A few weeks ago, Rebecca gave me a lesson on the proper use of the ellipsis.

The ellipsis is probably the most mis-used punctuation mark on the planet (at least judging by my old habits. 🙂

The proper English use of an ellipsis is for there to be three (read THREE) periods (or full stops) in a row – alternately you can use the UNICODE character at U+2026 (8230) (Cryptic reference, see here.) You can also (this is much easier) use the HTML entity ….

An ellipsis is treated differently than a period, so if you use an ellipsis at the end of a sentence, you still have to follow it with a period (full stop) for the end-of-sentence. This is generally called aposiopesis – a trailing off into silence.

This might look somewhat comical, since in regular writing there’s now 4 periods in a row, but oh well – that’s writing for you.

I did think I could write this entire entry without an actual example of proper ellipsis usage… must. not. give. in….

🙂

… especially when shooting portraits?

I’ve been viewing lots of portrait photographs online lately, and have come across far too many of “I’m smiling, but I really haven’t put my heart into it.” smiles.

I guess one of a photographers greatest tricks, is getting people to open up and be REAL around the camera.. For some people, it comes naturally – but for others… oh, the horror of the unnatural grin plastered on their face makes my eyes hurt.

Being a photographer myself, I don’t have any answers – but I read some tricks somewhere that should help.

I’ll let you know how it goes. 🙂

So the dentist diagnosed me with stress-induced TMJ. A side-effect of it is that my left jaw muscle has been cramping up, making it hard to eat pretty much anything. Woo hoo.

We tried some pain killers, hoping it would relieve the pain and let my muscles relax a bit – when that failed, I was prescribed Carisoprodol, a muscle relaxant.

Oh boy.

Really.

Oh boy.

I think it also relaxes my I-don’t-give-a-crap muscle. It’s awesome.

So if it wasn’t for the lightheadedness and dizzyness, I’d be great right about now.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m just going to float around here for a while.

.. that I’d be taking some pictures. I just finished downloading some-100 shots off both my cameras, including some video footage I’ll have to figure some way to upload.

Enjoy.

As I mentioned here, I’ve been wanting to revive my photographical muse from her sad demise a number of months ago.

Well, I have… sort of. I’ve taken pictures – now it’s a matter of post-processing them (or not), and putting them online.

Look forward to an update somewhere, sometime soon.

Sooo awesome.

Totally.