My first graph

I whipped this up over on Create-a-Graph. It seems certain people are in need of a reminder of the facts.

And here’s the compliment:

Something must be working.

Truths For Mature Humans

So Paul C just shared this list. You know my favorite thing to do with lists, don’t you? That’s right. I like to dissect them and provide my own commentary. So here we go.

1. Totally agree. In addition, it is part of a best friend’s job to know my porn hiding place (both on my computer and in my closet). In the event of my untimely death, it is his responsibility to go to my house and remove all of my porn. I don’t need my mom or my kids knowing that I have porn. That being said, my mom reads my blog. Merry early Christmas Mommy.

2. Agreed. That’s why I live by a rule inspired by Sun Tzu (the Art of War): “A successful army wins, then goes to war. An unsuccessful army goes to war, then seeks to win.” English translation: don’t start a fight you haven’t already won. Don’t get into an argument about something you don’t know you’re right about. If you don’t know what you’re talking about, don’t get into an argument about it. Long story short: true, but if you let that happen it’s because you’re a bad general.

3. Nope. Disagree. Little kids don’t need naps nearly as badly as old people do. Yes, kids sometimes need naps. I bet. It’s a universal truth that kids don’t like to do all the same things old people like to do. Kids don’t like taking walks outside. Old people wish they had taken more walks outside when they were kids. That’s just stupid. I don’t wish I’d taken more walks outside when I was a kid. I wish I took more walks outside NOW. I wish I could sleep more NOW. I expressly do not take back all the times I didn’t want to nap when I was younger.

4. Oh. Is there? Do we need a sarcasm font? Do we really? Is it not enough to just assume everything on the internet is sarcastic? Or to actually use your mind-grapes once in a while to see through the obvious and determine whether or not something is sarcastic? Friends, there is a sarcasm font. It is called “Comic Sans.” Some of you may disagree, but the nature of this font’s reputation makes it the perfect candidate.

5. *sigh* You grab the sewn in corners and treat those as the corners of a rectangular sheet. This problem was solved before you ever pondered the question.

6. No. It was unnecessary when they made you do it twenty to thirty years ago, and it’s equally necessary now. There doesn’t need to be a uniform standard for “quick, sloppy writing.” Even when there is, it doesn’t matter because everybody just writes THOSE letters even quicker and sloppier, and you still can’t read it.

7. You know how MapQuest (you still use MapQuest? Really?) works, but you still give it your address as the starting location instead of your exit on the freeway. MapQuest (Srsly. Welcome to the 21st century. We use Google here) doesn’t need to be fixed. You need to figure out how to use it. How much do you pay the guy who ties your shoes every morning and brushes your teeth for you?

8. I agree. Obituaries aren’t for comforting people. They’re for entertainment. Really, what informative value is there in an obituary? Anybody that needs to know probably knows already that the person has died. And if they don’t, nobody wants to find out by reading the newspaper. Make obituaries more informative.

9. All I can say is: Wow. You’re old. I’m “not tired” all the time. Not so much during the week, but… Oh. Waitaminute. Nevermind.

10. It depends. Nobody wants to hear about the time I put my term paper off until the last minute and failed English. On the other hand, it’s also not a good story that I put off my term paper till the last minute and got an A. But I guess this is really about REALLY bad decisions. Like that time my buddy Pete and I dropped acid while we were on safari in Kenya. THAT adventure gave new meaning to the phrase “commune with the beast.”

11. Yup. happens. Happened to me at school the other day. I spent three hours pasting myself into a picture in Photoshop. Then I had to go to my InDesign lab. I hate InDesign. It is junk. It’s a toy. It’s desktop publishing for soccer moms, and it doesn’t even conform to the same standards as all the other Adobe products. So I started working on my assignment, finished it, started the next one, ejected my thumb drive, shut down InDesign, put all my stuff away, turned off the monitor and just stared at it for an hour and a half.

12. Yes. Do that. I’ll just have one more person to laugh at and call a troglodyte. If you’re okay with technology just stopping so you can save a little money every ten years, you can stop wasting the oxygen you’re stealing from the rest of us.

13. Okay… Then click “no” and shut up.

14. Yeah that’s fairly true. With the exception of suits. my suits get washed… twice a year. Even the raincoat I just bought for my Spike Halloween costume is machine-washable.

15. Srsly. So ya know what I do? When my phone rings, I look at who’s calling, decide whether I’m going to answer, then press the appropriate button on my phone. Honestly. Who still misses phone calls accidentally?

16. What kind of narcicist cares who sees them, as long as somebody does? Vanity knows no “important people.” I walk out of my house looking great every day, because I know SOMEBODY will see me. If watching Heroes has taught me anything, it’s thah you never know who will turn out to be “important” later.

17. I used to do that. Once again I say: “Welcome to the 21st century. We have Google.” Anybody I don’t want to talk to has their own separate voicemail message that says something similar to “stop f*&#ing calling me!”

18. I completely agree. That’s racist. Tall people need to see in the cold too.

19. I bet more kisses begin with Rohipnol.

20. Yeah. I must concur with my esteemed internet colleague. I guess. On the other hand, I don’t really get nervous driving through anywhere. I wish Google maps had an option for “don’t show me any search results in a ghetto.”

