Montreal Trip + Holidays!

Yeah, it's been awhile.  In November I went to Montreal for five days, visiting a friend.  This was the first trip I went on in a long time that wasn't a conference.  It was a lot of fun being able to wander around and sight see the entire time.  Some of the highlights of my trip were Old Montreal, wandering around the downtown area, and going to see the Biodome.  Here's the link to my entire set on Flickr.  I have to warn you, there's quite a few pictures (but not as many as I took - I think I had 400 pictures but only about 150 made it to Flickr).

It's now Christmas time, and I've started taking some pictures from around the house of decorations and the like.  The Christmas season for me continues on until mid January with Ukrainian Christmas, so expect to see more holiday photos on my photostream.  They'll all be collected in this set.

That's all for now.  I'll try to update this blog a little more often!  :)

Thanks!

Thank you to whomever bought a greeting card of "Ahoy There" from my Red Bubble Site a few days ago.  You made my night!  :)

Final GDC Online

So I'm back from my trip to Austin for the final GDC Online.  I took some pictures, which are all on my Flickr page here.  Apparently I am terrible at taking people pictures; almost everything in that set is either a Lego minifig or a hotel room. 

The trip itself was a lot of fun.  I was unfortunately sick for all of it, but I made the best of things and still had an excellent time. I met many great people, and reconnected with others whom I've met before.  All in all it was a fantastic trip and I will miss Austin (although I am excited for San Francisco...)

Thanks!!!!

And yet another thank you must go out, this time to whomever bought a print of "Climbing."  Thank you so much for your support!

Thank You!

Thanks to whomever just bought a print of "Darth Maul;" you really made my night!  :)

Finally Uploaded 3 Weeks Worth of Pictures to Flickr

So yeah, I had about three weeks worth of pictures on my camera and I finally uploaded everything to Flickr.  I had pictures from a fishing expedition with my dad on my local river; unfortunately all we caught was one pike and it flipped off the hook before I could get a picture.  I went with a friend up Mt McKay during a storm, and uploaded a picture from that night.  It's a bit blurry, but I thought the picture looked pretty neat.  I've also taken lots of pictures of the flowers in my yard, so those are there too.

The one thing that's missing is Lego pictures.  As I was uploading everything, I realized I hadn't taken any at all during these last few weeks!  Hopefully I'll have some time to remedy that this week!

Thanks :)

Just wanted to say thank you to whomever bought a copy of "Look at All the Books."  Your support is greatly appreciated!

Active Again!

Just over a year ago, I decided to stop posting to this blog.  My idea was that I would start posting to the new blog I started on my personal website.  But for the last little while, I haven't been very happy with the way my site, and my blog in particular, has been going.  So as the first step in revamping my website, I decided to move all of the photography posts I've made over the last year to this blog (with the exception of two, "Spring Photography" and "Speak Out With Your Geek Out: Lego Photography."  The first one is about an article I wrote, and the second one is a post I wrote about the hobby; the second one appears here as well). 

So if you're looking for posts about photography, look no further!  But if you're interested in posts about writing, check out my blog on shaunakosoris.com.

-Shauna

A Few More Thank You's

Wow, yet a few more thank you's to dole out.  A few more people bought some prints from my Red Bubble site.  Thanks so much for your support!

A Late Thank You

I just wanted to give a quick shout-out to the people who bought some greeting cards from my Red Bubble site over the last week.  Thank you so much for your support!

A Whole Bunch of Pictures and an Update on the Flood

Edward Street Bridge Last Night, a photo by s.kosoris on Flickr.

If you've been on my Flickr photostream lately, you may have noticed I haven't uploaded anything new since May 29th. While I haven't uploaded anything new I have taken quite a few pictures during that time. So as I write this I have over fifty pictures uploading to Flickr. There are a lot of flower pictures because I bought flowers and our lupins bloomed. But there are also a bunch of waterfalls. In the wake of the floods I wanted to see what all of the local waterfalls looked like. I went back to Kakabeka one night, then went out to High Falls and Middle Falls a few days after that.

As to the flooding, if you aren't aware of what happened, my city received record breaking rainfall in late May. Our sewage plant was flooded and many people ended up with both water and sewage in their basements. This was mainly restricted to two areas in the city.

