Death of a Grand Dame / After the Blitz

September 30, 2020 by 4g3nd4

1:12 Scale,
Between September 1940 and May 1941, during the Second World War the city of London was bombed by the Luftwaffe for 76 consecutive nights and many towns and cities across the country followed. More than one million London houses were destroyed or damaged, and more than 40,000 civilians were killed, half of them in London

Kenneth Haseltine, age 48, Miniature Artist, Salem Oregon U.S.A
Ever since I was a young child I have had this obsessive need to create things. The process of making something gives me a sense of peace like nothing else in the world. When a new project first comes to mind I’ll spend most of my waking hours thinking about it, planning out details in my head, obsessing on it until it’s been finished. It’s a wonderful kind of anxiety that’s only relieved by successfully completing the project.
Miniatures has allowed me to bring together all the skills I have learned over the years from many different hobbies and apply them to this art form, drawing, painting, sculpture, woodwork, model trains, fiber art even sewing, I have tried them all, but Miniatures are my passion now and my creative focus for the last 7 years.
I approach every project with a strong idea in mind, but rarely with any firm plans, I like to let the idea evolve on its own, let creativity guide me and not be boxed in by sketches or some measurements on a piece of paper. I know this philosophy is counter to what most people believe, they have been told that in order to be successful at this hobby you need to carefully plan ahead, but this approach has never worked for me. Free your mind and the rest will follow is my motto.
I call this piece Death of a Grand Dame, like her owner’s this grand Georgian home on the outskirts of London has suffered the ravages of war, now exposed to the elements her death is imminent.
With this piece I wanted to convey the sense of loss I feel when I think about the destruction caused by war, not only the lives lost, but the architectural treasures these very people built and lived in now gone forever. I’m inspired by 18th and 19th century Architecture and its opulence. My goal is to take the viewer to another place and time if even for a split second, to imagine what it must have been like to live in that particular moment in time, to live in those opulent spaces of yesterday.
The piece is constructed from wood, cast plaster and paper.
23” (58.42 cm) long x 13” (33.02 cm) high.
.
.

Posted by Ken Haseltine Regent Miniatures on 2012-01-13 02:59:20

Tagged: , Dollhouse , Miniatures , 1:12 , Scale

Feathered death

September 19, 2020 by 4g3nd4

Blogged in The Woodwork: Faking long exposure

Feathered Death
Baker Beach, San Francisco, California

Nikon D3, Nikkor 14-24mm f/2.8G
Aperture 2.0 (raw fine tuning, spot & patch, straighten, white balance, dodge & burn) nik Color Efex Pro (contrast color range, bi-color user defined, bleach bypass, glamour glow) Photoshop (heal)
1/60sec @ f/18, iso200, 14mm (14mm)
____________________________________________________

Visiting Baker Beach.

While returning to the car, I passed near a seagull looked at me guiltily and then flew away. I was curious what it was looking at and noticed that it was a dead bird whose legs had been caught in some cloth flotsam and had been washed ashore.

This photo was taken handheld in aperture mode which was adjusted to have as much depth of field possible and still be well above the shake limit. The 14mm has no trouble focusing close but the dust on the lens left a lot of blemishes that appeared easily after post processing. I’m going to have to look into a good portable cleaning solution as the surface would take forever to clean with a LensPen. I remembered to bring my GPS with me (with batteries) so the location data is accurate (though I forgot to adjust my camera for daylight savings time so I had to shift things over 3600 seconds).

I used dodge and burn to try to reclaim some dynamic range in the overexposed background (burn) while getting some feather detail in shadow (dodge). The spot & patch algorithm was very poor for dust spots in the sand so I had to heal that (as well as lens dust) in Photoshop.

I used contrast color to get better separation between sand and sea, a bi-color to magnify that effect even more and “postcard” the image without messing with the saturation, and then bleach bypass and glow to create the otherworldly look around the dead bird. Most of these filters were not applied to the bird itself using a negative u-point.