21. Two words: Battlestar Galactica. Two more words: the Last Unicorn.

22. Get a radio flyer.

23. Um. Okay. Nobody likes red lights, and everybody knows this. What are you trying to say here?

24. O. M. G. Sooooooooooooo true. I almost can’t watch TV without a snack or a laptop.

25. I believe it appropriate to say “what?” once before you switch to “get the dick out of your mouth.” If somebody is that hard to understand, they need to be shamed into speaking properly. If they have a physical handicap, you instead say “I’m sorry. I’m having a really hard time understanding you. Could you talk a little slower?” If you’re in a loud place, “smile and nod” is appropriate. On the other hand, why aren’t you wearing earplugs? Then you’d be able to hear the person just fine.

 

26. I’ve never had that happen. My philosophy in any driving situation is “I let one guy in.” If two lanes are merging down to one, I get over two miles in advance when the start putting up signs that say “lane closed: 2 miles.” So all those people who keep zooming down the lane that’s closing: one of you is getting in front of me, then I’m clamping my teeth on his bumper and not letting go until the lane opens up again.

27. That is a fallacy. Pants don’t get dirty the same way shirts do. Shirts get dirty after being worn once. Pants get dirty when they’re dirty. Just to be safe, I change pants every Saturday, whether they’re dirty or not.

28. It’s just you. Do you think three-year-olds get dumber every year too? The thing about high school kids is: they’re the same age every year. they just don’t get any smarter.

29. I actually LOVE that feeling and try to duplicate it after it happens by accident. It never works.

30. I hate bicyclists that don’t know the rules. You’re not a pedestrian: get off the f*&#ing sidewalk. You drive in the road. You signal your turns, and you observe the traffic lights. I don’t move over on the sidewalk for bikes. Well, I do in Springfield, but I hate myself for it.

31. I used to do that. Now I just don’t look at my watch unless I care what time it is. That way I remember.

32. No on all counts. I always have trouble snoozing my alarm clock. And mine doesn’t even have a button. It’s the kind you just tip over to snooze.

So… that was fun for me. Was it good for you too?

First Trip to the Product Studio

So today was my first time in the college’s product studio. That’s the smallest of the three studios, used mainly for product shots. The assignment was to shoot two different pieces of glassware and get both white-line and black-line shots. I had a lot of fun using the Canon EOS Utility to shoot from the computer so I didn’t have to touch the camera for those long exposures (took one at three seconds).

During the demo, when he was showing us all how to shoot glass and offering suggestions as to how to setup the lighting, the professor told us that expensive glassware makes for better photos, and that very expensive crystal would yield the very best results. He said that when he had to shoot glassware at RIT 40 years ago, what he did was went to Macy’s and bought some. He brought it to the studio, took it out of the box, shot it, put it back in the box still in perfect condition, and returned it to the store.

I thought that was a fantastic idea. I’ve done similar things in the past, and planned to do just that. Kerry thought it was a good idea too. She just didn’t want to front the money. So I grabbed a Reidel stemless white wine glass and a Disaronno funny-shaped shot glass out of my liquor cabinet and shot those. I also brought a plain ol’ rocks glass, a rocks glass shaped like the shot glass (which you will see in a moment), and a bulb-shaped, cork-sealed bottle (like you would expect a mana potion to be in) I bought at Michael’s two weeks ago for this express purpose.

I was only scheduled for an hour in the studio, and figured for fifteen minutes to clean up (I didn’t plan to make a mess, but everything had to be put away before I left). And since I wanted to get both white lines and black lines (you’ll see what that means in a minute), I only had time to shoot the two pieces.

Those being the facts, I did show up about fifteen minutes early, and there was no one signed up for the slot before mine. So I got in a little early and had a few minutes to get acquainted with my new friend, the Canon EOS 30D, and his friend, the EF 24-85 mm lens.

I noticed a few differences between this setup and my Rebel. The most infuriating was the viewfinder. I don’t know if it’s the lens or the camera, but when I looked through it, everything was grainy, which made it something of a chore to focus properly. When I have problems focusing my Rebel, I use the autofocus to help me by holding the trigger halfway done and waiting for the red light to light up. That didn’t work here because of the lower lighting conditions I was working with in the studio. The other big difference is the power switch. I do not like the power switch on the D models. They have “off,” “on,” and “-.” I don’t know what “-” is for, but every time I wanted to turn the switch to “on,” I flipped it all the way past “on” to “-.” So that was mildly annoying. Also, the D series have an LCD display on top, whereas the Rebel uses the preview screen to display all the same data. I like that a lot, since it uses a lot less power to run that little LCD than it does to light up the whole preview screen.

First, let me explain the setup. I had two hospital tables (just like the ones they serve your lunch on) at the same height, about three feet apart, with a heavy slab of plate glass laying across them. Behind that was a big drape of white paper. behind the paper was a big triple-bulb light. with a reflector on the back and a diffuser on the front. The line you see in the background of these photos is the back edge of the plate glass. In a couple of them I hadn’t zoomed in quite far enough, so I had to crop out a little bit of the tables.

