Category Archives: Photo Stuff

Late night portraits

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After photo (history) class today (I love the photo history class; I hate my portrait photo class), I came home and had the sudden urge to go out and photograph things. As this was the first time this semester I had gotten such an urge (and so strongly too), I was surprised, given that I figured my photo class had killed any part of me that still enjoyed photography.
So yeah, started with Chris around 10:30, continued with Todd, Alex, and 8 around midnight. Ended up shooting people until around 1:30-ish. I must say that I’m really, really happy with many of the shots I got.







You can see more of them at photos2
See how much better my shots come out when I’m not constantly trying to conform to someone else’s idea of “artistic”? (Granted, some of these could be cropped better, but meh; I’m still really happy with them)
I really, really should drop my portrait class and just go out shooting like this more often.

Also, doing this shoot made me realize that I really, really need to get my own tripod and a telephoto lens. The latter is easily remedied, as Alex is selling me his 70-300mm (official Nikon brand too!) soon. The former can be remedied by throwing money at it, but I don’t know if I can afford it right now :-P
But wheeee. Photography makes me happy. Too bad you can’t truly appreciate the depth of field in the above images due to size. Oh well.

One bonus piccar that isn’t in the gallery at photos2…

Liek ZMONGS it’s the first :-\ face I’ve seen someone make IRL!

As for now, it is 3:30 AM, so I should probably go to sleep.

Weather++

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Today was the most amazing weather… I spent most of the day outside, photographing various goings on with ghannema.
Photos from today (as well as KGB painting the fence; the last outside-excursion with ghannema, matthewj, jgrafton, and Jordan; and Car and Tom portraits) are up at photos

Borrowed Dom’s sexy, sexy 10-20mm lens for today and played around with it. It takes amazing pictures (you can probably tell which ones from today were taken with it). I want it, but I don’t think I can afford a $500 lens.
However, I am looking at a 70-300mm that costs about $150. I’ll probably end up saving up and getting it. It seems quite worth the money.

So yar.
Piccars!





Now, oh god so much homework I haven’t done yet today.

Meh

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Despite today having its high points (unofficially official Pi day, Mark party, finding out we did fairly well on our networks lab, some nice new scores in ITG including my first sightread star, doing stuff with Ben), the weather seems to generally be matching my mood… which is to say, crappy.

Work continues on CMU Adventures. The puzzle to unlock Wean 4 is implemented (even if Wean 4 itself isn’t) which means that Doherty is fully implemented from B level to 2nd floor, and Wean 5 and 7 are both fully implemented. Whee.


Me wants a 10-20 lens…. oh god wide angle sexiness.

I should probably head to bed early, as I’m ready for today to be over.
Blah bad moods.

Random updates

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For people who are interested in Student Wars, the second-to-last expansion (Internships) has been uploaded for your playing pleasure. I’ll work on Loose Ends eventually and wrap up the game.
In related news, work on the graphical cards for the STD Card game, work on the base sets for the Supernatural card game and RPG Get! card game system, and work on Student Wars v2 have all been delayed because I’m busy with school and other life stuffs.

I photographed Tom and Car yesterday as the first part of my next assignment for portrait.
Feedback on these would be helpful, as I don’t want to do horribly on another portrait assignment.
Bleh.
Most of these have been slightly cropped, but the framing still bothers me (if anything, the recropping to try and confirm to what the professor considers “good” is what bothers me, since I like the full frames on many of these)… not sure what to do about that.
Meh.
How is it possible to hate photo so much, given that I immensely enjoy photographing?

In the full version, part of her elbow is still out of the frame. I tried cropping it down, but it still looks weird. Bleh.

Cropped too close to her head, maybe?

I like this more than the full one, where she is more centered in the frame.

Not sure about the cropping of this.

I’m torn about this one, because I really like it, but I feel like my professor won’t.

I like this one.

Once again, arms being partially out of the frame, and unsure how to fix it…

God, what is it with me and partially cutting arms out of the frame? It’s not something I’d normally notice, except it was one of the (few) things specifically pointed out to me… but the thing is, it doesn’t bother me that they’re cut off, and so it’s not something I think about while photographing. If anything, it bothers me when you see the entire arm in the frame, because it looks weird.
Is it my fault that my artistic sense doesn’t conform to the general sense? Things that I find artistic never match what other people like. And if it wasn’t for the fact that it affects my QPA, I wouldn’t care.
I hate hate hate hate hate hate hate photo -_-
I just want to go out and take photos and not have to care about this stuff, because I enjoy it, and the stuff comes out good *enough*. Why am I spending time stressing about this? Grargh.
I swear, if I was less anal about losing half a semester of work, I’d drop this class and be so much better off for it.

Content is continually being added to CMU Adventures. I’m currently working on the Doherty 1/B content, and will start on Wean 4/NSH soon. If you haven’t yet, creating an account and playing would be much appreciated, as the game could use all the testing it can get.
…
At least there’s something I’m good enough at.
*sighs*
*stabs photo with a big stabby stick*

Stuffs

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Life is going well, I think. Still busy as hell with stuff, but I’m still finding time to destress, so I guess that’s good.

I’ve been working a ton on my final project for webapps. I suppose that I should post the URL now that it’s officially hit Beta and I’ve finished the framework.
http://adventure.alanv.org
Create an account and try it out! Let me know of any bugs you find and whatnot. I’m still working on content for the game, but there shouldn’t be any fatal flaws in it.

This morning was my phone interview with Viz/GDC4S. I think it went fairly well. I dunno. I’m hoping they’ll want to interview me more/hire me, but we’ll see what happens.

Whee.

I couldn’t get this picture to come out right. Meh. It looked better in real life.
I hate photography -_-
*is still seriously considering dropping portrait*

Also, George W. Bush’s resume
-_-
How is that man still in office?