Best job in the world? Maybe not.

(If you're here after reading this week's "Jake's Take," you might be looking for the post below on the photo retouching process)

Okay, time to come clean. If you paid attention to the small print in the swimsuit section, you'll notice that I took all the pictures.

Awesome, right? Best job on the planet! Think again. Pictures are deceiving.

Don't get me wrong. I love taking the photos, and I'd gladly do it again (and probably will), but the fun is that goofy sort of "hey, let's make you look beautiful while cracking bad jokes" deal, not the "oh my God, she's so hot, I'm such a cool photographer, we are exuding a look of sex that can be seen from the space shuttle" fun.

First, several of the women had never done this kind of posing before, and though I've shot a lot of photos (buy one if you'd like), I'm still relatively new to the female glamour photography scene. They were nervous, my mind was racing with thoughts of poses, angles, lighting and all the technical minutae from f-stops to aperture settings.

Second, take one of the outdoor shoots. It's August, a hundred-plus degrees. We're out in it, sweating. It's me, at least one assistant, the model, a friend or two of hers, and in one case three young children.

There are gnats and mosquitoes, all doing the South Georgia thing on us. On top of that, because of the way sunlight works on this planet, we're either shooting around 8 a.m. or 7 p.m., and trying like hell to get as many shots as we can (usually 100-200 or so) done before either the sun gets too high (harsh shadows) or sinks below the horizon (too dark to shoot without massive lighting rigs).

The whole time, we're talking, swapping stories, coming up with ideas for new shots, and giving uncomfortable directions. Not uncomfortable as in "how about a cleavage shot," but as in "okay, twist your hips a bit to the left, but keep your shoulders pointed to the right... yes, I know you're not meant to bend that way. It'll look great."

For some shots, I had to jump in a pool or splash around in the ocean. Ordinarily, that's fun, but not when you're holding $1,000-plus in camera equipment that doesn't like to get wet.

And the indoor shoot? Get the lights pointed the right direction. Bounce the flash off the reflector right... there. Move that reflector about six inches up. Good. Is the air conditioning on? These lights are boiling hot!

You get the idea. In short, swimsuit shoots are pretty much the un-sexiest thing on the planet, but a lot of frenetic, creative fun.

When we do the second annual one, we're shooting the pictures in the early Spring, then publishing them in August.

After all the shooting comes culling through the photos to find the "winners," then the whole retouching process - read on to the next post to find out more about the nuts and bolts of that.

How swimsuit pictures happen.

For those of you who want to step inside the sausage factory (and never look at a hot dog the same way again), here's the inside dope on how the Connect Statesboro swimsuit photos get on the page.

Once we've got a willing model, we did the vast majority of the shoots outdoors, either early in the morning (8 a.m.-ish) or late evening (7 p.m.-ish). Why? Because that's when sunlight isn't directly overhead, minimizing harsh lighting - the dreaded "boob shadow" effect - and making it not so darned hot outside.

With a helpful assistant holding a reflector at the perfect angle, a photographer (usually me, we're a small staff) shot the pictures. Typical shoots had anywhere from 100-250 pictures, from which we culled two to four "winners" that'd get their shot in the magazine.

Once we knew the photos that were going to be worked up, the fun began. Just as an illustration, I'll use a photo of myself to demonstrate (photo by Luke Martin). Keep in mind these aren't the exact steps that we used on every photo, just a rough approximation of some of the things the models went through in the digital world. Click the photos for a larger look.




There I am. Don't I look sexy? No? Well, Mom thinks I'm cool, and that's all that matters.

First things first. We need to crop the photo to focus attention away from the background and on my bulging bicep.



Much better. Cropping is one of those simple touches that can really make a photo pop. Read up on the rule of thirds for the secret recipe to good crops.

As sexy as I'd like to think I am, I know that's not the case. Genetically I got the short end of the stick as far as complexion goes. I'm in my mid-to-late twenties and still fighting breakouts. As luck would have it, it's not a good skin day. On top of that, years of soda have made it so my teeth aren't the brightest out there.



The teeth aren't bad (thanks, Dr. Lasala), but they could be better. Looking at my arm, not only do I have a rather unsightly surgery scar, but I've apparently have too much underarm hair.