This is the first shot I took, and I think it turned out to be one of the best. The way I have the glass turned, it gives that pleasing curve to the reflection. The later shots either have a straight line across the glass, or the curve is pretty wonky. For this first shot, I had the light pretty far back from the paper barrier, so the lighting is pretty even.

For this shot, I moved the light much closer. Maybe four or five inches away from the paper, so there’s a pretty distinct halo. I should have also lowered the light, so that the center of the halo is right on the “horizon,” but this shot still came out pretty well.

For this shot, there was a big piece of black construction paper taped to a light stand. So I put it between the white paper backdrop and the subject to get this nice “white” line effect. The blue tint here is the way every single shot turned out today. I have no idea why that is. The room didn’t look blue, there was no filter on either the lens or the light. For most shots, I just fixed the white balance… Shit. That’s what it was. I didn’t check the white balance on the camera before I started shooting. Somebody was probably playing with the white balance, or was shooting under fluorescent lighting, or some other such thing, and just didn’t reset the white balance to auto. Damn. Oh well. Mystery solved. Now I know to check that in the future.

Anywho… For this shot, I left it blue because it gives the nifty impression that the shot glass is carved out of ice.

Like I said, I wanted to get white and black line shots of each glass. So here’s my white line (or “dark field”) shot of the wine glass. Clearly visible in this shot are the reflections of every damn thing in the studio.On the left is the computer screen, and on the right… a roll of brown paper towel standing next to a red and white bottle of glass cleaner. I really should have paid closer attention to this early on. I did eventually discover that this was happening, but I had apparently already used up my quota of good shots for the day. This is the only shot that photoshop has never touched. In the other shots, the glassware was dirty, or the plate glass “tabletop” was dusty (the first thing I did once I got the tables setup was wipe down the plate glass), and that had to be fixed (using the spot heal brush and the patch tool). I tried taking the computer screen off the glass in this shot, but it just made the reflections in the right side look more pronounced.

I started cleaning up, got all my gear packed up (the glassware, my memory card, etc: all MY stuff), then decided to get one last shot. So I plopped my Kindle (gently) down on the glass, turned the camera back on, focused on the leading edge, and snapped it. Just for fun. I might go back and take out the “horizon” line in this one.

So that’s my first venture into the product studio. If I can manage to get in there again before this assignment is due (highly unlikely), I’ll reshoot the dark-field wine glass, but I’ll remember to clear the tables and turn off the monitor when I click the shutter. Next week, it’ll be portraits in the mixed-use studio. I probably won’t get those up here until after Thanksgiving. But I might. We’ll see. Seacrest out.

Tea Nazi Rant.

Image via Wikipedia

This is a rant. It is a rant about republicans and religion in general. It’s pretty heavy at the end. If you’re not in the mood to be depressed and/or pissed off, don’t read it. You have been warned.

Saying you believe in separation of church and state doesn’t make it okay to try and get the government involved in religion. Either the government can legislate religious issues or it can’t. Marriage is an institution of religion. If you think the government should be allowed to say anything about it, you don’t believe in separation of church and state. The end.

It’s okay to not want church and state to be separate. They’ve got religious government all over the middle east. Just look how happy everyone is. There’s no drinking, no gambling, no singing in public, no women without hats, no pornography and (best of all) NO FAGS!! Sounds like paradise to me. Christianity was a driving political force throughout the middle ages. Science was illegal and everybody was just so damn happy.That’s why there were so many crusades. People were just so happy and so excited to share the love of Christ that they went to the middle east and killed people (people who worshipped they same God they did) for worshipping a different God than they did.

The structure of the American government is based around the idea that religion and government in the same building is a bad idea. Don’t you dare say America was founded on Christian morals, or I’ll put you in jail for coveting your neighbor’s ass (the Old Testament will stop counting when you take it out of the “holy book.” But that’s a whole other topic).

But this is all ancillary to the big picture. The religious, conservative republican party is the same beast that every Christian political force before it has been: rich people trying to get richer by saying the right things to maintain their power base. That’s what religion is. Religion isn’t about God, and it’s not about salvation. Those are just the tools it most often uses to keep people under its thumb. It’s about money and it’s about power. I think no one understood the power of religion better than L. Ron Hubbard, who said: “I don’t want to make money writing science fiction. If I wanted to make money, I’d start a religion.”

One person doesn’t have a religion. One person has faith, and there’s nothing evil or insidious about that. There’s nothing wrong with believing in Jesus or Mohammed or Buddha (etc.), or even Xenu. Religion is a corporate stupidity. Religion is saying “I believe what you tell me because you’re smarter than me. Anybody who disagrees with you is wrong because I believe what you tell me.”

Here’s what I’m talking about: There are actual Christians out there who honestly believe that the Bible doesn’t contradict itself. You cannot have read very much of the Bible and still believe that. In one bit, God says “don’t kill anybody.” In another bit not too far away from that, God says “go over there and kill everybody. Yes, even the women and children.” He even sends an angel (or at least, a guy from out of town. And I’m not being glib: it’s genuinely unclear) to lead the charge. That’s just my favorite example. There are others as well.

