Ito

Thanks for the kind words! Gunna keep the shots coming

Thanks for the kind words! Gunna keep the shots coming

Time for a couple more:
 

 

 

Photography is by far and away the art I am doing the most of lately (well, outside of all the design I do for work, if you count that). I figured that it deserved it's own post. Expect to see mostly cosplay and action sports stuff in here.
 
Let's start things off with one of my favorite shots from last season.

Thanks for the kind words! Gunna keep the shots coming

decided to update this thread:
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You are getting better with every new shoot.
My favs are the wedding couple, the man with rollers, the cosplay on woods, and the girl in petal roses.
Looking foward for new ones, congrats.

Have some more sports this time around
 

 

 

That means a lot, honestly. I will be running it again on Saturday at 5:00 if you want interested in going! Though not sure if I am going to be filming it or not lol.      
Only the top skiing photo and the Bee and Puppycat cosplayer (the one with the plushy) are the only strobbed shots there. I will have to post more of my strobbed, but to be completely honest, flash has been the single most difficult area of photography for me to understand. First off, I hardly ever shoot with the flash on camera. If I do, I am certainly bouncing it off of a ceiling or a wall. I am not going to make any assumptions on how much you know about photography, so sorry if some of this is a little basic. The softness of your light is directly proportional to the size of the light source in relation to the subject. Essentially, if I want really soft flattering light, I need to figure out how can I make the light bigger. Bouncing off a wall (assuming the wall isn't colored) can help a ton. The down side of this is that it uses a ton of power, especially if the walls or ceiling are higher or far away. You can use a bulbous diffuser right on the flash (like the Gary Fong Lightsphere). This will give you a marginal increase in softness (and still sometimes a bit of an unflattering look if the light is on camera).
 
The absolute best thing you can do is get your light off of camera and with a modifier. Shoot through umbrellas are probably the cheapest way of getting this done, but I really love the look of a soft box (I use my 43" apollo orb soft box as my main modifier). When you take a photo with a flash right on top of the camera, you are lighting someone, but you are taking away so many of those shadows this give depth and contrast. Shooting off camera flash can add really add to the depth of an image. I have been looking for a great solution for what to buy in terms of off camera flashes for a while and am on my to my third set - 3 yonguo YN560 IV's with a YN560 TX transmitter, all for around $300 with great remote manual controls, these things seems great so far.
 
All of that said, I shoot more often with natural light. Most of the time I am walking around a con I have my 35mm f/1.4 lens on with the aperture set to max (1.4), the shutter speed between 1/60 and 1/200, and then I adjust the ISO to whatever gets me in that range. I don't know what kind of camera or lenses you are shooting, that would make it a lot easier to recommend things. Be warned though - the lights in the dealers hall at Acen flicker at about 1/200th so never let your camera get above that speed when you are in there.
Since I Acen is coming up in a week (!!!), here's a shot from last year using a super ghetto rigged flash setup.
 

Here's a couple new pieces
 


 

Artist: グリーヴァ (Grieva) Album: 妄想主義者ノ背徳。(Mousou shugisha no haitoku.) 1. Type[艶] (Tsuya) (SE) 2. 自己精神殺害推進會 (Jiko seishin satsugai suishin) 3. 妄想主義者ノ背徳 (Mousou shugisha no haitoku) 4. Art play 5. 夢デ逢ウ貴女ガ削除デキマセン。(Yume de au kijo ga sakujo dekimasen.) 6. 密室104号室～暗イ部屋二僕ト君～ (Misshitsu 104-goushitsu～kurai heya ni boku to kimi～) 7. 腐『furan』乱
Rating: | No need for grievin', visual kei is not dead!
 
Grieva sure came into their own over their few years of activity. Starting out as a glaringly obvious exercise in old-school DIR EN GREY fanboyism (pretty much producing a blueprint replica of the Gauze album), they raised lots of eyebrows but also gained an ever-growing fanbase. They've been churning out release after release like clockwork, a practice that few can pull off successfully while maintaining quality. These guys, however, not only manage to put out consistent tunes, but also seem to be slightly evolving every year. While there's no drastic change in sound (thank god for that!), they're constantly tweaking their formula and instrumentation to achieve a greater effect. Their latest mini album, Mousou shugisha no haitoku demonstrates this tendency excellently.

From the kick-in-the-teeth industrial beats of the intro to the impressive sonic diversity of the closing track, Grieva presents a fine-tuned version of their vision: building upon the legacy of the old-school with youthful vigor, and a tad more than a pinch of craziness. On the one hand, compositions like the title track or "Yume de au kijo ga sakujo dekimasen" burst forth from the speakers with a mixture of yesteryears' melodic sense coupled with a truly modern (or post-modern?) approach. On the other hand, we're inevitably treated to a small number of songs where Grieva wear their hearts on their sleeves a bit too obviously. It's hard not to recall exact moments from DIR EN GREY's back catalog when you hear the intricate lead guitars of "Art play" or the jackhammering bass in "Misshitsu 104-goushitsu～kurai heya ni boku to kimi～". The difference this time (compared to, say, their debut album) is that they were able to fully integrate these parts into their songs, not sticking out like a sore thumb throbbing with plagiarism. "Misshitsu 104-goushitsu..." even has a music box interlude reminiscent of a certain DEG classic – it's hard not to crack a smile of appreciation at the homage.

The arrangement and delivery of the songs deserve praise too, where it's due. Even though the mini album starts off in a rather repetitive fashion (after a surprisingly bangin' intro SE) with "Jiko seishin satsugai suishinkai", they more than make up for that later on. Tracks like "Art play" employ a wide array of styles, from metal chugging to upbeat ska-influenced guitars, resulting in nice changes of pace and dynamics. As soon as you're beginning to feel you're listening to 'just another typical Grieva tune', they change it up ever so slightly, introducing an interesting guitar tone or effect. In short, it's hard to get bored while listening to Mousou shugisha no haitoku. This statement is ultimately solidified by the closing track "furan", an ambitious composition that goes from a punky, all-out shoutfest (props to those pipes, Kyouki!) to an unexpectedly sweet melodic guitar solo, short bass and piano interludes and a driving chorus. It is a thrilling, dare I say progressive, finish to an already cool release.

A year ago, with the release of their 2nd full-length album Shuuen, I couldn't imagine Grieva going any further in terms of quality, but along came this release and blew me away. Granted, Kyouki and co are still far from being the most original bunch of visual kei musicians, but who needs that when you have a reliable, constant supply of kickass tunes to rock out to? I could hardly ask for more.


Support the band! Buy the mini album @ CDJapan
Buy the mini album @ Yesasia

Looking sweet! Let's see some more!

One of the old gaurd! XD

Glad you decided to make a formal introduction.

Dog sitting

I'm definitely excited to hear this.

The way sexy men take photos lmao
 

Here's another new one

Been shooting a lot lately, so here are some new images that I took at Acen.
 

 

 

"My Little Wish" Preview Track
Not gunna lie, I kind of loved that.

The way sexy men take photos lmao
 

The way sexy men take photos lmao
 

The way sexy men take photos lmao
 

The way sexy men take photos lmao
 

The way sexy men take photos lmao
 

The way sexy men take photos lmao