Shadows and Light

This morning I have the house to myself, and I'm working on a story set on Tau Ceti.  It really needs to be a character-driven plot, since it's primarily a relationship story (instead of being a milieu, mystery, or status-quo story).  I wrote the original Very Rough Draft a few months ago, and I'm seeing the parts where I started to lapse into "Tolkien Hiking Porn for Space Station Tech Enthusiasts."  The mantra to repeat has been, "Advance the plot, reveal character."

On a completely different note, here's some photos from last weekend, when it was much less foggy.


I'd recently seen some back-lit photos of plants Pat Kight did, so during the Mt. Pisgah hike I was on the lookout for light shining through leaves.

 I like the contrast between the pale lime lichen and the orange leaves.

 Western Oregon trees have to support a lot of lichen.

 Some times the lichen is so thick, it's hard to know where a tree ends and the lichen begins.

 The sun came out about a third of the way through our hike.  The earlier rain gave everything a silvered sheen.  My camera is not capturing the brilliant greens everywhere.

The only macro-lens shot I took.  I would have taken more, but that would have required a hike about six hours long instead of two.

Still More Pat Kight Photos...

© Pat Kight, 2014

I think this is the most whimsical photo Pat took.  I was standing in front of a bowl of mist, but it wasn't really misting so much.  Once Pat got home, she zapped the bowl with some Photoshop magic.

© Pat Kight, 2014

 Obligatory Crystal Ball shot.

© Pat Kight, 2014

I was going for goofy (on purpose) in this one.

This is Me...

© Pat Kight, 2014

This is me ready for my Bollywood Dance Number!

© Pat Kight, 2014

 This is me, swearing on all that's holy that I never took my clothes off at all during any part of this photo.

© Pat Kight, 2014

This is me pretending to by your kindly grandfather sending you a psychic message from another time.

Photo Shoot

I'm not sure what to think about this series.  I was going for rugged and I think it came out goofy. This is not Pat's fault.

© Pat Kight, 2014

I'm a simple Renaissance Man, in a simple wooden frame with straight lines to contrast the simple folds of my unconstricting poet's shirt.  Oh.  And I was a dog in a previous life.  Did you say you had some chocolate?  I can stay right here if you have chocolate.

© Pat Kight, 2014

Help, I've wandered into a play structure, and I can't get out!  They promised me a poet's cottage with glass windows, but this is all they have got.  And there's no tea.

© Pat Kight, 2014

Look at me.  Now look at my hand.  Now look back at me.  Wait!  Don't look at me.  OMG! This is a Drunk J Crew session, isn't it?

Evil Bambi Eyes

This morning I cleaned my office.  It wasn't quite the archaeological excavation I thought it would be thanks to actually using a filing cabinet the last time.  Mostly, it involved recycling odd notes and flyers, and clearing out some space in the rolling file that's supposed to house works in progress instead of finished manuscripts.  The take-away from this morning is that I have too many unfinished projects, and I don't have an excuse to not pick a manuscript and either finish incorporating Wordos critiques or else polish a manuscript for critique soon.

© Pat Kight, 2014

On the picture front, here's another Pat Kight photo.  In most of the pictures, Pat used a narrow field of focus and managed to focus on my eyes.  She also Photoshopped some of them, mostly to darken or blur backgrounds.

I'm not sure what I was thinking when this picture was taken.  My hair looks like it's got a Dorothy Hamill bob, but it's merely escaping a hair tie.  I think I was trying to look coy or impish or something.  This photo is making my eyes look bigger... I think.  I've decided that black and white photos paradoxically make my hair look darker.

In thinking about this a little more, I've come to the conclusion that this photo is capturing my "Evil Bambi" look.  Maybe I'll use it for author biopics for romance novels.

Smiling Thespian

© Pat Kight, 2014

Continuing in the Pat Kight Summer Photoshoot series.  I like this photo because I look like I'm having fun, but not too goofy (What? Me? Goofy?).   I didn't realize it at the time, but in some of the other photos I've done the Fabio Open Shirt thing a little too much -- in this one, my shirt front is staying as closed as I thought it would.

Also, while I'm rocking the Grizzly Adams Beard, I don't look too wrinkly.  Not that wrinkles are bad, I'm not quite ready to embrace them.  (Yes, it's true, some days I look in the mirror and sing to myself, "The sun when it's shining on your face really shows your age...")

Waiting

Last August I had a photo shoot.  There were lots of props, and a few hat changes.

© Pat Kight, 2014

This photo is fun because I look like The Hermit from the tarot card.  I'm thinking that Pat must have Photoshopped in the light in the lamp along with some other post-production tweaking to make the photo more sepia than it was.  Now that I'm looking, I'm standing underneath our cherry tree and the Pat's facing south.  It was about 3 PM and I'm facing west.

We had a lot of fun.  I'm going to see if I can rotate some of the photos through the blog.

Photos with Pat Kight

The other month the very talented Pat Kight came over and we had a photo shoot.  I forget how many photos she took (I want to say about 300).  We had a lot of fun playing with various poses, shots, and the shadows in the back yard.

It was lots of fun, and, for once, I pretty much wore the same outfit throughout (although there was that series with the veil...).