“But the Bible is the word of God, so it can’t possibly contradict itself. You’re taking it out of context.” I thought that’s what the Bible was for: taking bits out of context and making them say whatever is convenient to make your point. That’s what every guy I’ve ever seen quote it on TV does. That’s why there’s so much of it: to discourage the common people from reading it so the priests can tell them what it says and what it means. For a while that didn’t happen as much as in the good ol’ days, but now we’ve come full circle.

That’s what the Nazi party was in the 1930’s, and that’s what the tea nazi party is today: religion. That’s why religious political movements are always (ALWAYS!) anti-education. The German nazis burned books, and so do the American ones. Because anyone who has a mind inquisitive enough to seek education knows they’re full of shit and sees that they’re just saying whatever they have to say to get and keep power. Just like Hitler. Hitler didn’t hate Jews. He didn’t hate anybody. He just needed an object to put the hate on, and Jews were convenient. They were everywhere, so anywhere he needed to go he could get people hating them. Just like the tea party (and the rest of American Christendom) is doing with anyone who doesn’t have a traditional sexual orientation (even those who’s physiology prohibits it).

And before someone calls me on it: I know there are Christians in America who aren’t total assholes. For every Christian I know who is a complete waste of genetic material, I know at least one who is worth their salt. But as long as you call yourself a Christian, you choose to allow bigots and hate-mongers to be your public voice. I base my judgements on what I see and hear. That’s all I can do. So you have to be just as loud as they are when you say “he doesn’t speak for me,” or nobody hears it, which is why people hate you for being a Christian, and why I had to stop doing it.

And it’s going to work. They’re going to win. The tea nazis are going to gain power, they are going to become a major force in the government, and the next world war is going to be everbody against us. But this time, it won’t be a nation trying to conquer its neighbors. It will be a new crusade (because we didn’t learn anything from the old ones) to conquer the world in the name of Jesus. It’ll be just like Command & Conquer. We’ll be Nod. I’ll put money on the fact that we’ll even wear red (you can’t be a Christian army and not wear some red. It’s the rules).

Why will this happen? Because half of us are too stupid to know any better and the other half don’t care enough to do anything about it. Just like nobody in Germany cared enough to stop Hitler before he rose to power, even though they knew it was likely togo wrong. They were all too excited about a re-ignited German nation to care about how they got there.

And just like the allied forces did to the citizens in the towns with concentration camps in them, whoever finally beats us is going to make us walk through the re-education centers where we sent all the atheists and all the gays. They’re going to line us up in front of the ditches where the bodies of all the people who were tortured to death or killed themselves because they couldn’t handle the torture any more are rotting because there are so many they can’t be buried or incinerated fast enough. They’re going to point their guns at us and make us look at all the death. And they’re going to say “you did this. This is your fault. You are as responsible for all of this as the men at the top because you let them do it.” All the stupids will have joined the army, so the only ones left to be marched through the camps will be those of us who know that it really is all our fault.

Am I really the only person who sees this? Am I crazy? Someone please convince me that I’m completely out of my mind and that history doesn’t really repeat itself like every history teacher who ever lived says it does. Someone show me how the tea party is different from the nazi party. Maybe all the news coverage just makes it feel like it’s a greater problem than it really is. And if I’m not wrong, what’s a guy to do? I don’t want this to happen. What can I do to make it not? Vote? Right. Because my vote counts. Run for office? Right. Because I could get the support of a major party or am independently wealthy enough to run my own political campaign. Pray? Oh, I do. And, as previously noted, my vote counts. So this is what keeps me up at night. How about you?

Batmen and Stormtroopers and Ghostbusters! Oh my!

Pardon my poor blogging habits, but this post will be re-posted in the next day or two with links throughout. I would ordinarily just not post until I’m ready, but I really want to get these photos up and it’s bed time. On that note, none of my captions will line up with my photos because Windows Live Writer is for some reason not as good as it used to be. That will also get fixed. I just really want you all to see my convention photos, but it’s well past my bedtime and I just can’t deal with it right now.

New England Comic Con 2010. Was. Awesome. Excuse my poor grammar, but that’s how much fun it was. At first, when we were first planning to go, I thought it would be really fun. Then we got there Friday afternoon, everybody wasn’t there yet and people were just setting up their booths, so I was prepared for some major league boredom. So we went out with PaulC and Jill and had some Seafood. Saturday was awesome.

It was a ton of fun to see all the costumes, chat with a few comic artists and meet some of the Scooby gang. So, with no further ado, here are some photos.

Okay, I lied. Here is some ado. Several people asked me to send them the photos I took of them, so I just started handing out business cards to bring people here to my blog. If you (or something you made/own) are in one of these photos, have it. It’s all yours.

Because there are so many photos on this page (42, if I didn’t mis-count), these are jpegs and not my preferred Tiffs. They are not the best quality, and I put a watermark on them. If you want the Tiffs, I would be more than happy to send them to you. The high-quality images that I send you will not have a watermark, you can do whatever you want with them, and I don’t even want any money. I can’t e-mail them because they’re large files (50-60 Mb per photo), but shoot me an e-mail and we’ll work something out. I’m willing to mail a CD, or maybe setup a download space somewhere. Suffice it to say, we can work something out.

