Friday, January 25, 2013

More Stuff

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve doubled my camera stuff.  These two beauties arrived in the past two weeks. 

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I ordered the lens when it was on sale for a great price over Christmas.  I spent all of my allowance and Christmas money.  So, now I’m poor, but happy.  Having so much more zoom is very handy.  I haven’t used the tripod yet, but I’m debating getting up tomorrow morning to see if I can snap a few sunrise shots (weather permitting).  I’d also like to try some moonlight shots with the massive full moon this weekend and all of the snow to reflect the light.  I have my wonderful wife to thank for that little gem.  It was on back order, but it made it before the end of the month.

Lets hope I can put them to good use.

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Make a Light Box

My first lesson of the new year is how to make a light box.  Actually, this is not my lesson to give.  I exercised my Google Fu and came up with several articles that set out how to make a simple homemade light box. 

Some of you know that I am a closet nerd.  I have little plastic men that I paint and subsequently play with (in a game, not in my closet).  I put a lot of time and effort into painting the little blighters and then I go and take a crappy picture on my desk with a phone.  I decided to do something about this lamentable situation.  I looked into how some bloggers made their man dollies look so good in pictures.  The answer was a light box.  I looked online and found that you could bu

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y light boxes, but the price was pretty steep for the amount I was going to use it (I am not a prolific painter).  So I went the home made route.

This is what I came up with using only an old moving box, a utility knife and some white tissue paper.  I do think I will be switching from tissue to fabric, due to the fragility of the box right now.  The book was used to put my camera on.

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This is what the pictures of my minis usually turn out like.

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Now with the light box, they look much better.  I’m still fiddling with the settings, so the photos aren’t perfect, but they’ll get better.  I guess I have to paint some more toys to photograph.

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If you want to make your own light box, I got my information from here and here.  You can also just Google it and there are many articles to choose from.

Sunday, January 6, 2013

Learn

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Learning-is-FunLast year my wife inspired me to choose a word for the year.  It’s kind of like a a multifaceted New Year’s resolution.  Last year I made up my own word and went with positivity.  I think I did a pretty good job with my positivity last year.  By no means am I a wellspring of optimism, but I have tried and succeeded to avoid overly negative thoughts about people, events and the future.  I still need work and I have to keep the goal in my head to avoid relapses, but I’m on the right track.

That leads me to my word for this year.  I have chosen the word learn for 2013.  I have many things to learn in life.  If you think you have nothing left to learn then you have nothing left to live for (besides being a colossal fool).  I want to learn lots of things in relation to my profession, technology, photography and the world.  Some lessons will be large and some will be small.  I hope to share some of the things I learn here.  Maybe my dear readers will even learn a thing or two.

Remember Me?

It has been quite a while since I’ve visited this space.  There are many reasons.  I have a very challenging class this year and I generally come home exhausted and fall into some escapist activity for the remainder of the evening.  I have a bit of an on-again-off-again Skyrim addiction I’ve been dealing with, and I was simply not inspired.

Well, I’m back to take another kick at the can.  I don’t know what’s changed.  Maybe the new wireless keyboard my amazing wife got me for Christmas came with inspiration built in.  Regardless, I hope to give the five or so people who read this blog some entertainment over the next several months.