It's taken a few weeks but as far as I know the pumps are back online (or should be within a day or so). We've had temporary pumps functional for the last week or so, but they were playing catch up and pumping out the sewage pump. Luckily we haven't had much more rain in the last few weeks!

And if anyone is wondering, my house was completely fine. I actually drove home through the storm which was a bit scary, but my basement was completely fine. I was more worried about the roof because it had been leaking a few days before the bad storm, but it's also been fine.

Red Bubble All Cleaned Up

I've been pretty busy over the last few weeks and forgot to delete all of those pictures I mentioned in my last post. But today I stopped putting it off and actually cleaned up my Red Bubble site. In addition to deleting almost everything on the list from my last post, I decided to get rid of the Lego pictures "Rapping My Heart Out," "Squidtron," and the black and white "Lake Lenore in Black and White." The only picture on my list that didn't get deleted was "Orange Gerber Daisy Close Up;" I decided that one should stay. In total, I deleted 54 images from my Red Bubble site.

After deleting everything, I reorganized my collections as well. I decided to get rid of the Black and White collection because all of the black and white pictures I have on Red Bubble are scenics. I also decided to keep the Miscellaneous collection as that will give me a good place to showcase any pictures that don't quite fit into the other collections.

As I mentioned in my last post, all of these photos still appear on my Flickr photostream.

Cleaning Up my Red Bubble

I've been thinking about cleaning up my Red Bubble site for a while now. And now that it's spring, there's no time like the present! I like all of the pictures that I have featured on Red Bubble, but I have an awful lot of them, especially Lego pics. I remember reading that it's a good idea to cycle out your old pictures on Red Bubble to keep your portfolio fresh. So that's what I'm going to do this month, cycling out some of my least popular pieces to make room for future new ones. Rather than just deleting them all, I am going to lower my markup on them until the end of the month so they are all on sale! Red Bubble has their prices set for manufacturing the prints, so I cannot lower that cost. But I set the markup on all of my pictures. So for the next ten days, I am putting these pictures on sale, after which they will be deleted from Red Bubble (but don't worry, they'll still be visible on Flickr) Lego:

• The Last Thing You See (a Lego Boba Fett shot)
• Noob Combo! (Lego Halo)
• The Royal Knight's King (Lego Castle)
• Cyborg Villain - A Closeup (Collectible Minifigs - Series 3)
• All in Green - Toy Story Army Men (Lego Toy Story)
• I Guess He Does Have an Army Truck (Lego Toy Story/Boba Fett)
• Miss Swann (Lego Pirates of the Caribbean)
• The Foreman (Lego Construction worker)
• The Blacksmith (Lego Castle)
• Anubis (Lego Pharaoh's Quest)
• Hey, Wanna Race? (Collectible Minifigs - Series 2 and 3)
• Elf in the Snow (Collectible Minifigs - Series 3)
• The Troll Queen (Lego Castle)
• Grab that Scorpion! (Collectible Minifigs - Series 3)
• The Dragon Masters in the Snow (Lego Castle)
• Tokkat (Lego Star Wars - an Ewok)
• Underwater Atlantis Adventurer! (Lego Atlantis)
• Dengar (Lego Star Wars)

Flowers:

• A Pretty Purple Flower
• Purple "Wild" Iris
• Pretty in Orange
• Oh So Pink!
• Pretty Purple Blooms
• A Random Day in Fall - Gerber Daisy
• Pretty in Yellow
• A Final Black Eyed Susan
• Orange Gerber Daisy Closeup
• Gerber Daisy - Water and Shadows
• From Seed to Flower

Animals:

• Two Bucks - Mission Island
• Another Buck - Mission Island
• Dragonfly in the Leaves
• Blurry Sasha

Black and Whites/Scenics

• Black and White Frozen High Falls - Pigeon River
• Dad by a Side Road
• Silhoutte Sunset at Lake Lenore
• View of Lake Superior - Tettegouche, MN
• Fall Colours
• Middle Falls
• Above Middle Falls
• A Single Cloud
• Contrails in the Afterglow Over Fork Lake
• The Walking Bridge- Temperance River
• Dramatic Sky While Out Fishing

Miscellaneous (temporarily created for these pictures):

• Warhammer Elder Guardians
• Jelly Fish Food Colouring Abstract
• Blue and Yellow Food Colouring Abstract
• Green Dragon Food Colouring Abstract
• Food Colouring Abstracts!
• Snowy Neighbourhood at Night
• Snowflakes by Our Evergreen

Death Star Throne Room

Death Star Throne Room, a photo by s.kosoris on Flickr.