I tested the new dodge and burn tool in Aperture 2.0.1 update. It worked very well, but I’m disappointed that it has to generate a TIFF file in order to work. It’d be nice if it used the RAW file and just stored sidecar files that had the masks. The weird thing is if you edit using an external editor and then edit in Photoshop, it loses the version with your dodge and burn edits. In fact, 2.0.1 and 2.0 before it has introduced many, many bugs involving preview generation and versioning. For instance, if you replace the PSD file or edit a PSD file that you’ve already commented, it will reimport the EXIF and IPTC information and smash all your edits in Aperture. Besides the fact that you can no longer use the PSD-replacement trick (to preserve metadata from external creation tools like PTMac and DxO Optics Pro via PSD generation), it destroys all your IPTC work you might have done before round tripping with Photoshop. That is stupid. Another example is preview generation on expanded canvases with a alpha channel that has been colored in are rendered transparent no matter what in the original and then exported as black. So effectively those parts of the image become unusable! (Workaround: save a copy as PSD with alpha unchecked and than overwrite the current PSD) WTF? I mean this stuff worked in Aperture 1.0. Apple has taken the common-sense way of handling versioning and trashed it in order to make room for the API which isn’t really ready yet. They could have done much better if they asked the service to generate previews and gave it the ability to store sidecars. This would be far more versatile than the current stuff which is no better than Photoshop at this point (though the RAW rendering support will be change that for us DxO Optics Pro users). There is no need to actually save the rendered TIFFs—and why TIFF anyway? Those files are huge. Why not store losslessly compressed JPEG2000s are 1/2 the size of TIFFs for photos).

By the way Aperture 2.0 lost support of JPEG2000. (It was buggy in Aperture 1.0). That’s bad because I save my scanner output as high quality JPEG2000’s since they have 48bit dynamic range and yet are about 1/20 the size of a TIFF with almost no noticeable loss in quality. Support all Quicktime-compatible image formats for import! This is why I buy expensive computers, Apple. (Thumbnails should still be JFIF (JPEG) simply because the algorithm for working with JPEG2000’s seems a bit slow even on a fast computer.)

When I do a lot of Photoshop and Aperture 2.0 work, the hard drive starts swapping in a bad way and won’t stop. Very frustrating. What should have been a 15 minute postprocessing ended up wasting 3 hours because of bugs in Aperture and swap.

Finally, I decided not to provide the full resolution versions of the images and added a border around the image (but no watermark). This should still be good enough, if not better, for use under the Creative Commons in websites and blogs, but if you need a print-quality (larger than postcard size) version of the photo, this way you’ll have to contact me for the image. The border design and information is a rip-off of various parts from my favorite photographers: Kevin Kubota, Tony Sweet, Russ Morris, Ryan Brenizer, Jim Goldstein, and Andrei Zmievski.

Click for original photograph (If you cannot view this, add me to your contacts and I’ll add you to my friends. If you are already a contact of mine then just jet me a message and I’ll fix your status.)

Posted by tychay on 2008-04-02 11:47:48

Tagged: , heal , digital glamour glow , Bay Area , white balance adjustment , equipment , descriptive places , camera , nature , Pacific Ocean , places , colors , California , outdoor , Apple Aperture , digital bi-color user defined , dead , San Francisco , Nikkor , 14-24mm f/2.8G , brown , Northern California , digital color contrast range , Nikon D3 , Photoshop , portrait orientation , handheld , post-processing , subjects , nik Color Efex Pro , raw fine tuning adjustment , wildlife , spot & patch adjustment , orientation , dodge & burn edit , sand , animal , shooting traits , straighten adjustment , hiking , blue , Apple Aperture 2.0 , United States , Baker Beach , digital bleach bypass , ocean , water , beach , lens , expired , bird , photo specs , sky

Sophie tickling my ribs

September 14, 2020 by 4g3nd4

Cannot think of a better way to spend a afternoon than getting your ribs inked by international tattoo artist Sophie Zie-Carreras. Sophie is happy to take on any tattoo project, whether it may be a one off custom design, a customers own design or a piece of flash art. Sophie is originally from Auxerre,which is in the Bourgogne region of northwest France, between Paris and Dijon.It is a commercial and industrial centre, with industries including food production, woodworking and batteries, Although it’s best export to date has got to be Sophie..
…………
…………….
………

rib tattoos ;
Rib tattoos have become widely popular in the past few years — with men and women alike. There are some major differences between getting a rib tattoo and getting your wrist tattooed, or the small of your back. A tattoo on the ribs can be either extremely painful for some, or moderately painful for others depending on your pain tolerance.

Since its all bone and little to no muscle tissue, the pain can seem like a slight [sun]burn or someone sticking your repeatitively with a very large sharp object. Rib tattoo come in all shapes and sizes. Thye range from your average joe to super famous acors and actresses, like Megan Fox. For example, she has a tattoo on her ribs with a poem saying, "there once was a little girl who never knew love until a boy broke her heart." Rhianna is also a well known name who has a small gun tattooed on her rib cage.