So here’s the show. And I talk during it.

Let me preface with this: all these photos look a lot greyer in my Windows Live Writer window than they do in my image viewer window.

First, I find it fitting that we begin with some Batmobile. This first one I took as soon as we walked in on Friday. Yes, I asked the guy. And yes, it was okay to take photos of the car. It was getting a photo IN the car that cost money. That would have been cool, but I wasn’t wearing my tights. The rest were taken at various times during the convention when I happened to see the car from a new angle.

I think this is the best one. I think they all came out okay, but some were not well-focused, and others had to be cropped down too far to be very good.

 

 

 

 

 

I didn’t notice at first that the car had the fight sounds around it. So i had to take one more shot to get them in there.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And of course there was the BatCycle. this is the only decent shot i got of it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ladies and gentleman, allow me to introduce the one, the only (sort of) Harley Quinn. There were a few HQ’s floating about the big room, and this was the first Blasty McClownface to pose for me.

 

 

 

Speaking of circus freaks: where would the queen of scream be without her clown prince? Despite their perverse personas, these two were actually super friendly. Harley shook my hand for like an hour, jumping up and down the whole time, her hat bouncing all over the place.

 

Apologies to Mr. Ward, but this girl was the best-looking Robin at the con. I wish I’d gotten a better angle on this shot. If you can’t tell, she’s putting handcuffs on the Prize Prankster.

I think this is my favorite photo of the con. I saw the caped crusader, Harley and the J Man talking to the commissioner. The shot was too good to pass up, but they seemed to be having an important conversation regarding the quality of the quiltery at Arkham Asylum. So I took the shot. The jester (jestress?) saw me right before I snapped it and politely told me to buzz off.

The Dynamic Duo in all their colorful tight-wearing glory. I couldn’t have asked for a better pose for the caped crusader and boy wonder (no, not Captain Sunshine and Boy Wonder: Batman and Robin).

I’m ashamed to admit that I don’t know who this is. Yes. I know. It’s robin. But who’s that WITH Robin? At first I thought it was Rorschach, but now I’ve decided that doesn’t make any sense. Can anybody shed some light?

Right after I took this shot, I walked up to the two (actual) Boston policemen standing guard by the door behind them. I childishly asked if I could take their picture. In hindsight I should have said something like “I realize you guys aren’t in costume and that’s you’re real-life uniform. Would it be alright if I took a photo of the two of you just doing your job?” Instead I said the same thing I had been saying to everybody all day: “hey guys. Can I get a photo of the two of you?” But they were very cool and not dicks at all like they had every right to be and just said “no, we don’t do photos.” So, props to those two gentlemen for being exceptionally cool when I totally (unwittingly) disrespected them and their uniform.

Two words: Hot. Batgirl and Harley, just bein’ awesome. These two get the prize (in my opinion) for hottest costumes that I got photos of. I must point out that Supergirl was super hot. I did not get her photo because I was both dumbstruck and partially blinded by her awesomeness. Ask Kerry. She was blinded too. She was talking when we were walking out of the con and SG came strutting in, gold cape and hair flowing. Kerry stopped talking. I expected her to stop walking too, but I was able to pull her away from the shiny.

 

 

 

 

Cap was one of the few non-Batman comic book heroes in attendance at the con. He struck this pose all by himself. I’m sure this wasn’t his first rodeo.

 

 

 

 

 

 

This was our first glimpse of the men (and women, but these were men) of the 501st. As they were marching by, I told Kerry to shout “remember Alderaan!” but she was too afraid.

Speaking of the 501st, I can only assume that these are the helmets of their fallen warriors. There was another group there called the “Mandalorian Mercenaries.” I don’t know if the two are affiliated (I presume that they are), so if I mistake one for the other, you must forgive me. I thought all of these helmets were really cool in their own right, and even cooler if you imagine the warriors who would wear them.

 

 

 

A welcome blast from the past was this super Sith Lord. I took a photo of him, then he saw me, then he struck this great pose. This was before I started asking people for pictures and was trying to snap surreptitiously. I’m glad I figured out quickly not to do that.

 

 

 

 

 

This accommodating member of the Grand Army of the Republic was the first person I asked to pose for a photo. He seemed more than happy to point his weapon at me, just in case I turned out to be a rogue Jedi mid-shoot. This trooper’s armor looks a lot purpler in my windows Live Writer than it does in my Windows Image Viewer. I hope it looks bluer to you than it does to me.

This suspicious-minded Mandalorian should pay more attention to his surroundings. He’s got the photographer pretty well covered, but the Jedi behind him looks about to start some shit.

