FREE HER

Here are some mermaid photos! Surprising no one, I'm not really satisfied with this shoot for a number of reasons. I suppose the bright side of that is that I will probably end up doing a third bathtub mermaid shoot at some point. (If not more...)

I don't know if you guys find it interesting when I talk about stuff like this, or if it just drives home how self-critical I am, but I am who I am, so I'm gonna write like 750 words about it, and you can ignore it and just look at the pictures if you want, haha!

Post Mer-tem

A few things doomed this shoot from the get-go. First, Josh accompanied me to my parents' house to help out (their bathroom's color scheme and slightly larger tub was a better fit for this shoot than my own current tub, which is tiled in a tan-colored stone, and is a smaller tub in a smaller bathroom with no natural light) but once we arrived, he realized he'd forgotten about an appointment, and had to leave. Normally I'm fine just working with a tripod and a remote trigger, but when my legs are tied together and I'm soaking wet, it's a lot harder to get to and from the camera! So instead, I enlisted my parents' help. As wonderful and helpful as my parents are, neither of them are particularly experienced with photography, so I'm much more likely to end up with issues in the images that they simply didn't notice (For example, every image of one specific pose/framing was out of focus on my face. Oops!)

The other thing that heralded trouble for this shoot was that I badly misjudged how much natural light this bathroom actually gets. I remember it as being quite bright, so I didn't bring any external lighting other than a little LED kicker that wasn't sufficient to light a whole scene. Things started out "meh," and as it got cloudier out, progressed steadily towards "blegh." I did what I could in the editing, but ultimately the pictures are just pretty dang grainy.

Of course, other problems presented themselves after that. I hadn't quite settled on a makeup look, so I improvised, and I'm not thrilled with all of it. I like how the eyes came out, but I should've known that I'm never satisfied with any attempt to fabricate the appearance of cheekbones on my round little baby face, and I kind of hate the lipstick, too, even though it's in the color scheme. Plus, turns out I hate the top I made! So that's fun.

After all this, I took the tail to my parents' neighborhood pool to test swim in it, since I hadn't really had a chance to use my new Finis Shooter monofin. Unfortunately, this monofin's smallest size is a medium, and the foot pockets aren't adjustable like they are on my previous monofin, the Finis Rapid (which is technically not a recommended monofin for either of my two Finfolk fabric tails — it doesn't quite fit.) I was super frustrated to confirm my fear that the Shooter is just too damn big for my dumb baby feet, even with neoprene socks to try and bulk 'em up. It was giving me really poor propulsion as a result, and I gave myself a blister within about 10 minutes of swimming, which is very bad news for my upcoming trip.

This basically means that I'm going to have to go back to using my Rapid for the trip, a monofin which is less powerful, and doesn't really fit in this fabric sheath, since I only have one day before my trip now. Yet another attempt by life to teach me the lesson I refuse to learn: Quit leaving things to the last minute!

I'm gonna sleep on it and see how I feel about makeup and mermaid tops in the morning. I need to make some calls tomorrow about what I'm bringing with me, and hopefully a little rest will give me fresh perspective and allow me to stop kicking myself.