PLAY – DEVEN JAMES LANGSTON

Couch Couple Calendar 2017

At the end of 2014 Lauren and I had the crazy idea to do a themed photoshoot every month for a year. After turning those photos into a 2016 calendar for friends and family, we had no choice but to do it again. May I present Couch Couple Calendar, Volume 2!

Abusing our couch

Like the previous year, we tried to do as much of the photo shoot as we could using practical elements. Poor couch. We were actually on the sled, and it was not nearly as fun or comfortable as it looked. Ever do a bunch of physical activity inside with your coat on? Worth it though.

Alright… the snowman and the trees are fake. We had to make some compromises. I’d say on average I put about 5 hours of photoshop work into each of the photos in the series. As someone who is quite fond of post production, I was more interested in having a fun end result than saying everything was done right there in front of the camera. And now you know.

Speaking of in front of the camera, our dog Roddy really hates having his picture taken. It took a lot of coaxing and treat giving to get him to give a high five on camera.

One Patch At A Time

Our solution for making a grass-covered couch was simple in theory and tedious in execution. At Michaels craft store you can buy patches of fake grass that come in a 1×1 square. We bought one. Then we took that one patch of grass and shot a series of about 80 photographs covering every visible spot on the couch. One ridiculously long photoshop session later, and the couch looks like it’s completely covered in grass!

I really put our lawnmover on the couch. The dog did not, however, actually pee on it. We re-used the same old high-five trick for Roddy and made him swiping at a butterfly. In reality I think he would probably care less about them. He’s a very unconcerned dog, most of the time.

Embracing Our Inner Geezer

I didn’t have to try quite as hard as Lauren to become an old geezer. This surprisingly simple photo shoot didn’t involve all that much photoshop work afterward. I enhanced the wrinkles on our faces and the gray in our hair, did a teensie bit of liquify to make our jawlines more jowly, and added veins in Lauren’s legs. Oh and the wallpaper, of course.

One more thing I’d like to mention…

Deven and Lauren Langston
Est. June 2017

This was the month that Lauren and I got Married.

If you haven’t seen our first calendar yet, what are you doing!?

The Series That Never Was

After two years of doing the couch calendar, we tried to start a new series called “floorscapes.” We thought shooting from above would give us new creative ideas, which it did, but without an assistant to man the camera it became too impractical. Instead we used it to announce our trip to Japan, which was where I proposed to Lauren.