 

 

 

 

Told ya. Great pose, but I wish I’d caught it from a slightly better angle. I love the way both this Jedi and Darth Maul’s lightsabers cast a cool light on their faces.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Okay. I’m not complaining. Really, i’m not. but this is the third guy in a helmet to point his gun at me. It’s a very effective pose, but it seems to be the only one of which masked Mandalorians are capable. So I asked this particular meter and three quarters of awesome to give me a second look.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Which he was only too happy to do. Truth be told, that first pose was better. Props to you, dark grey Mandalorian.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I saw Emperor Palpatine and his best-dressed apprentice walking around ominously on Friday night. Apparently that Jedi showed up and dispatched them while this poor guy was still getting his boots on. Similar to the blue clone trooper, the color of this guard’s garb is a little off here. In my preview window, it looks a lot redder, whereas here it looks a lot browner. Again, i hope you are seeing him wearing bright red-orange and not dingy maroon-brown.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The 501st had a booth setup at which they were giving the younger crowd some target practice. This brave trooper was one of the targets.

 

 

 

 

 

Some more super cool helmets. The one on the right is an empire-era pilot or driver helmet, and if I remember my history, the closer one is a clone pilot helmet. That would be before they switched to the open-faced, yellow-goggled variety.

 

 

 

 

 

 

This fine gentleman showed up on Saturday. Coincidentally, immediately following his arrival, all of the card games out in the hall started getting very one-sided. It should be mentioned that no one lost any limbs (at least, not that I was aware of).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The biggest celebrity of the con didn’t show arrive until Sunday. It was worth the wait. Has anybody seen “Beneath the Dome?” In that documentary, he was portrayed as something of a jerk. That’s pretty accurate. He was super arrogant, all rolling around twittering and being all “hey losers! I’m R2-Frickin’-D2!” It got a little annoying.

But seriously, the guy at the controls was super cool and R2 played with the kiddies.

 

The Ghostbusters of New Hampshire were also at the convention. They’re swell guys. They were taking donations for Make-A-Wish if I remember right. I caught this dude outside as we were leaving for lunch on Saturday. I was really worried I wouldn’t be able to salvage this photo. I didn’t reset my shutterspeed from when I was shooting inside. So this was shot at f/8 and 1/20 at around 1:30 in the afternoon. If you know what I’m talking about, you know that this entire photo was completely washed out.

 

 

 

 

 

 

No, this ghostbuster is not selling Fords, and neither am I. It just would have been hard to crop that banner out of the shot. So, you’re welcome New Ford Fiesta. I kinda wish this guy had given me a pose, but it’s still not a bad shot. Ghostbusters aren’t exactly common.

 

 

 

 

 

 

So I saw five ghostbusters standing by their car (which was super awesome, by the way. I think it was a PT Cruiser). Of course I asked them for a group photo. They did this cool pose. I don’t know if this was planned or spontaneous, but it made for a super shot. At first I thought they were flipping me off, and I thought “umm… there are kids around fellas, but whatever you want.” Then I realized they were just pointing and I laughed at myself.

These two officers were very friendly and wanted very badly to recruit me into their fleet of the stars. I was trying too hard to play along for any real conversation to happen. Live and learn.

So that’s all my convention photos. I have more photos that I took in the couple of blocks of Boston between the convention center and the hotel. Those will be up… later. I’m busy with school this week, but I wanted to get this con stuff up quick. I might not get to my wrapup and the outside photos until this weekend. We’ll see.

Once again, if anybody wants hi-quality copies of any of these photos, just let me know and we will work something out. Whatever is worked out, I will not ask anyone for money.

Assignment 1: Self Portrait

  So my first photography assignment was a self-portrait. I took 58 images and handed in six. I should have handed in seven. Here they are. Photoshop never touched these images. I took them all with my Canon Digital Rebel XTi and my dad’s tripod. For (mild) editing, I used Adobe Lightroom (really cool application. Check it out if you do photography).

The first thing I did with all of these photos was to set the color to 5500 Kelvin. It was off by a little bit in each one, and setting them all to daylight just made the colors look a little more real. I only cropped one after the fact, and I’ll tell you why when I get there. If you don’t care about photographic processes or what I did to edit the raw image, skip the reading. But come back for the last paragraph.

If you can’t see the images, fix your browser. Seriously, these are all tiffs. You should be able to see them in your browser. That doesn’t mean you necessarily can. If you can’t, try this. If that doesn’t work, e-mail customer service and tell them you want your browser to support the Tiff file extension. Seriously. It’s a little bit ridiculous that your browser doesn’t support Tiffs. Having said that, my understanding is that most browsers can’t display Tiffs without a plugin.

I won’t convert them to jpegs, so don’t ask. Jpeg compression supports a little over 16 million colors (8 bits per channel). Tiff supports a little more than 281 TRILLION colors (16 bits per channel). I did too much work to lose all that color data. That does mean 58mb photos, but that’s the price of 16 bits per channel. I would just put up the cr2’s, but I’m pretty certain nobody’s web browser supports raws. That being said, if someone WANTS the raws, I do still have the originals, but I saved my developed raws as Tiffs, so I don’t have raws of the finished products.

If more than one person can’t figure out how to see Tiffs in their web browser, I’ll try to figure something out. So don’t hesitate to speak up, but if you’re the only one, you will probably be ignored.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Original photo on right.