I have no fear, however, for these things can be fixed. First, I apply a global smoothing to my skin - it evens out my skin tone and makes my skin that much closer to perfect.



Much better... but not perfect. To fix the remaining complexion and scar issues, I break out the Photoshop "healing brush," which tries to make an area that stands out (like the scar or a zit) match the surrounding area's shading, texture and color. Oh, and it works like a charm on underarm hair.



Whoops! Forgot the teeth - and while we're at it, my left arm looks really, really pale. It probably should match my sunburned head (thanks, Brooklet Peanut Festival). I can fix both with adjustment layers, another nifty-cool Photoshop feature that lets me apply an adjustable effect to just a part of a photo.



Beautiful. Just beautiful. Now we do something a little more advanced. I want to make my bicep just a little more manly.

The first step is drawing a curve that approximates the line I want my pumped-up muscle to take. Then I use Photoshop's liquify tool to push the edges of the skin to match the curve.

Sounds tough, right? Trust me, it's not. Works for reshaping all kids of body parts.



Oh, yeah. That's more manly, all right. As a final step, we'll apply some slight vignetting - making less-important areas of the photo a little darker so more-important areas stand out.



If I was get really fancy, I'd use the "dodge/burn" tool with my drawing tablet to put in some highlights and shadows to simulate muscle definition. Gotta get on that elliptical machine more often...

This is a quick example (about 5 minutes of work). The shots that went into the magazine took anywhere from about 10 minutes to an hour or more.

So that's the kind of work we did in the Connect Statesboro swimsuit issue. Nothing too drastic - we started with some of the most beautiful women in the area. Check it out this Thursday on stands everywhere.

Tales of Hardship

Imagine a world where everyone loves one another, and noone ever has to do any work because there's plenty of everything to go around...

Congratulations, you're thinking about the Smurf village, you glittering pansy. And while you were smelling tulips from the safety of your imaginary dress, and then probably kissing Matt Damon, Connect Statesboro Editor Jake Hallman and I were at Tybee Beach this Saturday, doing the opposite of kissing -- working like dogs to make sure Connect's swimsuit issue would be coming out on time. Oh, and since I brought my girlfriend with me, Anna, there was also some kissing going on.

It's been busy times since I took this job, and the grueling pace doesn't seem like it will ever let up. While going to the beach to take photographs of what someone who writes for Connect calls "Statesboro's Most Beautiful Women", I've written articles about almost more than two bands in the past two weeks, and interviewed Bubba San from the Car City commercials. That's a band a week, plus sometimes I attend Lazer Tag competitions. At this point, the only thing keeping me going are the unlimited supply of drinks bartenders feel compelled to serve me when I flash around my press pass and threaten to write something horrible about them. It's a rare time that you won't find me doing exactly that (in fact, if you see anyone at anytime doing something else, it's a safe bet that it isn't me), but once I'm cut off because I've "had too much" and I'm "starting too many fights with the waitress", I'm still busy as a beaver contributing to this newspaper. I mean, I'm not working, exactly, but the look on my face says that I sure am thinking about it.

If you're one of the many out there still collecting my fantastic yarns, you may have seen my name on last week's artist profile, as well as the piece on "Blues, Beads, and the Bayou." It's not quite the journalistic anarchy I promised yet, but be on the lookout for when I start dropping Video Game Reviews on the unsuspecting public, as I'm now being sponsored by KB (not EB) Games and given free rein to play anything in the store to my hearts content.

Also, I finally earned enough from my awesome journalism to buy myself a tattoo I've had my eye on.

Celebrating a love that will never die, it's an artist's realistic interpretation of myself as I would appear as a skull, with a banner underneath displaying the word "me", surrounded by tiny hearts to help better declare my feelings.

What's even more amazing is that if you look closely and squint, when I flex my biceps, I can create the illusion that the skull is frowning, if and when I need to express hate towards something.

Anyways, eat your heart out, 11th hour. (whoops, the competition, I meant to say!)

It'll probably be easier if you rip it out through your back.

More RIAA goodness...

Maybe it's just my new pet cause, but I found more proof the RIAA's undeniably evil.

They're actually deposing a dead defendant's family in one of their lawsuits.

Previous post (with interview!) on the new evil empire here. Connect Statesboro story on a local guy getting the legal lightning strike here.

