I was completely playing around with this one, but I had intended to do a serious photoshoot . . . I was a little lacking in inspiration though, and I had a few items I’d never used yet. Weird stuff. Like a Zentai costume and a green screen. Ok, actually those two item go together quite well, but it wasn’t planned I promise! And maybe I was slightly influenced by the new photoshop tricks I learned the other day. But anyway, I ended up picking out a nice sci-fi outfit (to go over the zentai suit of course), some futuristic-looking props, and a green screen backdrop.

The end result was a totally Dr. Who – looking android set. Or is that trandroid (tranny android?) . . . you know you’ve dreamed of it, c’mon! Below is a collage of original Dr Who androids and cybermen (thank you BBC) next to one of the pics I took. So who do you think would win, the cybermen or the trandroids?

 

I’ve always known Photoshop is considered *the* tool for image editing, but I never really understood why. I thought I could use it just fine, and it looked like it did about the same stuff as any other image editing software. You know, resize images, adjust the colors, apply some filters. And then there’s that mysterious paintbrush thing, that never seemed to do anything useful.

Well, I recently discovered that Photoshop can actually build webpage galleries. And that it does a pretty good job with them. Oh, well that’s neat. And you can customize them a bit, unlike in my (very old Macromedia) version of Fireworks. So then I started really wondering what else Photoshop could do that I never knew about. I mean, I know people do some amazing things in Photoshop, but I always assumed that they could do amazing things because they were amazing graphic artists.

Turns out Photoshop is just a downright amazing program . . . it’s just impossible to find exactly what you want to do without having someone tell you a few tricks, or taking a class, or something like that.  In a matter of a couple days (mostly by coincidence, but partly because I was looking), I figured out how to use the airbrush correctly (duplicate the layer, blur it so it looks soft and airbrushy, add a “hide all” layer mask, and then paint on the mask to reveal the softened image where you want it), how to automatically align objects and layers (select all, then layer->align to selection), how to do batch processing by creating actions (window->actions, then just hit record while you process an image), and how to create really cool HDR images (file->automate->generate HDR in CS2 and later).

So between automating web galleries and file processing, I’ve now shaved over an hour off of my weekly update time AND know how to put my logo at the bottom of all my images without adding any time. Oh, and my galleries are now split across pages so the thumbs load faster, and have better navigation. And no more broken links from my less than perfect typing skills

What am I going to do with all that time I save? Dress up and take more photos of course!

I’ve been wanting to go clothes shopping since before Christmas and just finally made it to the mall yesterday. Yup, I’m actually one of the few people that still shops at the mall. At least for clothes. I buy almost everything online, but you really can’t beat the sale racks at the mall for girl clothes. I guess it depends a bit on what you’re buying, but Juniors stuff hits the clearance racks a month or two after it comes out. And I can buy tanks in the winter and sweaters in the summer because I just have to wear them for photos, not actually go out somewhere in them Lucky for me I’m a small in most stuff, and there’s always extra smalls lying around. Smalls and larges are always leftover.

Anyway, I got 3 cute short-sleeve shirts, 2 pleated skirts, a pair of adorable princess pj’s, and some new sandals for  a grand total of . . . $26. And then, there’s always cute lingerie that comes out for the holidays and goes on super sale a week after because really, who wants to buy christmas lingerie in the middle of January? Well I do! So I splurged a little and bought a super cute santa outfit that I had been eying since it came out this year . . . for 75% off I’d say that was a pretty productive trip! And you’ll think so too when you see me wearing some of this stuff

Ok, I’ve done my fair share of complaining about shaving in the short time my blog’s been online (see here, and here), so it’s time I posted something useful about shaving. Like . . . a trick that every girl learned from her mom, but most crossdressers probably never had the opportunity to pick up.

I’m sure you heard from your dad, however, to shave in the opposite direction of hair growth when you shave your face. Or if you use an electric razor, you have to go in circles AND up and down. Well the same goes for the rest of your body (mostly), which makes sense . . . but most people don’t realize what direction their hair actually grows. Actually, I know a lot of girls who don’t even bother trying to figure it out because their hair is fine enough that it doesn’t matter. But for crossdressers with coarse hair, this can make a huge difference.

Before going into details, let me just say that if you have long hair (ie first time shaving or it’s been awhile), make a first pass over everything WITH the hair growth – your razor was designed for a certain hair length, and if your hair is too long it will pull the skin up close to the blade (like it’s supposed to) and then clog up and pull the hair instead of cutting or worse yet pull the skin too hard and nick you. In either event, your skin will swell a bit and your final pass will just cut and scrape you up instead of giving you a nice clean shave. Shaving with the hair prevents the blades from pulling the skin close to the blade and instead just chops off the long part of the hair, leaving stubble that you can take off with your final pass which will go AGAINST the hair growth.