For this photo, after I filled in some light, I darkened the blacks a little bit to put some contrast into my jacket, which is all black, even though it looks like there’s some blue in it in these shots. I fixed the lights and darks, the highlights and the shadows to make the contrast across the whole image a little more. I desaturated the blues to make my jacket look black and my shirt look grey (which is what they really are). I know the jacket looks a little blue still, but I couldn’t lower the saturation any further without totally washing out the color in my jeans (I thought about just letting my jeans be grey, but this is a graded assignment and I didn’t want to look childish for having a whole bunch of sliders all the way to one side. More than that, they’re not grey. So they’re still blue). Next I desaturated the greens and yellows to mute the colors in the tree behind me and make you look where I want you to look. If you look too closely, the leaves do look a little funny. Then some noise reduction and a black vignette and done. I think this is the only photo where I’m on the right side of the frame (which is arguably where I should be).

  

Original photo directly above.

 

I was going to crop this one to get rid of the parking lot, but it’s a good thing I didn’t. Apparently it needs that dark foliage on the right side to anchor it. I guess there’s this thing: because our culture reads left to right, we need an anchor on the right side of a photo to keep our eye in it. Personally, I never see what people are talking about with rules like that. My eye stays where I want it to go. I always see a different focal point in an image than everybody else, and my eye doesn’t “slide off the page.” But rules are there for a reason, and there’s no point breaking them if you don’t know why they’re there in the first place (in art). This is one of only a couple of shots that I took at an upward angle. Turns out, that’s a good idea. It makes your subject look more important. “Larger than life” is I think the appropriate description.

I edited this image in color first, then converted it to greyscale. In hindsight, I wish I’d made the decision initially to go grey. It would have saved me a lot of work. I had to fill a lot more light in this one. That’s not necessarily a big deal, except that it keeps making my jacket and t-shirt look blue. I totally blew out the lights and highlights to completely wipe out the sky. To compensate, I had to darken the shadows to show some contrast. I then lightened the darks a bit to make my book a little more visible.

I heavily desaturated the reds, greens and yellows, to take focus away from the trees and the brick building behind me. This also of course desaturated the bench, which I wanted to keep highlighted, but you can’t have everything. I don’t like to play with the secondary colors, but in this case I completely desaturated the aqua “channel” to wash-out the bright green awnings in the parking lot to the right. To finish up, I desaturated the blues again, dumped in a ton of noise reduction, and added the dark vignette. At Kerry’s suggestion, I popped this one to greyscale after I had already fixed it up. I think it works better that way, and so did Professor Ruderman. Score.

 

I actually was pretty happy with the way this image came out of the camera. But I think you’ll agree: my final product looks better. I didn’t hand this one in with the assignment because it didn’t occur to me to put it in greyscale until later that day. I think it’s better than the other one of me in the window. Hence, Lesson 2: always try grey. Any given photo might look better in greyscale, and you just don’t know until you see it. For this shot, I actually had to set the tripod on the bed. So it was a little tricky to line things up just right without leaning on the bed. Even clicking the shutter button I had to be careful not to put any downward force on the tripod or it would screw up my focus.

 

 

I think this particular image has the heaviest vignette of any of the ones in this article. Just because it was so bright out, and I had to play with the light so much (in LightRoom, not “on set”), I needed to make the room dark again without darkening outside the window too much. I did have to play with the light a lot more delicately, just because I wanted to keep that window super bright. I didn’t NEED to play with the colors quite so much in this one, since there was plenty of light in the original shot. I actually added overall color saturation. After darkening the room a bit, it became very apparent that the wall behind me is in fact not quite pure white. So I cranked the yellow saturation down to almost nothing. That also made the gold coloring on my book look lighter and more golden. I also took out almost all of the green so as to keep your eye away from the trees outside, which all looked especially brilliant green all day. While this particular shot never made my t-shirt look blue, it did make my pants look especially vibrant, so I pulled down the blue saturation as well. To finish up, I did the usual noise reduction and added a heavier vignette than usual (I don’t think it’s overpowering).

This time, instead of just clicking the greyscale button, I reset the image back to raw and started all over. I think it looks just as good as the outdoor grey, and I  was able to drop about half of the heavy vignette that the color image needed. At least, that’s what it looks like. After double-checking my numbers (LightRoom is so awesome), it turns out the vignette here is actually about ten percent heavier. It’s just less dramatic because there’s no color.

 

 

 

 

This is the one I cropped. It looks okay now, and it looks fine after I’ve played with it. I’m happy with the crop. I think it makes the shot work much better. If I wasn’t happy with the crop, really what I should have done is re-shoot. The backpack and the couch cushion, which I put in on purpose (damn my eyes!), were just full of noise when I filled in some light and played with the levels. No amount of noise reduction could make them look okay. And in fact, the couch itself picked up a good amount of noise, but by being anal about the light levels, and careful with my noise reduction, I made it (mostly) go away. I shot this one downward… because. I was experimenting with different things all day, and it  was time to crank the tripod up as high as it would go. For this shot, I think it worked.

 

If you zoom in on the lightened corner of the couch, you might still be able to see some of the noise I was talking about. If you zoom in on the right side of my face (my right, not your right), you will definitely see some color noise.