The really mean part of the suits? If the RIAA files a complaint against you for file-sharing and you settle with them (usually to the tune of $3,000 to $4,000) instead of going to court, the money doesn't actually go to the musicians you allegedly ripped off. They can still sue you. It goes to the RIAA's legal fund, and is used to file more lawsuits.

Hello again, Internet. It's been a long, long time, and a lot has happened since the last time I tried my hand at this whole "blog" thing. I know I once wrote that I was quitting this business for good, and making my way in this crazy ol' world as a fugg'n rad jetpack wearing hockey player, but money has a way of changing your dreams.

Or rather, lack of money has a way of changing your place of residence from an apartment... to a shack in your grandmother's backyard. I wasn't sure I wanted a job as a freelance writer, especially after being effectively fired from my first job as a freelance writer, and had planned on flipping a coin to decide whether or not I would enter the working world a second time. As it turns out though, money made that decision as well, when I realized I didn't even have a coin to flip. So after a night spent in quiet contemplation, taking a long hard look at my life-
I decided to give it a go. And here I am, ladies, gentleman, and asexual scenesters, ready once more for cash money and criticial acclaim. The generous and hip Jake Hallman of Statesboro Connect has taken me under his wing, and until further notice, this is where I'll hang my (party) hat.

For those of you who have no idea who I am or what I'm all about, let me assure you, it's going to be a wild ride, true journalistic anarchy. I'm going to pee in your pools, and swim around in your toilets, and no one is going to be here to stop me. Except for maybe Jake, and occasionally other higher ranking members of the Connect staff, who will stop me either by hitting me, or threatening to take away my paycheck. For my parents, and other me fans, keep your eyes peeled for articles written by yours truly, appearing only in Statesboro Connect, on newsstands now.

Last thursday: I interviewed former child star Mae Middleton of TV's "Any Day Now", and took on the status quo movie rental establishment known in hushed circles as "Video Warehouse"

The RIAA have much in common with the Mafia.

There, I said it. When it comes to strongarm, Corleone-esque legal tactics, nobody's got the RIAA beat. Read this, for example.

When I spoke to Rebecca Jeschke at the Electronic Frontier Foundation for my story on a local guy getting sued, she had a lot to say about their tactics against online copyright infringement (which is not theft, don't be fooled). I wasn't able to use much of it in my story on a local guy getting nailed by the RIAA, so here's the MP3 of the whole 10-minute interview.

In response.

Like any business, we here at Connect Statesboro have competitors. That’s perfectly fine with us – we all grew up working in environments where having someone breathing down your neck is par for the course.

Unfortunately, some people don’t like competition. They’re threatened by it. One of our competitors’ publishers has written some unkind, untrue and unprovoked things about Connect Statesboro. In a phone conversation, he asked me to talk about him.

I won’t write his name, or his publication’s in these pages. Ever. In fact, this very post is the only time that I’ll even acknowledge this competitor exists.

The other guys don’t have that problem. They’ve written about us several times, because we scare ‘em to death.

It must be the fact that after four years of a free ride of playing at publishing a bi-weekly paper, local people (GSU graduates, even!) with proven skill and writing credentials decided to do something they weren’t – serve the entire Statesboro entertainment community, not just the university, without being self-indulgent or pretentious. Connect Statesboro’s an outgrowth of the immensely successful entertainment page that ran for years in the Statesboro Herald.

In retrospect, we should thank the competition for the free advertising. They’re used to giving away free ad space, though, since a combination of that and restrictive contracts seem to be how they keep several of their long-time advertisers from jumping ship. Take a look at one of their issues. They seem awfully preoccupied with their advertisers, don’t they?

We don’t do the give-away thing at Connect (except for online classifieds). Our advertisers pay us for space because they believe in what we’re doing and know we have legions of readers, not because we give them a free ad. We’re here for the readers, and our advertisers recognize that.

Here’s the quick defense to some of their barbs: first, yeah, we tried to hire a single one of their writers. She’s very talented, and when she explained that her current position offered more opportunities I wished her the best of luck and told her I didn’t blame her for staying.

In response to the “copying” comments, we’re a print publication. There are going to be a few similarities, but we don’t look to papers in our own town for pointers. It seems a little strange, though, that after our stellar “Carla Connect” started, a poorly-written romance advice column appeared in their paper.

