not such a bad friday after all

Fridays are tough. They seem like they stretch on forever, and I'm antsy to get out of the dark and windowless photo studio and see the big picture view of the world...sky and trees and fresh air. 

My morning commute starts before dawn, through the cold fog. (Figurative and literal, since I haven't had coffee yet, my brain is as foggy as the highway)

Then I spend my day on details. (I'll explain this part of my job some other day)

On the commute home I take a different, more idyllic route. It calms me down and reconnects me with the outside world.

When I got home, I grabbed my camera and tripod and spent the evening at one of my favorite places:

Lonesomeville

It's a century-old farmhouse situated on an acre of land in what is now SE Portland, about 10 minutes from downtown.

The house and garden have been restored by two amazing artists and their friends into an delightful showcase for their pottery and other designs.  

A couple of times a year they open it to the public and sell their pottery and let people tour the garden.

I love seeing it in the spring, but I think their Halloween sale is the best!

(click here to see what it looked like last year)

Happy Halloween!

wordless wednesday no. 24

it's not as easy at it seems

The past few weeks, I wonder if I've died and gone to accessory hell.

I work as a photo stylist, and even though the average person would never know it, the recession has hit the advertising industry pretty hard. Advertisers have been reusing old photos, running fewer ads and scaling back costs, which means less work for the supporting industries like photographers, stylists and graphic designers. After a very long dry spell for freelance work, things seem to be finally picking up a little.

I've been hoping for work of any kind, not just the glamorous and fun stuff like this:

or this:

or even this:

Sometimes, this is the reality:

Socks. Hundreds of them. Days and days of them, punctuated by piles of hats and gloves, and then - then when I thought I would surely go out of my mind, I get to style SHOES!

So the next time you look at shoes or socks or hats or gloves in a catalog or on a website, think of me and those other anonymous stylists out there slaving away,

lacing all those shoes perfectly.

And just in case you're wondering what kind of shoes I prefer:

sunnyside up

I've been working in a place where they keep the fried eggs in a drawer...along with fall leaves and popsicle sticks. I guess it would be weird if it were a restaurant, but it's a commercial photo studio. Welcome to the world of advertising. (And don't believe everything you see!)

photo styling 101: how to roll towels like a pro

I admit it. Sometimes my thrifty nature gets to be a bit much. I don't like to throw things out, and tend to use things until they wear out or fall apart. Old socks are recycled into sweaters for my Santa dolls and Fairies, bottlecaps are turned into lamps, twigs and tree trimmings are fashioned into rustic furniture, and worn out T-shirts and flannel sheets make good rags for dusting. All this recycling would lead one to believe Camp Cactus is a tidy place, orderly and simple. A place full of useful objects, a place that gets dusted occasionally, right? Well, not exactly...here, let's check out the linen closet:


I ask you, just how many dust rags does one need? I know, at first glance it doesn't look that bad. (What you don't see is the depth of the closet...at least three feet!) Please note that there are no towels in the stuffed to the gills neatly organized linen closet. There are however, crib and twin size sheets, even though we haven't had either a crib or a twin bed in the house for years. All this hoarding thriftiness has led to many inventive storage solutions, which is how we came to store the towels in a bookcase in the bathroom...

Even this is not simple, much to Dave's dismay. The poor guy craves the simple life. He doesn't like fussy stuff, whether it's "art food" or over-stylized window treatments, it just doesn't sit well with him. Which brings me back to the towels in the bathroom bookcase...

I'm a professional photo stylist. It's hard to check my design sense at the door. You've probably read the post I wrote about reorganizing the books in the front hall, so you know I get a little [ahem!] anal about how things look. But, back to the towels...I decided they didn't look so great folded, and if you wanted one from the bottom of the stack, it was difficult to extricate it without messing up the rest of the pile. So I pulled a stylist trick out of my hat and started rolling them up. Dave did his best, but couldn't quite replicate the look, so I decided to write a little tutorial. Here goes:

Step one: Fold in half lengthwise, ends together.

Step two: Fold the top third down to the center.

Step three: Fold the bottom third up over the top third, and smooth it out.

Step 4: Roll it up neatly, left to right, or vice versa.

Step five: And there you have it -
just like in the catalogs!

Stay tuned for my next tutorial: How to fold a T-shirt, Navy style.

it's all just smoke and mirrors...