Again, photo way too dark. Available light was just not my friend today (on the other hand, I learned how to light without flash and how to correct for available light). Not only did I have to raise the exposure in LightRoom, I also lit up the shadows, the darks and the highlights.

I didn’t touch the colors here, and I wish I had. I should have brought down the saturation on the blue channel just a bit. My pants really do look too vibrant, and the shadows in my shirt look a little blue.

Yes, that’s a different book sitting open than the book I’ve been reading all day. That’s my photography text book. Sitting on the table in front of me is the complete works of Edgar Allen Poe, which is the book in all the other shots.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This one was a bitch. I took six or seven shots with the sword, and this was the only one that didn’t look like I was displaying the sword. I knew right after I took it that this one was out of focus and I really wish I had re-shot it. Lesson 1 (or rule 2): If it looks out of focus on the camera’s little two-inch led screen, it’s WAY out of focus. re-shoot it. I really had to beat the piss out of this image to make it presentable. As an art project, I’m fairly satisfied with the results. As a graded assignment, I wrote my professor an e-mail and told him I didn’t mean to hand this one in.

 

 

 

Here’s how it came out. I sharpened it to within an inch of its bits. That helped, but it still looked like crap. I dumped in all the luminance and color noise reduction LightRoom could muster. That helped a little more, but it still looked really bad. Finally, I did something I never do. I added film grain effect. Kill me. Kill me now, Kill me quick. Film grain looks bad. There is no reason to ever ADD film grain to a photo. Grain is what makes old photos harder to work with. I will never understand why this “feature” exists anywhere, particularly in a professional digital image manipulation application. Why would you ever intentionally make an image look inarguably worse? The film grain didn’t make the image look better. Don’t you dare say it did. What it DID do is make it appear as though I made the image look like shit on purpose. Will I hang this one on the wall in my office? Yeah probably. This one is getting printed at 300 dpi and put in an expensive-looking frame. It’s going to follow me around for my entire career as a professional photographer as a reminder of lesson number one: RE-SHOOT!

 

I was lucky this shot turned out well. I only took it once, and I didn’t expect to use it. I just thought I better get a shot at the tree without the sword. I also took one with the book before this one. This was my last shot of the day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I wasn’t going to use this one, but I wanted to put in one more shot, it was too late to go back outside and get one and all of the shots at of me at my computer sucked (and too bad. some of them were okay).

I really didn’t have to do very much to this one. The two issues that came up in just about every photo I handed in were the trees and the blues. In this one as well, I dumped the saturation on the greens and yellows, and dropped it a bit on the blues. I did put in a little vignette, just to keep MY eye from wandering out of the image. YOUR eye might be held in by the shed to the right. My eye is not so easy fooled.

 

 

This was my third shot of the day. It needed a TON of light adjustment. Shooting directly out a window is a bad idea. It looks okay on the subject (if you’re not square with that as well), but it totally erases all the shadows and highlights everywhere else. There’s just light and dark. Anyway. It took me a few shots to get my hands in just the right position (notice I hadn’t put all my rings on yet). I kept taking a shot, then looking at it in the camera preview screen, then holding the book and trying to twist my head around to see my hands. Vain, I know. But that’s just the kind of narcissist I am.

 

 

 

So here’s the finished product. This is the first one I edited, and I think it came out alright. I wish I had killed the trees a little more, and I wish I had washed out the blues a little more also. I basically just fixed the light, raised the overall saturation, then made the reds just a ting bit yellow because it looked like I was wearing red lipstick.

 

 

 

 

 

 

So the problems I had in just about every photo were: vivid vegetation drawing attention from magical me, jeans, t-shirt and jacket too blue, and noise reduction basically sanding down the ribbing on my t-shirt. That was an interesting dilemma. I chose that particular shirt because it has some interesting texture to it and because it’s pretty close to a middle grey. So obviously, I wanted to keep the texture visible.

Noise reduction reduces the amount of colored “snow” in the image by averaging every pixel with the pixels adjacent to it. Unfortunately, that also makes the texture of my shirt disappear, leaving just a slightly (almost imperceptibly, in some cases) darker stripe right down the middle. So in every shot, I had to balance three things: the need for light, the need for noise reduction, and the desire for my nice, textured t-shirt to be accurately represented. Any rational human would probably say “damn the torpedoes!” and just use too much noise reduction.

But that would be too much. So, in trying to keep the texture of the shirt, I was able to judge just how much noise reduction was too much.

The jacket vs. pants quandary was a constant battle. Part of me said “fuck it. Let there be a blue shadow on the jacket.” The same part of me said “fuck it. Let the pants be grey.” The (thankfully) sane, third part of me (whom I have named Dan Forsythe) said “compromise.” So the jacket has just a hint of blue shadow to it, and the jeans look a little washed out (which they actually are). Next time, I’ll remember this and dress accordingly. I’m not sure what that means. I’ve learned my lesson, I’m just not able to apply it yet.

The trees were an easy fix: dump the saturation on green and yellow. It’s just lucky I wasn’t wearing anything green or yellow.

So that’s all the photog tech talk. The rest of you can start reading again. Really all I wanted to say is: if any of you (gramma, mom, etc.) want copies of any of these, I can make that happen. Let me know.