Alot of rib tattoos on women range from the typical flowers, stars, hearts, butterfly, word/quotes, ect. Rib tattoos for men usually include more masculine ideas such as [last] name(s), children’s name, birds, pin up girls, knives, or 50s-esque pin up girls with a modern day twist.

Because of the pain, most people opted for usually smaller pieces of art but ultimitely the rib cage is a perfect area for tattooing large art work on. With those who opted for flowers, or bushels of them even, tend to have bigger pieces as the colors are more vibrant and bright and also included ALOT more detail which makes the piece even better in most cases.

The tattoo artist also depends on the pain factor as well. Usually they’ve had enough expierence to be able to go with how much pain you’re in if you let them know. They can make it to where you can expierence as little pain as possible (again it WILL hurt regardless though since you ARE getting a tattoo obviously)

The usual time for a rib tattoo to heal is about the same for any other tattoo — two weeks give or take a day or so. It would be advised to keep cleaning and waiting for it to peel/heel for about an extra week only because unless you plan on going shirtless for two weeks after its done, your clothes and almost anything else that is in contact with your torso could not only alter it a bit but also send you screaming in pain because of the sensitivity.

I know some women who have had rib tattoos and gotten pregnant have found though that the tattoo streches as the baby gets bigger. It might go back to the way it was before afer the kid is born, but unless you’re constantly working out to get your pre-baby body back, it might take a while.

In the long run, rib tattoos are extremely unique; and if well thought out with the idea — very intriging as well. Most people enjoy seeing them on other people, and its a great conversation starter. If you’re considering getting one, I would think long and hard about it but if you’re dedicated to it and do your homework on it, I believe that you won’t be dissapointed with the end result

Posted by celticcross2000 on 2009-09-19 17:40:57

Tagged: , True Will Tattoos , Sophie Zie Carreras , Tattooed Bob , tatouage , rib tattoos , tattoos , tattoo , tattoo studio , female tattooist , girl tattooist , women tattooist , bodyart , tattoo woman , grim reaper , tattooed ribs , tattoo artist , art , artist , tickling , happy saturday , oh joy , awesome , work of art , magic tattoos , french tattoo artist , french tattooist , my art work , better than drugs , side tattoo , drawings , body drawings , ink , ink on skin , tattooed by a woman , auxerre , european tattoo , european tattooist , death , tattoo emporium , North holmwood , addicted , bodysuit , naked , naked man , pain , tattooing ribs , tattoo suit , full suit , getting a tattoo , getting tattooed , french girls , french girl , bob hogan , robert hogan , no pain, no gain , beautiful tattoo , back tattoo , french tickling , tattoo addiction , tattoo addict , hot , hot stuff , french export , frenchie , beautiful , Mort , woman , naked woman , ribs , beauty

Epoxy of Death

August 27, 2020 by 4g3nd4

Pratt & Lambert Palgard: A potent two-part epoxy paint.
Protects the floor from oil and chemical spills…plus it makes the floor really easy to keep clean!

Posted by formulaphoto on 2006-10-30 08:19:09

Tagged: , garage , floor , cabinets , workbench , bench , woodworking , epoxy , paint , wrc , rally , car , workshop , fumes

EWSG Superboy/Supergirl Volume 1, Issue #5: The Sting of Death

August 12, 2020 by 4g3nd4

This issue is from the perspective of Tamara/Supergirl.

I standby the lamp-post until the police arrive for Assassin. I hear the sirens getting closer and closer.. Finally, the police arrive, and I bring Assassin over to them.

Supergirl: "Here he is.. The elusive Assassin."

Officer Smith: "It’s you again.. Th-thanks I guess.. But you went a little overboard.." He says looking at how broken Assassin is.

Supergirl: "Yeah my friend can be a little rough sometimes."

Smith: "You call this little? I’d hate to see him angry."

Supergirl: "We’re just trying to make Leavenworth a better place to live. No harm no foul right? Anyways, I should probably go find my friend, as you have this situation under control now!"

Smith: "Those damn supers.. If this keeps going on, I may not have a job anymore.." He mutters to himself as I fly off to find my brother.

I hear my ringtone go off, and I answer the phone on a rooftop nearby..

Supergirl: "Hello?"

Superboy: "Hey sis. Did the police show up yet?"