This morning I was planting some geraniums left over from a photo shoot a few days ago, and I came across this:

a lovely plant, but something wasn't quite right...

Oh, right...real plant not lush enough? No problem! Just add some flowers!

the real thing

Ever wonder why everything looks so much better in catalog photographs than in real life? What planet do these lush flowers and fluffy, soft beds and gorgeous fashions that fit perfectly on flawless models come from, anyway? And why the hell doesn't it look like that on me/in my house/in my yard???!
The answer is, it could. That is, it could if you're not disinclined to wear your clothes clamped in the back with pins and clothespins, gaffer's tape and wire...or if you don't mind sleeping in a bed with 3 or 4 layers of down, packing tape and foam blocks, or if you don't mind planting silk flowers in place of real ones in your garden.

My job as a photo stylist is pretty hard to describe to most people without a rather lengthy explanation. It's not very complicated, really, (and it's definitely not brain surgery) but it's one of those invisible professions designed to be behind the scenes...it's all about creating illusion with smoke and mirrors, so to speak.
Advertisers would probably sooner poke their eyes out with a sharp stick rather than let the general public know just how much adjusting, tweaking, fluffing, buffing, polishing, etc. it takes to make their products look appealing in a photograph.
Many art directors like to say they're not selling a product, they're selling a lifestyle.
Photo stylists sometimes specialize in specific areas. Some work strictly with models on fashion shoots, some do nothing but food. Others choose to work only on room sets or with soft goods. Some, like me, like to work on a little of everything. I mostly work on soft goods: apparel, bedding, towels, etc. Live models really aren't my thing, although I've been known to pinch hit when necessary. Personally, I prefer working with mannequins and inanimate objects, mostly because they don't complain if I accidentally stick them with a pin.

~ lifestyle ~

~ reality ~

Even a photo of a stack of neatly folded t-shirts is not entirely what it seems...

I could tell you more, but then I'd have to kill you...So next time you look at a Macy's, Mervyn's or Target ad, or a Pottery Barn catalog, or even a fashion spread in Vogue, remember to view it with a healthy dose of skepticism...and never say I didn't warn you.

how not to do laundry

We have a system for doing laundry at Camp Cactus...the evolution of which seemed to happen rather organically, and naturally (meaning: nobody actually designed the system, it just sort of occurred; and said system's evolution has happened at an agonizingly slow pace, like the melting of the glaciers before global warming). Here's how it works:
Step 1: There are 3 baskets, beautifully handmade by child laborers highly skilled workers in China. One for WHITES, one for LIGHTS, and one for DARKS. With me so far? Ok, these three beautifully handmade baskets usually reside in our ridiculously huge bathroom, waiting patiently to be filled with the correct shade of dirty laundry. (This seems very simple and logical and easy to me...so why do both of our grown children insist upon doing their own laundry in one giant, washing machine- killing load? But, I digress...)

Alternate Step 1: See steps three and four for explanation.


Step 2: The now-full basket of dirty laundry is moved into the hallway outside the bathroom, waiting for someone (anyone?) to carry it down 2 flights of stairs, over 2 baby gates (a story for another time) to the basement laundry room/hovel to be washed until sparkling clean, or at least smelling like spring rain.


Step 3: The sparkling clean, smelling-like-spring-rain laundry is plopped warm and fresh out of the dryer into its beautiful and functional Chinese basket, carted back up two flights of now exceedingly steep stairs, over two baby gates (destined to someday cause one of us in our increasingly aged condition to break a hip), to the bedroom, where it is deposited in the middle of the floor. This location was chosen (again in some organic, evolutionary way) for its position relative to moving about the bedroom, meaning of course that anyone wishing to move about must step around it. Evolutionary timeline of this era: millions of years (okay...maybe a day or two or five) Which brings us back to Alternate Step 1: (see above) where dirty laundry waits not for an empty basket.

Step 4: After a few days sitting in the middle of the bedroom floor, the piles of dirty laundry have grown too big for the bathroom, and something must be done. So, the basket is emptied onto the largest flat surface available for folding.


At which time, it has started to resemble a giant sand castle molded in the shape of a hideous malformed lump, startling the lounging cat, and causing whoever faces the task of sorting (and sometimes even folding) this pile to sigh loudly and complain about the whole system.



There. All done. Now isn't that better? Stay tuned for my next tutorial: How to fold like a photo stylist. Coming soon.