This past weekend I was given the sheer pleasure of practicing "creative exposure" with my god son on a warm and beautiful day at Topsail beach. It was his first time there so he was all aglow with smiles and amazement at the rocks and surf, which I managed to capture quite a few times. I haven't gotten into too much post processing with them thus far. acouple of the good ones looked a little overexposed, but upon further inspection it was his babywhite skin and a bright day. You can actually see the little wrinkles on his skin, even in the supposed hotspots. I just have to tone down the shots some to make them look a little better. A lot of his face shots are shaded, but it's because he found the sun a bit bright so he was always looking away from it. This is livable and believable, so I may just leave that touch in there.
The practice I was getting was for a little exercise in the book "Understanding Exposure" by Brian Peterson. It talks about having your stops and shutter speeds at different levels to give you the correct exposure while giving you different depth of fields (Forgive me, any of you who are better at this than me, if I said that wrong!:P). I did get some fun shots, but in the end all they were doing were allowing the key focus of the shot (my godson) become MORE of the focus of the picture, with the backgrounds blurring out ever so slightly on each successive step. My next creative exposure experiment will be Thomas Amusements at Night. Some of the fantastic light patterns and colors I should get there will be very interesting indeed.
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Final Fantasy 13 is a real anomaly of a game. By rights, I should absolutely hate it. The long long run of linearity should have killed me, but it didn't. The next fault of the game, the "grind" of level building for my characters, is something that made me stop playing World of Warcraft. However, I just love this game. I want to develop my characters, the story, while convoluted, is fun. The battle system, as the characters grow, gets more and more fun. The baddies, while not as varied as I like, are interesting and worth a look at, and some can be particularly intimidating! (See behemoth king... ouch when he stands up!)
Even though I know this game isn't for everyone, as it does get a bit long (I just broke hour 36 of a suspected 60, 9 of which have been grinding) it's something everyone who calls themselves a gamer should at the very least try. The streamlined battle system is a breath of fresh air from the standard menu surfing of previous titles. The worlds are utterly amazing and can almost overwhelm you in detail.
Check it out.
That's it this day. Chat again soon.
C
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