Supergirl: "Yeah they did. They have Assassin in custody now. Where did you head off to in such a hurry?"

Superboy: "I saw that guy in the black and red watching the fight. I decided to follow him, and ended up in some alleyway nearby the Lucky Horseshoe Casino.

Supergirl: "So? Did you learn anything?"

Superboy: "Not much unfortunately. It was just some random guy dressed up in the costume. He got told to wear the costume or else he was gonna die. I did get a name though.. The man in the red and black calls himself ‘Pirate.’ Apparently he’s some sort of ghost I guess, as he has a pale face and red eyes. It’s a start at least."

Supergirl: "Hmm, not much to go off of, but ok. I’ll meet you in front of the Lucky Horseshoe, and then we can go home."

Superboy: "Sounds good. See ya in a bit."

Supergirl: "Yeah, cya." I hang up, and I fly over to the Lucky Horseshoe Casino.

So many of these crazies coming out of the woodwork. First Assassin, now Pirate.. What’s next? The Villain? Oh so original.. I see my brother leaning against the wall. I wave at him, and he leaps off the ground and flies to me. I strain my eyes, trying to stay awake.

Superboy: "So what do you think Pirate’s deal is? Why are we so important to him?"

Supergirl: "How would I know? I know just as much as you do.. Maybe he hates us saving people, I don’t know.. What I do know however, is that I need some sleep."

Superboy: "Ok ok I was just asking a question.. Let’s go home and get some sleep" He replies, not wanting to make me mad.

We soar through the city, weaving through different buildings and alleyways, making our way home. A few minutes later we get there. I land on the grass softly, making sure not to create a massive crater. I see the lights still on inside the house..

Supergirl: "That’s odd, they aren’t ever up this late."

Superboy: "Maybe mom is just up writing. I’m sure it’s nothing."

I go to the front door, and turn the knob to open the door. It’s unlocked.. I hear the door creak open, and what I see is stuff of nightmares. My dad is on the floor unconscious, and my mother has some sort of cable around her neck. I see a masked man, and it looks like the cable is coming from him. My brother walks in and his jaw drops. He walks towards our father, and feels for his pulse. He takes a sigh of relief. He rips apart the cable from mothers neck, and checks her pulse. Noticing no pulse, he starts to cry.

Supergirl: "Who are you and what do you want?" I say to the masked man as I walk up towards him.

Stinger: "Me? I’m the Stinger.. As for what I wanted, I wanted you both.. Your parents here were not very co-operative with me, so I had to take matters into my own hands. Your mother was loyal to you to the bitter end. This is quite shocking, as you two aren’t even human.. Yes, I’m aware of your gifts.

Supergirl: "Why us? I’ve never seen you before."

Stinger: "It’s all part of the job. Someone really wants you two to suffer.. You really didn’t think Assassin was the only one sent after you, did you?

Superboy: "So Pirate hired you too?" My brother asks, as he’s ready to pummel him.

Stinger: "Bingo! He’s paying me, so I get the job done. Oh and even if you stop me, he’ll keep sending people after you. The sting of death will live with you forever."

Superboy: "You’re dead.." He jumps on Stinger, and starts to punch him.

Supergirl: "What did I just say a few hours ago brother? Don’t be like him."

Superboy: "He killed mom! How could you let him live after that?"

Supergirl: "We let the law decide his fate. We can’t be judge, jury, and executioner.." I pull my brother off stinger, and slap stinger with enough force to knock him out.

Superboy: "What good am I if I can’t even protect our mother? This keeps happening to me.. I’m not worthy to be a hero.."

Supergirl: "You are.. We both are. We stopped Assassin, and now we stopped Stinger.. Think of all the people they would’ve killed if they were still out and about.."

Superboy: "What about Pirate?"

Supergirl: "We’ll get him too, don’t you worry about that. Go get some rest, I’ll go call the authorities.."

Superboy: "How can I get sleep with whats happened?"

Supergirl: "Just go.. Please just try to sleep."

Superboy: "Fine.." He stomps his way to his room and I hear the door slam close.

I have to stay strong for my brother, but there is so much I still needed to learn from my mother.. Now I may never learn those things. I hope things get better soon, but with our luck recently, I doubt it.

End of Issue

Posted by Enøshima on 2016-11-18 22:18:11

Tagged: , EWSG , Superboy/Supergirl , Superboy , Supergirl , Volume , 1 , Issue , 5 , Stinger , Sting , Death