I found this picture quite awhile ago and absolutely loved it. I also love the Emperor minifig, so I've been toying with attempting to recreate it with Lego for quite some time now. I acquired the pieces to build the Emperor's chair from Final Duel 1. Once all the pieces were here, I realized I only really needed the window for this but that's okay (now the Emperor has his chair).
I finally sat down yesterday and made the backdrop. I think it turned out reasonably well. I decided to use blue legos to kind of mimic the lighting behind the stairs. I originally wanted to use gray but I didn't have nearly enough bricks so blue it was. To get the stars in the window, I used a friend's suggestion: I took a black piece of construction paper and poked a bunch of holes into it. I then placed my flashlight behind the paper to light the holes up.
Lighting the actual picture was pretty tricky, especially now that I was using my normal flashlight for the stars. I tried a second flashlight, but the light it threw wasn't right. I then switched to a book light which I covered with a kleenex. The result was this subdued lighting, which I thought was perfect.
Of course, now that the set up was finished, I then had to experiment with where to cast the light. I ended up taking over 40 pictures before being able to decide on a couple I really liked. I ended up posting this one because everything just seemed to work: the window was clear, the lighting was good, and you can see the backdrop reasonably well. I really liked three of the others as well but none of them worked the way this version did.
If you know who the artist is for the original picture, please let me know so I can give proper credit!

Barriss Offee

Barriss Offee, a photo by s.kosoris on Flickr.

I originally got a Barriss Offee minifig for another project. I had never heard of her before and so had no qualms about taking the minifigure apart. But then somewhere along the way, I discovered this picture, which really intrigued me. A jedi using the force to heal? This is the type of thing I imagined Master Yoda doing (before his lightsaber duel sort of ruined that image of him for me). I liked the idea of a jedi who doesn't fight (and doesn't have a lightsaber), but instead can heal and do other mysterious things with the Force. I realize that in Star Wars, the real Barriss Offee does have a lightsaber, but I've refused to get one for my minifig.

This shot was a long time in the making. After I saw the aforementioned picture, I thought that Yoda's Hut would be the perfect backdrop! I acquired Yoda's Hut a long time ago from ebay, but haven't had a chance to use it before now (again, it was purchased for another project, different from the one I wanted Barriss Offee for. I just haven't had time to shoot it yet). I also wanted a large chunk of time to shoot this picture, knowing I would need time to get everything posed right (and I'd probably need to take multiple shots). I was planning on shooting something else tonight (one of my minifigure portraits for my Faces of Lego set) when I found the picture sitting with my Lego collection. Having the needed time, I decided that now was the perfect time to attempt this.

I originally had a larger trans blue piece for Barriss to hold (as the force magic), but it was too large and looked funny. Luckily the end of Mr. Freeze's gun worked perfectly!
I took over 30 shots with my Canon. I had it narrowed down to four before ultimately choosing this one. I originally had a shot uploaded where I had the trans blue piece really sparkling (thanks to multiple flashlights!), which looked really neat. But I ended up going with this one because I liked the lighting way better on the rest of the shot.
If you know who the artist of the original picture is, please let me know so I can give proper credit!

Thanks!

Just wanted to say thank you to whomever bought a copy of "Grab That Scorpion!" from my Red Bubble site! Your support is greatly appreciated!!!!

Thank You!

Just a quick shout out to whomever bought a copy of "Ahoy There!" from my Red Bubble site yesterday! Your support means a lot to me; thank you so much!

Another Thank You!

I just wanted to say thank you to the two people who bought some of my photos this past week from my Red Bubble site! Someone bought a copy of "Lego Boba Fett Macro," and then a few days later someone else bought a copy of "Yoda on the Dock." Thank you both so much!

Thank You!!!

A big thank you to whomever purchased a greeting card of "Yoda on the Dock" from my Red Bubble site! Your support is greatly appreciated!!!