Now that that’s out of the way . . . your body hair grows in circles. Yes, really. But that’s ok, they’re predictable circles. We’ll start at the top and work down. Back hair for the most part grows down and towards your spine. Forget about shaving this exactly with the growth on the first pass (try just shaving up, that should work), but for the final pass this is rather convenient because shaving up and out (towards your shoulder) is a reasonably natural motion. At least, as natural as shaving your own back can be . . . And just for clarity, “out (towards your shoulder)” is in a different direction for your left and right side.

Moving to your front, chest hair grows in a similar pattern – the upper chest hair largely points to the center of your chest, while hairs around your nipples and lower point a bit more downward but still somewhat inwards. Hairs close to your nipples probably make a bit of a swirl pattern, growing around the nipple but usually never growing upwards. That means if you start with an up-stroke shaving your chest, you will mostly be trimming longer hairs but also catching the handful of hairs the grown downwards. Then finish with an out-stroke to get a smooth finish on the majority of hairs that grow inwards. Go around the left side of your nipples starting from the bottom and going left, up, and around to the top. Go around the right side of your nipples starting from the bottom and going right, up, and around to the top. Don’t shave over your nipple directly unless you want to take it off though! Getting the center of your chest and over your collarbone is tricky, but do it the same way you shave your jaw-line – skin is stretchy, so pull it away from the edge of the bone so that it’s (relatively) flat and taught. Don’t be tempted to press hard to shave a concavity (like the center of your chest) because it won’t work and is almost guaranteed to cut you in the process.

Underarms, this is an interesting one. Underarm hair grows in 3 directions – down (at the bottom), up (at the top), and towards your back (center). I usually shave up first, then down, and then towards my chest – this last direction hits some of the more sensitive hairs and goes over some large muscle ridges, so do it carefully. But if you don’t shave all 3 directions you’ll end up with ugly stubble. Again, be careful to flatten the skin as much as you can, and don’t press hard. These ridges are mostly muscles, so just relax your arm as much as you can, and you should be able to get them to go away (though maybe only one at a time).

Arms . . . arm hair on the side near your thumb grows down, so you can take out most of it with nice easy upwards strokes (towards your shoulder). Hair on the other side of your arm though grows in a couple directions. Some of it is down, much of it grows around your arm (towards your inner arm, the side without much hair), and some of it right near your wrist actually grows up.

Most belly hair grows down and slightly inwards. Hair around the navel grows towards the navel though, so you’ll need to take some little strokes in each direction out away from your navel.

Butt hair (don’t laugh!) grows in two directions. Mostly it grows down, however, the closer you get to the center of your body, the more hairs point inward. You’ll probably need to cover your entire butt with both up-strokes and out-strokes. Hair on your perineum (between your butt and your balls) grows towards your back, as does hair on your balls. Hair around the edge of your penis points down the shaft. Be really careful with this hair though, it’s super sensitive.

Hair on the front and back of your thigh grows down, but hair on the sides points around the leg towards the back. This goes for hair near your crotch too, which can be really difficult to shave. Don’t forget that skin stretches – if you pull it down your leg and go over the area, then pull it in to your crotch and go over it again, you can usually pick up all the hair though.

Hair on the lower legs grows down, and hair on the feet grows towards your toes. These are actually really easy areas to shave if you’re just very careful about bones and joints. Don’t try to just go straight over a ridge or protrusion, slow down and make sure the razor stays on a flat surface. That means you’ll have to shave each face of the joint separately, and then move the skin a bit to shave the apex. But you won’t have any cuts if you do that!

And that’s it, now you’re all clean shaved and sexy smooth

I’ve been working hard lately to improve my photography techniques, ever since I got some studio lighting. It’s amazing what a difference good lights make, but it takes a lot of work to figure out how to use them right. And you definitely have to use at least 2 lights, and make sure you turn the camera flash off, figured those out the hard way

Actually, I have three 1000W lights, but I don’t have a circuit in my house that can handle more than one of the lamps for more than about 5 min . . . so I started trying to use just one light plus my
camera flash, and that made a mess. Well, it wasn’t terrible, but it certainly wasn’t very impressive either. So I finally found some outlets on a different breaker that aren’t too far away, and I can at least get 2 of my lights on at the same time.

I’ve been keeping the lights at right angles to eachother for the most part, with a wide softbox sitting low and close and a tall softbox farther back and higher up. I think all these sets had the tall softbox at about double the intensity of the wide one, but since it’s also farther away the light falling on the scene from both is probably about the same. I should work on that a bit more to add some more depth to the scene, but I’ve been trying not to turn anything up too far so I don’t blow any more breakers.

I’ve also been having a lot of fun with my mirror lately. Not only does it make for some really interesting picture though, it also lets me watch myself while I’m posing. Sometimes I actually forget about the camera for a few minutes and just watch myself in the mirror! But anyway, I think it adds to the artistic feel of the photos. Though it also had a bit of a learning curve to keep both the camera AND the lights out of the mirror’s reflection!

