Warren Shea - World of Warren

Archive for the ‘Photography’ Category

Getting color right

Sunday, July 29th, 2012 at 11:17 pm

I spent a lot of the weekend taking more pictures…and trying to get the color right. It’s important to me that the color on these photographs is accurate to the statues…so I’m trying really hard to make it right.

This was my last “best” Wonder Woman. It was color corrected with a grey card to get the color temperature right.
f/2.8
ISO 100
Exposure 1/60
Using a lightbox and set on cloudy

Color corrected.
f/2.8
ISO 100
Exposure 1/250
Taken outside, using Noon-ish sunlight on the left + diffusion panel
Camera was (probably) set on Daylight but may have been set to Shade

Color corrected.
f/2.8
ISO 125
Exposure 1/125
Taken indoor using 5pm-ish sunlight (coming from the right) and using a reflector on the left.
Camera was set to Shade

Color corrected…even more than the last! With level adjustment layer, in Photoshop.
All other settings are the same

Color corrected
Taken indoor using 8:30am-ish sunlight (coming from the left) and using a reflector on the right.
All other settings are the same as before

I think some of the colors are a bit too strong, I need to tone them down…but for the first time ever, these photos accurately portray the skin colors correctly. It’s not too blue/zombie like. I can adjust the colors a bit later…but it’s close to my “what i wanna be” example:

I used to think that I wanted a photo to have light. SO MUCH LIGHT that there were no shadows. But I was incorrect, shadow provides depth. But you don’t want too much or you lose information. You want subtle shadows. And you don’t want blinding light as that’s a loss of information too.

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Update on Secret Project KB

Tuesday, July 24th, 2012 at 11:59 am

Unfortunately, this is the only thing I can write about as it’s the only thing I’m spending my time on lately, other than social events.

I’ve been working hard on kotobishoujo.com. I’m spending my time either taking photographs of statues or filling the site with content

Originally I thought some of the photos were good :
http://kotobishoujo.com/dc/wonder-woman/ (possibly NSFW) but it’s looking like my photograph’s lighting is still off, even with a grey card.

I’m not getting the exact skin color of the statues…meaning I need to take my photographs back to the drawing board. It’s okay, I only took, processed, resized like, 150 of them T______T. But better to fix this issue now than later.

I also notice that while a lack of light is not your friend, proper shadows are required to define the shape of items. You can’t just have all the light in the front, you need to be strategic for shadows to achieve depth. Ah well, better I learn this now than later.

I wish I had a photography mentor!

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Darkness is the enemy…

Friday, July 20th, 2012 at 2:25 am

…in photography.

Seriously, a lack of light can make or break a great photo.

I was just looking at some of my old files/photos, before my DSLR Camera (which still needs a name btw…I wanna call it “Parker” after photographer Peter Parker but I’d prefer to call it a girl’s name). Oops, side tracked. My old photos are either lacking light or maybe the camera sucked so bad it didn’t let enough light…I don’t really know. But the photos are bad. I’ll post some later (it’s 2:30 am right now, I really should sleep).

Anyways, while my Saturday is busy, Friday night and Sunday is pretty free. I hope to post some small galleries to show what I’ve been up to.

I’m pretty excited…this is really really fun stuff, though super time consuming. I’m really enjoying myself :)

I can’t wait to show you how far I’ve come :)

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TO DO: Secret Project KB

Wednesday, July 18th, 2012 at 10:45 am

(or kotobishoujo.com)

I purchased the domain for this site on Oct 18, 2011. I had the idea/passion to make this site about 9 months ago…but could only do it when warrenshea.com was finished, a project that took…..much longer than it should have.

I think around the end of May, I finished warrenshea.com…so I’ve had a month and a half of having this project as my focus. To be honest, it’s coming a lot slower than I expected. Here’s my checklist of things I’ve done

~~buying the domain~~
~~designing the basic layout~~
~~developing the basic functionality~~
~~pouring in content~~
fix the search and make it look nicer
create a logo
pour more content into the blog
go to various sites and look up prices for each statue (time consuming and tedious)
~~buy a camera~~
- learn how to use the camera to take professional shots (time consuming)
- take pictures of all the statues (super time consuming)
- create a gallery for each figure

Overall, it’s a bit overwhelming how much work is involved, not to mention the maintenance of it all. I need to be on top of kotobukiya bishoujo information! It’s harder than I thought it would be.

Anyways, there’s still a long way to go. I’m working on tons of things all the time, like learning about photography…for the site.

ETA on completion: who knows :/

Anyways, I just wanted to write about this project as it’s now the focus of my free time. This is to help me stay organized :) I feel better when I’m organized!

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DSLR Example – Wonder Woman

Tuesday, July 17th, 2012 at 12:33 am

I’m in the process of doing 16 angle shots of each of my bishoujo characters for my kotobishoujo.com site.

This was taken by me O_O. It looks so professional…though not as professional as it could :/

Here’s an example. Click for a larger image (Warning, the larger image is 4.89 MB).

Hmmm, as I compare this image with some professional images, I notice the color is off on my character. Not sure why. I’ll have to investigate.

Update

This one is truer to the real colors..it still doesn’t look right though!

Update 2

with gray card

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