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Warren Shea

Archive for the ‘Photography’ Category

My Saturday is average.

Saturday, September 18th, 2010 at 8:53 pm

I slept last night at around 11pm….It was weird, I came home from a bar and left, my skin very warm and with a headache. Except this time I didn’t drink. -_-; It’s unexplainable! Maybe it’s the bar atmosphere O_O

So last night, I thought it’d be funny if I took some mutual funds papers to bed and fall asleep while reading them. So that when Z found me, she’d think it were funny that I couldn’t stay awake reading it. For some reason, I thought this would be funny…I don’t know why. I was drunk (actually, no I wasn’t…). Anyways, I fell asleep, as planned…and then kept sleeping…until 2pm today. Let me tell you, it was an awesome sleep :D I had at least 4 separate dreams…one was a Futurama episode o_o.

Went out to some dim sum restaurant that Z wanted to go to…had some very good eats. Then walked around Eaton Centre a bit. I got a $30 tripod at Best Buy for a camera that I’m currently borrowing. The lack of a steady hand and a good camera & macro lens go together pretty poorly.

EDIT: Here’s a pic of my new “studio”. Looks good with a tripod…also, taking pictures on the couch didn’t seem to work….too low…my back couldn’t take it.

Photo Studio

EDIT: I also got some Mario mints at Best Buy:

Mario Mints

I went to the Disney Store and pre-ordered a Blu Ray Beauty and the Beast. Got this pretty lithograph for pre-ordering.

Beauty and the Beast Litho
note: this is a picture of MY lithograph, not a picture off the internet…

We also got 2 stuffed animals, a Hamm and a Doug. Zena and I really liked the Hamm (he was very soft!) and the Doug might prove useful later.

Hamm

Doug

The plan is to get some Disney Blu Rays, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdins, The Lion King, etc. Toy Story 3 Blu Ray available from pre-order in early Oct FYI. I personally cannot wait for the Toy Story Blu ray box set trilogy. I was in line at the Disney store, running through Toy Story 3 in my head, especially the ending, and finding myself zoning out into the emotional aspect of it. Hard to describe. Toy Story 3 really was one of the best movies I’ve seen all year, if not the best. I can’t wait to rewatch an HQ version of it.

Zena also purchased Starcraft II for herself. I pray that I don’t start it…

After that, I went to Indigo to look for some CSS books. As I started looking at the selection of books, I felt a big overwhelmed at the number of different books and different topics. HTML5 books, ASP.NET C# 4.0 books…jQuery. I felt uneasy and wanted to go home…to do work. But then I started blogging… :S

You know, I just realized that when I opened and removed the tripod from the box, I completely discarded the instructions. When I buy a Transformer, I’d never look at the instructions on how to transform it. “Instructions are for little girls” I would say. Except I don’t use “little girls”, I say something slightly more vulgar. But aren’t simple instructions the basis of learning fundamentals? Maybe I’m not the type that can instinctively learns from fundamentals, I’m the type and dives in head first and then drowns? or more accurately, dives in head first, learns how to swim enough to get by, but probably not make any records.

I leave you with a Flash plushie I got a couple of months ago. He sports a jagged lightning belt meaning he’s Barry Allen, not Wally West (boourns). He’s still cute though.

The Flash

Photography – eternally time consuming

Saturday, July 24th, 2010 at 11:48 pm

Okay, I have 2 new galleries up. About 3 nights of work here. Originally I wanted to post like…10 galleries! but frig, it’s time consuming. I did these 2 but I need to take a break. I should do a gallery every once in a while instead of all at once…even doing 2 galleries was pretty painful.

Step 1: Set up the “studio”.
Studio

Step 2: Take pictures. Go wild, take as many angles and shots as you want.

Step 3: Select the ones you want to show.

Step 4: In Photoshop, adjust levels to lighten the background. I attempt to make it white, to blend in with pure white. Doing so, you lose color information, darkened colors, etc. It kind of sucks, losing the information…but I sacrifice it for a more intense image. The colors can become more vivid as well.

Step 5: With the Brush tool, go over the corners to make everything white. Also, use the clone tool to fix blemishes.

Step 6: Resize for the web and post.




Step 4 and 5 take the most time. The 32 shots for my recent Black Widow gallery took about….4-5 hours. It was painful. I should take fewer shots but it’s just so fun to try different angles, etc.

Anyways, here are thumbnails to my 2 most recent galleries. They can, of course, also be found at Gallery.

Kotobukiya Bishoujo Statue: Black Widow

Kotobukiya Bishoujo Statue: Rogue

My Gallery and photography

Thursday, July 22nd, 2010 at 11:45 pm

I was planning to release a whole mess of galleries in the next couple of days…but doing one of my galleries has involved a lot of lightening in Photoshop (Levels, Curves, Brightness/Contrast). It was then that I realized my photos aren’t quite getting the bright light I’d like…

I messed around with my lightbox and bristol board just now…I’m not sure if I want to re-take my shots. I don’t mind, photography is pretty fun….tho it’s time consuming and I have better things to do.

Anyways…hopefully by the end of the weekend, I should have a bunch of galleries up!
I’ve got a whole mess of toys…I’ve already got a whole mess of photos but if they’re too dark, I’ll need to reshoot…

/update on what’s been occupying my nights lately

It’s that time of the year again…

Wednesday, May 26th, 2010 at 10:45 pm

Let me explain this cake.

1. I absolutely LOVE those Loblaws cakes, the colorful ones with tons of sugar….I absolutely <3 LOVE <3 the flowers. Pure sugar. Now, these cakes aren't really socially acceptable, nor are they meant for adults and they're also as unhealthy as a cake can be. For those reasons, I only get the cake once a year...around my birthday (which is today). This is MY cake.

2. Why does it say Christina? Because…I love that sugar icing so much. So I make them write as many letters as I can. “Christina” is 3 letters more than “Warren”. That’s 3 letters more icing I get for free. Also, by saying a girls name, it’s like I’m getting it for someone so it’s less embarrassing for me (cuz what adult gets those cakes -_-;). But admitting this sentence alone shows how sad this all is. Well, too bad…I do stuff like that.

Anyways…I got this cake over a week and a half ago. I ate it all myself within 3 days. That’s just enough time to love it, tolerate it, and feel sick of it…for another year. Except I don’t really get sick of it, I could eat more right now. Dammit I LOVE THOSE SUGAR FLOWERS.

/something you wish you didn’t know about me

The difference between a lightbox…and…not a lightbox? -_-;

Monday, May 17th, 2010 at 12:43 am

Figure A is a cake, the picture is taken on my kitchen counter, using natural condo light.
Figure B is the same cake, placed in my lightbox, using…light from the lightbox.

The camera is the same, the photographer is the same…the only difference is whether the cake was placed in the lightbox or not. You can see the difference in quality, professionalism…color…um…and whatever other buzz words photographers use. Texturizationalation. Y’know?

More pics coming soon…the lightbox is certainly fun to play with. I’m very happy I purchased it…it was like trying to draw with crayons. You could get some things right..but you couldn’t get the detail or the look you wanted. Even if your skill was the same, without the right tools, you couldn’t do what you’re capable of.

Originally, even with the lightbox, I couldn’t get the pictures I wanted. I read the camera manual a bit this weekend to learn the settings more, I Googled some hints on taking professional pictures with a digital camera…and I’ve improved my skills with pretty minimal effort. I’m very excited to show some better pictures…I still have quite a few models to take images of. And I hope to get at least 2 more from Anime North :)