued into the front of the Bible.
The Bible used for Hearts Beat High with Joy was my Grandma Bennett’s Bible. The smaller Bible pictured in the last picture was my Dad’s Bible. The Bible in the middle of the stack was my Grandpa Bennett’s Bible.
I finally found a use for this window that I like. Sara agreed to pose for this picture before we went to the movies one snowy Monday night. This pose was not without some danger. The lights behind Sara are extremely hot, but she managed not to burn herself. This was a victory of some kind.
Daily Reminder
Don’t forget to update your links, bookmarks and RSS Feeds to the new URL: http://www.photography139.com/notebook/
This picture is an homage to one of my favorite scenes from my favorite movie of 2009 – (500) Days of Summer.
Derrick posed for this picture when he was forced to vacate his abode for Girls Night on foggy Saturday night in January.
As it turns out, there wasn’t a blog on Thursday, so here is the love letter from Thursday’s Writer’s Almanac.
There are many prevailing popular perceptions of Emperor Napoleon of France — most of which began as British propaganda. While his name doesn’t often conjure images of a sweet hopeless romantic who pined for an older woman, the letters he wrote to his beloved Josephine reveal as much. In December 1795, he wrote to her:
“I wake filled with thoughts of you. Your portrait and the intoxicating evening which we spent yesterday have left my senses in turmoil. Sweet, incomparable Josephine, what a strange effect you have on my heart! … You are leaving at noon; I shall see you in three hours. Until then, mio dolce amor, a thousand kisses; but give me none in return, for they set my blood on fire.”
Napoleon and Josephine were married in 1796; he was 26 and she was 32, a widow. He wrote to her from all across Europe, when he was out waging military campaigns. The year they married he wrote to her:
“I have not spent a day without loving you; I have not spent a night without embracing you; I have not so much as drunk one cup of tea without cursing the pride and ambition which force me to remain apart from the moving spirit of my life. In the midst of my duties, whether I am at the head of my army or inspecting the camps, my beloved Josephine stands alone in my heart, occupies my mind, fills my thoughts. If I am moving away from you with the speed of the Rhone torrent, it is only that I may see you again more quickly. If I rise to work in the middle of the night, it is because this may hasten by a matter of days the arrival of my sweet love. … I ask of you neither eternal love, nor fidelity, but simply … truth, unlimited honesty. The day you say ‘I love you less,’ will mark the end of my love and the last day of my life. If my heart were base enough to love without being loved in return I would tear it to pieces. Josephine! Josephine! Remember what I have sometimes said to you: Nature has endowed me with a virile and decisive character. It has built ours out of lace and gossamer. Have you ceased to love me? Forgive me, love of my life, my soul is racked by conflicting forces.
My heart, obsessed by you, is full of fears which prostrate me with misery … I am distressed not to be calling you by name. I shall wait for you to write it. Farewell! Ah! If you love me less you can never have loved me. In that case I shall truly be pitiable.
Bonaparte
P.S. — The war this year has changed beyond recognition. I have had meat, bread, and fodder distributed; my armed cavalry will soon be on the march. My soldiers are showing inexpressible confidence in me; you alone are a source of chagrin to me; you alone are the joy and torment of my life.”
And from Friday:
Zelda Fitzgerald, née Sayre, was F. Scott Fitzgerald’s great muse and more. He modeled many of his characters after her, and he even included lines in his books that were from letters that Zelda had written him.
The two went on their first date on her 18th birthday. Her family was wary of him, and she wouldn’t marry him until his first novel was actually published. Zelda was still 18 when she wrote this letter to Scott in the spring of 1919:
“Sweetheart,
Please, please don’t be so depressed — We’ll be married soon, and then these lonesome nights will be over forever — Maybe you won’t understand this, but sometimes when I miss you most, it’s hardest to write — and you always know when I make myself — Just the ache of it all — and I can’t tell you.How can you think deliberately of life without me — If you should die — O Darling — darling Scott — It’d be like going blind. I know I would, too, — I’d have no purpose in life — just a pretty — decoration. Don’t you think I was made for you? I feel like you had me ordered — and I was delivered to you — to be worn — I want you to wear me, like a watch-charm or a buttonhole bouquet — to the world. And then, when we’re alone, I want to help — to know that you can’t do anything without me.
One week after This Side of Paradise appeared in print, Zelda and Scott got married at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City. They became known as the quintessential Jazz Age couple: beautiful, flashy, with money, and often drunk in public. The year they married, Zelda wrote to Scott:
“I look down the tracks and see you coming — and out of every haze & mist your darling rumpled trouser are hurrying to me — Without you, dearest dearest, I couldn’t see or hear or feel or think — or live — I love you so and I’m never in all our lives going to let us be apart another night. It’s like begging for mercy of a storm or killing Beauty or growing old, without you.
Lover, Lover, Darling — Your Wife”
Before I delve into this week’s PPPW, I want to pass along some sad (not real sad) and fairly technical news.
The way I have always posted entries into this journal is through a blogging company known as Blogger. It is an awesome program and it allows me to write blogs on their website and publish them to my website via FTP.
Blogger is discontinuing their support for FTP publishing in about a month. That means that I am parting ways with Blogger at the end of February.
There are some positives to this change:
There are some negatives to this change:
Enough housekeeping! Here is Personal Photo Project of the Week No. 3:
The sad part about this story is that this fish has already died. As Dennis so eloquently put it: “He lived on the stage. He died on the stage.”
I did not kill this fish. Nor did I kill the second unpictured fish that I got for free because the Wal-Mart lady fished out two fish on accident and was too lazy to return the other fish to the aquarium.
They both died of completely natural causes, I believe that natural cause of death to have been “fish bought from Wal-Mart”. Despite my best efforts to keep them alive, I fed them every now and again, they perished… from this Earth.
So let me share a couple of pictures from their brief existence.
I need to thank my favorite rock star, Derrick Gorshe for loaning me the mic and mic stand. I printed out a temporary copy of this picture that Derrick requested so he could hang it up at Rieman Music. If you don’t count Shannon’s apartment as the worldwide headquarters of Little White Lye Soap or Jesse’s office at work, this is only the 2nd business to proudly display a Photography 139 image on one of its walls.
The first business was Salon 908.
I do know that the Photography 139 Calendar has graced office walls and cubicles of businesses like The Salon at Younker’s, Loan Processing Services, Ortho Computer Systems and Principal Financial Group, but this is a little different.
I hope you enjoyed the comedic picture and the sad tale of how it ended.