wave

uv pistol start

  • she/her
  • queer furry thing

  • constantly seeking diversion

  • chasing '90s cyberdreams

  • \ \

  • old pixel appreciator!

  • i wanna be an animal?

  • at least in VRChat

  • / /

  • my mh sucks, and

  • so does discourse

  • i avoid it

  • \ \

  • into: music, photography (๐Ÿ“ท๐Ÿ•น), old games, PCs, VR, furries, TF, gender feels, the millennium, ๐Ÿ„, yearning, etc.

  • / /

  • comments appreciated.

  • let's chat about nerd shit!

  • \ \

  • something is written here...

  • "Hexapodia as the key insight"


October 24, 2021

this was going to be the (never-written) how-to-build-a-MiSTer guide's main / top image

making random assortments of items appear aestheticly messy / disordered / chaotic (but not too much so -- there ought to be a pleasing harmony to the mess within the frame) is a task that takes some skill and effort, a fact i run into when i occasionally get the notion that such would be a good route to attempt for whatever current project at hand. it tends to be a bit of a pain.

after identifying a good mix of beautiful + generally recognizable games i had on hand i set about piling them in different ways and seeing how they looked surrounding the main subject, my just-built MiSTer, in a 16:9 frame. since it was an uneven pile gravity had to be accounted for, so i had to prop up / wedge various boxes with other objects to prevent them from sliding away (gravity) and make them stay right where i wanted them placed. also had to ensure there were no bare spots where the black lightbox shooting surface peeked through.

another factor in the arrangement was that due to both aesthetics and precautionary legal concerns i didn't want any game logos to be readable. like "Secret of Mana" on the bottom there is barely in-frame because it would've been easily legible otherwise. but i actually like that. it's like a little easter egg / treat for the viewer who recognizes a beloved game from just a little corner, or to turbonerds like me / possibly you who take it upon themselves to try and identify all of them.

in short, it's something of a production to construct a pile of objects that is simultaneously stable, looks nice, and meets one's editorial requirements. a multidimensional puzzle with physical, aesthetic, and symbolic considerations.

the Canon T3i DSLR managed to achieve a satisfactory blurry depth of field. the biggest issue (as with many shots from this project) is i didn't get perfect focus on the main subject, the top surface of the MiSTer. (i have no camera-suspension rig or whatever so i had to shoot while holding the camera over the lightbox. non-ideal!) this was further complicated by its transparent case, which showed another detailed surface just a centimeter deeper. today i fixed the MiSTer logo with sharpening and an amusingly fussy layer mask:

anyway, while the result could always be better, the main subject looks acceptably clear to me now.

as you've surmised this photo isn't a composite, it was shot in one go. while cleaning this up today i had the thought that it might've been easier to shoot the MiSTer and the background pile separately and then composited them later, but then i remembered a key reason i didn't: the transparent borders of the MiSTer's top surface are tricky, since you can see through them to the games underneath. i'm not 100% sure i could've shot the MiSTer separately on a white lightbox bg and then faked the transparency of its edges acceptably. 2 tricky 4 me

anyway, i'm pretty satisfied with the final image. nice to finally share it somewhere.


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