As far as being “corporate-owned?” Yup, we are. And our giant, scary corporate staff is made up of one full-time person, one part-time person, four people who donate a couple of hours a week, a part-time intern and (as of today) three freelance writers. One of those people – and it’s not me - is over thirty. Truly, we have unlimited resources with which to crush lesser publications.

And lay off the sunglasses. It was bright outside that day, and it’s important to protect your eyes from UV rays. No one “threw” them on me – I own ‘em.

To tell the truth, I’d probably have written something about the competition earlier in Connect’s run (our first birthday is coming up in September), but I’ve been entirely too busy.

Their publisher’s got plenty of time to kick back in his cushy Macon office and hurl barbs down at me in my little gray Statesboro cubicle. He must be spending plenty of time during his day thinking up witty things to write, since he’s obviously not spending much time making sure the spelling, grammar, story selection and layout of his publications is up to professional standards.

But that’s not really my problem is it? Or yours. As readers, I don’t expect you to care about what their publisher thinks about little old me, or vice versa. I’m just thrilled that reader support has seen Connect Statesboro grow into something wonderful over the past year. Neither publication owns the readers, advertisers or Statesboro itself, and you’ll make your own decisions as to who to read.

So I wish our competitors the best of luck with their burgeoning publishing empire centered out of Macon. Maybe there’s enough room in the Statesboro community for our paper and theirs. If not, they’ve got two other cities to publish in. I'm only concerned with Bulloch County, where I make my home.

In the meantime, my staff and I have a magazine to put together, and I’ve already wasted too much time writing about the other guy.

Don't take this the wrong way, Rep. Barrow...

If you read this week's "Jake's Take," you may have noticed that I came down a little hard on John Barrow, Statesboro's congressman.

Apologies for the crappy formatting on the column, by the way. We had Web problems this week.

Don't take "Jake's Take" the wrong way. Even if he made what's either a boneheaded or blatantly campaign-oriented, vote-whoring vote, Barrow's still my man for Congress.

I'm not going to say that his opponent in November's Congressional race, Max Burns is out of touch with young people. Burns is a former professor at GSU, so he's at least nominally in touch with that most apathetic of demographics, the 18-34 set.

Barrow beat out Burns for the District seat two years ago, incidentally, and now Burns is looking to return the favor (nobody likes being a one-term congressman).

I've met both guys, and they're both perfectly likeable. Barrow's politics run much closer to mine, however, so he's most likely going to get my vote. Barrow impressed me mightily by turning to me in an interview and asking, point-blank, "Jake, what do you think is the most important issue in the election?"

I told him it was that I didn't have health insurance (and, except for a brief period intervening, I still don't). He listened, though there hasn't been much motion on that front in Congress. My estimation of Barrow would improve even more if he introduced some legislation along those lines, but as a freshman representative, I can see that it'd be difficult to get that particular national ball rolling.

His measures to help area farmers have been admirable, though. If you work the land, you'd have to have your head screwed on backwards to not vote for Barrow - the super-conservative farm folks around here may not agree with all of his social positions, but Barrow's there for their pocketbooks ad livelihoods, and that's the most important thing, right?

And the rest of "Jake's Take?" Any of you who've followed my career in journalism know that I'm an editorial guy (that's the non-advertising part of a newspaper) through-and-through. There are some "coin-operated" papers out there that offer sweet deals - you know, the "you buy a full-page ad, and we'll give you the cover story" kind of thing.

Connect Statesboro will never do anything like that so long as I'm around. I have a great working relationship with our ads manager, Kimberly Babock, but she doesn't dictate what stories Connect covers (aside from the ads, that is). I gave her a heads-up that I would be going after Carmike Cinemas again, and she understandably expressed some concern.

They're an advertiser, and the money they pay to put a movie listing in every issue helps pay both her and my salaries.

I don't shy away from telling the truth, though, and the truth is that their service... well, it's been pretty bad at a lot of the movies I've gone to see there.

So why didn't I call them out directly by name in the column? In deference to Kimberly, plain and simple. I figured it wouldn't make a difference, since there's only one theater in town. If there was another one, I'd definitely have to have mentioned them by name. In the end, I feel it didn't make a difference. One thing I won't do is compromise my coverage for the readers.