Saturday, August 22, 2020

Show Time

I spent most of the day geeking out in the DC Fandome today, which – to me – has been the most successful online replication of a convention experience I’ve had this year so far.

(For the fellow nerds in the audience, I will reveal no spoilers. Except for the fact that one of Jim Lee’s favorite characters is Matter-Eater Lad, which both amuses and delights me. LLL!)

The first part (this weekend) was essentially a live stream with some interactivity, some taped content, and a store; the second part on September 12-13, and will featuring multiple worlds/streams and more interactivity, and sounds like it will be close to the kind of experience we were hoping for at BreyerFest this year.

DC is, of course, part of a huge multimedia conglomerate that has the resources to pull something like this off and Reeves is actually kind of a small company with very few full-time employees at their physical location in New Jersey, many of whom already have to wear multiple hats to begin with.

But it will be interesting to see if this particular event has any influence on anyone planning virtual events going forward.

Since I am spending the rest of the weekend catching up on my quilting projects (the sewing machine is back up and running, huzzah!) I’ll just close with another Virtual Photo Show photograph I was especially proud of:

One of the difficulties in photographing vintage Glosses is in trying to convey that glossiness without it distracting from or altering the color of the finish, and I think I managed to do that here. The color is a touch more yellow than he is in real life because of the light sources I used, but I couldn’t color correct the photo any more than I did without it becoming obvious or distorted.  

This model, incidentally, was not my first Charcoal Fighting Stallion. My first one was an earlier and browner version with more body shading, but who was slightly more yellowed and that I attempted to unyellow in my car one day

… and who I forgot about the next day when I went to work and parked in a freshly blacktopped lot. On a hot summer day. 

Don’t do that, kids.

Fortunately for me, my “new guy” showed up at one of my local flea markets a couple weeks later, and I ended up selling my original at BreyerFest to someone very happy to add a Bloated Charcoal Fighter to their collection.

4 comments:

Suzanne said...

Is there a book or video series you’d recommend for aspiring pony photographers?

ANDREA said...

It's been mostly me just experimenting with all the settings and features of my camera (in this case, a Nikon CoolPix L840) until I found what worked for me. The blessings of a digital camera is that you can take multiple versions of your photos and delete your mistakes before anyone else gets to see them.

I did take a photography class at a local community college 25+ years ago, but that was pre-digital and mostly focused on black and white photography and the technical aspects. IOW, not really that helpful.

My lightbox was built with five pieces of foam core board, some duct tape, and a white plastic tablecloth from Dollar Tree. Backdrops are mostly large sheets of Canson Paper from an art supply store. Light sources are two desk lamps and a clamp lamp with 100W bulbs installed.

Suzanne said...

These show photos are excellent! I remember seeing old posts in which you lamented a lack of photographic skill, although I’d say those old photos weren’t that bad. I’m inspired to try to better myself, I tend to be very inconsistent with lighting etc.

Suzanne said...

These show photos are excellent! I remember seeing old posts in which you lamented a lack of photographic skill, although I’d say those old photos weren’t that bad. I’m inspired to try to better myself, I tend to be very inconsistent with lighting etc.