Sleep and Inspiration

Hehe, it's totally one of those nights... but in a good way.

We went to Dollar Tree, Michael's, Home Depot & Walgreens and raided their cheap Christmas decorations. I vetoed the 3-foot tall string of blinking penguins. Not that I don't love electric penguins, but I just don't think we had a place for the lil' beauties. Needless to say, we found a few other spectacular pieces to gaudy up the house with.

We came back home and had some great stir-fry concoction from Trader Joes. And then, there was the Egg Nog. See, I love me some Egg Nog... with the proper amount of Goldschlager added, of course. Some folks do whisky, some folks do brandy, we do Goldschlager where I come from. It gives that creamy, rich drinkable goodness a taste of cinnamon and a hot kiss on the lips from the 'schlager to warm it up a notch. Mmm... mmm... yummy! It really goes a long way to bringing merriment to the hanging of countless decorations.

So, we eat, decorate (gaudy up the place), and then I build a fire and we hang out watching "The Taking of Pelham 123" on Blu-Ray. And, just so you know, it pretty much sucked. Poor acting and a lousy plot line, so predictable. And, of course, I pass out somewhere around 9 p.m., which is terrible form for me, hehe. I usually go all-night long.

Fast forward several hours.

And here I am now. I woke up about 5 a.m. and had a strong desire to retouch a photograph from the shoot last week with Phil Vassar. The retouch is good, subtle, but nice, I think. It's one of my favorite shots from our session. I think PV look's good in this one. It seems like a classic shot of him, his happiness and such. He's on the white cyc wall in the studio. Using light fall off, you can change the distance of your subject to the background, in a larger proportion to the light source and create a gray wall from white. [It's a simple trick Michael Gomez taught me.] Lit PV with the 6-foot Elinchrome Octabank boomed-up and from the left side, one light only, and a reflector underneath to help bring those eyes out a bit. Man, I really like the resulting image. It's simple, but a great portrait that catches a piece of this man's persona.

It's a good night/morning. Now the sun is up and the retouch is complete. My subconscious mind has settled back down, it's back off to Dreamland to play a little longer. Hope to see you there!