I just (finally) learned how to airbrush in Photoshop as well. Not that I plan on using it much, but it’s still fun and can help clean up some less than perfect pics. I practiced a bit on the pics in this post, but you probably can’t really tell since I resized them pretty small.

Anyway, that’s what I’ve been up to lately. Enjoy the pics, and of course if you want to see the rest of the sets, they will eventually be up on The Crossdresser .com

I know I’ve complained about shaving before, but this is miserable. I guess this is the first winter I’ve actually tried to keep myself smooth and sexy all the time – last few years I’ve dressed, I was only shaving when I wanted to do photos. Well anyway, between the cold and the dry air from furnaces I can’t keep my skin hydrated no matter what I do. Which means shaving just doesn’t go well. That, and getting goosebumps while shaving is really not good . . .

I guess it would help if I did a better job keeping up with lathering myself in lotion, but when it’s so damn cold that the lotion gives me goosebumps too, I don’t exactly look forward to doing it. Plus goosebumps stimulate hair growth and feel really icky when you have mostly shaved but really thick hair follicles. I get so disgusted though if I have any hair growing if from not shaving . . . so I can only stand a couple days and then I just soak in lotion for a night and shave everything off the next morning. I’m such a girl

The other thing that’s terrible about the cold weather is not getting any sun. I’m not one to go tanning or anything, and I actually like girls (myself included) who are a little pale . . . but a little dose of sunshine on a daily basis goes a long way for clearing up my skin and keeping it smooth. I would totally buy a tanning bed and use it for 2 min/day all winter. I wonder if that would be worth the money . . .

I know, I just need to move somewhere that doesn’t have cold winters . . .

Ok, maybe this isn’t the way most TGirls stay in shape, but I spent the past three days letting burly Canadians throw me on the ice and beat me with sticks:

Yes, that’s actually me in the blue there about to get checked into the boards by three guys, each of whom has legs as big around as my waist. Look closely, it’s true! Never ever challenge Canadians in a game they invented. Ok, actually it was a lot of fun, but damn do they take hockey and broomball seriously. Yes, I was playing broomball, which in the US is like hockey for people who can’t skate, but in Canada it’s a real sport. And for those of you who don’t know, it’s played on ice but you wear shoes, it’s played with a ball instead of a puck, and the sticks are a different shape.

Lucky for me though, Canadians also take their beer-drinking seriously, and off the ice they’re pretty good about sharing too

I know, I know, what’s a cute gurl like me doing playing a rough sport like broomball? Well, all I can say is at least it’s not rugby . . . Actually though, I catch and throw like a girl, so that really limits my choices of ways to stay in shape! Running fast, using a stick, and kicking I can do

Well of course it’s the clothes, if you left the “dressing” out of “crossdressing” we’d just be “cross”, and nobody likes a bunch of angry T-Girls! I know, I know, I’d never make it as a comedian . . .

But back on topic, I just finished working on 2 new features for my members at TheCrossdresser.com, and they’re all about the clothes. Now everyone who joins gets access to my closet – yep, everything from my shoe racks to my hangers of shirts, my panty drawer to my toy chest. And I know you want to get your hands in my panty drawer

Part of Katie’s Closet lets you dress me up in any outfit you can imagine. Well. An avatar of me at least. That’s an example over there to the left that I liked. The avatar and all the clothes were drawn by yours truly, by the way. So I know it’s not one of those super-professional-looking toons, but it’s got a bit of a personal touch since I drew it myself!

The other part of Katie’s Closet lets you search for photos and videos by any article of clothing I’ve worn . . . so you can literally sort through my panty drawer, pick out your favorite pair, and then look at all the sets I’ve worn that pair in. Pretty cool, right? I mean, how often do you get to search through a model’s panty drawer anyway?

So what does a hot crossdresser like me do to celebrate New Years Eve? Well I had great plans to celebrate with an orgy of a photoshoot with a new model . . . but they fell through. Yup, ouch. So instead I’m going to do a shoot tomorrow with my favorite dom who’s going to beat my ass silly for not getting the new model to show. Which actually has me pretty excited and will make for a great start to 2008. But in the meantime I’ve got no plans for tonight, and I really don’t fancy going out at the last minute by myself . . . might be a quiet evening of working on the websites I suppose, but I will at least pop a bottle of champaign.

Have you ever been doing laundry or pulled an old coat out of the closet only to find a $20 bill tucked away in a pocket that you had completely forgotten about? Suddenly you’re $20 richer than you realized before, and that’s a pretty great feeling, right?

Well, I’ve been working on re-compressing all my old videos to streamline The Crossdresser (if you missed my discussion of that project, take a peak at it here), and I keep coming across these videos that I had completely forgotten about making. Now, I’m probably a little strange in that I enjoy watching videos of myself (don’t worry, it’s more a matter of remembering good sex rather than being incredibly narcissistic), but re-finding lost porn is definitely as exciting as finding $20 in my pocket