Fading Beauty

There is a field near my house that I've enjoyed for years.  I'm talking about since I remembered it as a kid.  Every time I passed by it, I would be taken away by it's beauty and then I wish that this will maintain it's beauty forever.  Unfortunately, this field is sold and by this time next year, the field has become a new community.  Sad, I must say...sad this really is.  However, I captured some of it's glory for my reminiscence.  I hope you will enjoy it as much as I do.

Field of Beautiful Dreams

Shallow Depths Of Field

Learning photography is great.  The techniques will take some practising.  However, the application is really cool when it's understood.  With the following photographs, although the images is somewhat under-exposed, I purposely left it as you now see it.  My focus here is the Depth-of-Field.  Here they are:

Focus on red car

Focus on black car

Focus on silver car

Focus on all 3 cars

...and no!  You can't borrow them.  Only look at them.

Balancing white

I never knew how the custom white balance worked in a camera.  Recently, I learned how to do it.  It's quite remarkable for it yields pretty nice results.  Now I'll know how to use it.  Here is a sample of what I did.

Used the Shadow WhiteBalance

Used Custom WhiteBalance to correct the white wall

Full Moon

I recently attempted some shots of the moon.  The results were satisfactorily.  In fact, I really was surprised that I could achieve these results.  I did added the clouds after.

Restoring

This is great.  Now I've jst recently learnt some tools to restore old and damaged photographs.  Here's my latest project.  Hope you like it.

Colourful creation

Created this with InDesign and with Illustrator.  Only the circles were separated in Illustrator with the Pathfinder's Divide tool.

"Bridge Over Troubled Water"

I simply wants to share a song that has remained one of favourites since I started to listen to music. This version is by Michael W. Smith which is originally sung by Paul Simon of Simon & Garfunkel. Great inspirations. Enjoy.

Big Tooth! (Part 3)

I draft a mock up for a poster to promote a fictitious display of the fossil tooth of the Megalodon.  Take a look at it here.

Image of shark acquired through Stock.XCHNG

Morlock Adventure Quest

On Monday, June 13, 2011, there were 8 of us, Team Extra, who went downtown Toronto for the Morlock Adventure Quest and took some photos of...well, a few things.  Our group had the following peers: Andrew Vizmuller, Dana Margulis, Joseph Estacion, Kermen (Kira) Tiurbeeva, Laura Zeno, Maxim Yegorov, and Monica Chan.  The list of shots is quit long to mention and to list all the images here.  Instead, I wish to link you to all the photos instead.  Here they are: http://www.flickr.com/photos/stephenlew/sets/72157627108133110/

Thanks for reading.

FlashinTO v.100

This past Wednesday, June 29, 2011 I attended the 100th. gathering of FlashinTO who is a member of DATA.  This evening, we celebrated the special occasion with beer, pizza, KFC., pop...did I mention beer...on tap?  This gathering was held at Grip Limited. You gotta see their website.  It's information overflow, but done in a very nice way.  Be sure to visit the link to see it for yourself and find out how to navigate the website.

Here are some photographs of the night.

Sitting on the stairs like it was on a theatre for the presentation.

Panelists of the evening.

Ow yea...them got a slide too.

Thinking of sushi...after the big tooth project.

After I completed the Megalodon tooth project and as I went through my photo images, I came across the photographs I took about a month ago where we had sushi-sashimi take out.  Just wanted to share some of these photos.  Enjoy or drool while looking at these images....xD.

Sketches of shapes for digital assets

A few weeks ago, I created some sketches for some assets.  The assignment's requirements were to sketch 5 shapes of triangles, circles, rectangles, and an organic shape that I refer to as a "blop".  The trick is to find these items below the knee....hmmm...challenging, isn't it?  Here they are:

Paper Zoo

There is the zoo...and then there is the Paper Zoo.  Take a look at the following where there are 6 bio zones/areas: Polar, Rainforest, Ocean, Desert, North Plains, and Savannah.  Walk through and image you were visiting this zoo.

A penguin, on a Polar background.

Polar Bear

Bush Baby

Toucan

This is supposed to be a Squid...not a rocket fish.

Sea turtle.

Desert Tortoise.

Scropion.

Buffalo.

Deer.

Giraffe.

Lion.

All these beautiful backgrounds were hand painted by my peers.  The animals were all sketches that were done by myself.

Big Tooth! (Part 2)

This is a continuation of Part 1 of this big tooth.


For this part, I have tried to paint my tooth.  I gathered my water colour paints and had some hopes to make the tooth look a little more lively.  Unfortunately, as you will find out that it is problematic.





As I was gathering the paints, I noticed a permanent marker, so I took it and started to colour the top or actually the tooth's crown or base.  It seem to be acceptable.  However, when I got to the tooth's other part, the marker seems to be absorbing the ink.  As I noticed the marker started to dry up, I thought that the marker is probably dry.  I took another one to colour and soon after that, the same thing happened.  So, it means that paints must be used.

I started to paint from the crown and it seem to be good.  When I got further down, the Super Sculpey does not seem to absorb the paint.  Not only does it not absorb, but instead, it seem to be too light compared to the crown.  So, that means water colour paints does not work.  So, I went to buy around bottle of paint and tried again.

This is how it looks when water colour paint is applied to it.  I have to get Acrylic paint.  The images may not necessary show, but when the paint is dry, it cracks and peels.  When I apply for paint to it, when the dried portion become wet again, it just would not absorb and keeps the tooth looking like a bad paint job is done.

In the mean time, I noticed that some parts that I applied more Super Sculpey, is still soft.  I didn't put the tooth into the oven again for I'm afraid the stud base will smoke again.  So, I used a blowdryer and used that to heat the Super Sculpey and hardened up that portion.

Da daah....here's the final painted version.  The previous layer of water colour paints started to crack after it had dried up.  I had to clean it off as much as I possibly could by wetting it to reactivate the paint.  Using acrylic paint, it stuck on and made the tooth the colour I intended it to be.  While it was drying, I photographed it as if it was taken out of the water.

Front of tooth.

Rear of tooth.

Finally, I singled out the background.  Here are the final product...ready for display at the ROM ...xD

Front part.

Rear part.

The final part of this portion of the project is make a style guide.  Below is my version of the style guide.

Thank you.  The amount of hours that I spent on this portion of the project including research, sketching, modelling, painting, producing style guide, and travelling, is approximately 15 hours.  This is my very first time on such project.  I anticipated a shorter time.  However, since I'm not an artist, I'd probably do this in lesser time next time if I have the opportunity to do it again.