Geeks in hot weather do strange things
Monday, July 31st, 2006
The image above was taken in the same park as the previous “Today’s Image”. It’s a combination of eight photographs taken at varying shutter speeds, all merged together into this final image.
It’s been pretty hot outside for Michigan, leading me to hide from the sun. Wait a minute: I do that anyway. But I’m sweating a lot more while I’m doing it. No, in all seriousness, it has been very hot in the area (as it has been in many other parts of the country), and it’s made going out in the sun very difficult.
During one of my heat-induced stupors, I got the idea to take pictures of some new figures I just received in the mail a day or two before. Yes, I have action figures. No, they’re not dolls.
I know the idea of collecting figures past one’s teenage years is strange to some. In my defense, many people do this: granted, they are strange even by my standards, but let’s pretend that’s not the case, and that it’s perfectly normal for people to collect toys for the purpose of display.
Back in January I pre-ordered the first wave of Stargate SG-1 figures from CornerStoreComics [cornerstorecomics.com]. After several delays, I finally received them, as I said earlier, only a few days ago. They’re much better than I was expecting, and the sculpts, while not perfect, are pretty good.
Included in the package were some of the supplies necessary to build the Stargate. I say “some”, because not everything was included. According to the write-up on the CornerStoreComics page, all the parts were included in Series 1. Unfortunately, the rest are in Series 2, which is not yet out and I don’t yet have the money to purchase. I certainly hope I get it before it runs out of stock.
Regardless, I had enough of the Stargate to put it in the background. It totaled about three quarters of the ring: the base is what is the least complete. I thought the Stargate made for a good backdrop, and had some fun with different lighting effects in photographing the images below. I found the Jaffa guard a bit more photogenic than the other figures, which is why it got the most pictures posted. I know they’re not the greatest out there, but I had fun. They’re pretty close to what I had in mind, and it’s way too hot to try taking more.
Unlike the “Today’s Image” above, these images were not post-processed much at all. The images were color balanced (RAW mode) in Canon’s Digital Photo Professional, and sharpened and cropped in Adobe Photoshop. Only a few other corrections were made to two images (the third and fourth) to correct my mistake of shooting the edge of the Stargate ring in the image. Whoops. Anyway, the reason I mention this is to show that I’m getting better at shooting the image right in the camera, rather than relying on a lot of post-process work to fix my lack of experience with my camera. I think I’ve improved. Hopefully I’m not fooling myself.
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