I recline at my leisure, hair still intact. A pleasant summer's day. I am clad with my normal sartorial genius:
Black jacket from Planet Hollywood Paris (via a chain store seconds shop).
Black jeans (always!).
Grey t-shirt from some helpdesk.
Tinted halfrims from SpecSavers.
Battered shoes from the dawn of history (spot the missing strap on my right foot.
Hair from hell.
These first few pics were taken with the camera on "indoors light" settings (increased exposure compensation, lower yellow filter), so it can be noticed that, fleshwise, even after heavy touching-up with paintshop pro, I look like a pallid white zombie. Which, to be honest, is pretty darn accurate.
I thought the effect was kindof interesting. There were only two distinct shades left for much of my face, and it seems to have made a rectangle on my forehead and hands (an artefact of jpg compression, and not because I habitually walk around with toiletpaper stuck to my head). The rest of my face and hands looks like cracked clay.
In later images, where the glare blasting off my bloodless face hasn't completely saturated the camera, I have adjusted it as much as possible in order to make myseslf look human. Do not be fooled for a moment! I look much greyer. Hence the redness of my beard. Which is annoying, because part of the reason I did this "photoshoot" was to silence those among you who claim I have a red beard! Ah, well.
Some fool brought me a mirror. And some hair gel. OK, spring will be officially springing in two days, already the clocks have gone forward. Time to get rid of the winter coat.
Pointeh horns! I am teh deeemon king!
I've badly messed up the saturation curve here. Oh, well.
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Me being a dandy lion.
Detail on the face was prettymuch lost, here. I did what I could by magic-wanding it with a 5-pixel feather, then stretching the histogram downward and strongly emphasising what stood for mid-tones. I also knocked up the saturation, and down the luminance to try to recover SOME colour.
At this point, I figured out three things:
1) Facing directly into the sun, in a light-grey t-shirt, with my light-grey flesh, would cause some problemss with the camera,
2) The camera needed fiddling to makee it work better in sunlight,
3) I will never manage to look fierce. Ever.
Light coming from the side, backlighting the glasses, had the interesting effect of making only one lens of my glasses look tinted. Ah, well.
Unbeknown to me, someone switched off the camera between the last photo and this. So, of course, the settings reverted. Only one good pic was taken.
Here I've shaved two lines through my hair and beard, to see what it'd be like. Some fun!
The top view. Lots of pics were taken of this, but I'll not bore you with them.
The topknot! Sense finally sank in (though, not enough to check that the camera settings were still OK), and I'd moved against a less contrasting background - a faded brick wall.
Intended as an "after" pic, for best comparison against the initial pics.
The camera lady is asking for a "hard man" pose with the tacky plastic gun. The gun is made for her size, and since the pic is also taken from her height, I end up looking huge. Only the bricks break the illusion.
Sartorial notes:
Black leather jacket by some shop in Wales, a tenth of the price you'd find in London. Not brilliant quality, but it's kept me warm for two years now.
Lapel pins are a little dolphin (sold by some kid's charity, or possibly the RNID or RNIB), and the Cats! pin. I used to have the Cats! one balanced by a Lion King one (both excellent musicals, and I mourn the passing of the Drury Lane Cats!), but a little girl admired it on a train, so I gave it to her.
Now for a "silly hard man" photo (there's a difference? Yes, apparently I can smile this time). Our inexperience is showing: I'm holding the tacky plastic gun in the easiest way for me, not in the most photogenic way, so you only se it edge-on.
That's all, folks!