Author: saravipond

Idea

For this project, I decided to take pictures of my Skylanders at home. Even though I’m not great at keeping things organized, it was exciting because Skylanders mean a lot to me—they are a cozy childhood memory.

Even though there were some hiccups along the way, like figuring out the technicalities, I had a lot of fun doing this project. It was a great experience to dive back into the memory lane and remember simpler times.

Photoshoots

Shoot 1

Shoot 2

Shoot 3

Feedback

I got some good feedback from my peers during my presentation, and one of the things I was advised on was to make my subjects a bit brighter so they don’t get lost in the background. I tried to touch them up so they look more bright and so their forms can be traced more easily with your eyes.

Process

The idea that I finally went with was to shoot Skylanders in front of my fireplace. I used some light-up Skylanders to make up for the lack of light. I placed them on the portal which gave them a neon kind of glow that I was looking for. For some of the images, I wanted them to glow without the portal in sight, so I hovered the portal below the platform they were on to see if it would work, fortunately, it did. The images did need some editing and my ISO was quite high in some places due to a dark setting, but I think everything worked well in the end.

Photoshop

I used PS to clean the images and to fix some of the background issues. I couldn’t quite figure out how to show the process and integration on WordPress. I went to check on everyone else’s website to see how they did it and to get some references, but I had no luck there either. One way to check would be to look at the EXIF data and my image names, but I could not understand it otherwise.

Images

Experience

With this assignment, I tried taking photos of some Skylanders in different settings around my house. I had a lot of fun doing it, but I am really bad at organizing. So, I definitely struggled there. But Skylanders are nostalgic for me, so it was also quite personal. This course was quite foreign to me as I have no photography experience, I picked up the camera for the first time this year. It was quite hard getting all the technical stuff down, so it was a learning curve and a steep one. But I am really happy with the amount of progress I have made in a small amount of time.

I am not a great photographer by any means, but now I know how it is done, and I know enough to take good photos for myself. After I picked up a camera for the course, I realized that I liked it. It was a lot of fun to try capturing things around me, it was amazing to see how the light affects the mood of an image, and how colourful a day really is.

Initially, I thought it would be a good idea to capture them outside because of better lighting. But it made them look like scattered toys, so I tried taking the photos in my house. Halfway through the shoot, I had an idea to take their photos in front of my fireplace, and I liked the way it looked, so I went with it. I had access to some Skylanders that glow when you put them on the portal, and the effect gave me some pretty good images. I wanted to try taking photos where the figures would light up without the portal, so I hovered the portal beneath the platform. It took a lot of patience, and both my arms were sore after that, but the idea worked. So, I’m pretty happy about this project.

Presentation Link

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/19MiD59cvoa-bDFYxo6nhPOMBqjM55Gyo/