takin' pictures of goat-legged fuckpigs ain't like dustin' crops, boy

When I started this whole gayass blogging thing, I made it a rule that I would never post comments on my own blog.

The reasons for this have long since been forgotten; and frankly, it doesn't make a great deal of sense. But it does mean that I have an excuse to respond to comments with an entire post, thus masking the fact that nothing much else is happening in my life.

The highlight of this week was the purchase of a shirt.

I know what you're thinking; the answer is yes, that collar does have its own postcode. You may well be thinking other things; but I suspect these are less than complimentary, and so I shall choose to ignore them.

So, moving swiftly on...

Last week I posted some pictures of my Black Maul, and the Doombull that hefts it about. And rather than asking about the scratch-built shield, the hand sculpted armour, the carefully blended highlights and the subtle use of ink washes and glazes, the Infamous Willard Foxton wanted to know about photography techniques.

Sigh.

Well, if you're anything like me, you probably have a shitty camera, no idea how to use it, and a penchant for retro shirts that still smell of the last guy that wore/died in them. Accept the fact that almost all of the pictures you take will be massively rubbish; and therefore you will have to take a very large number of photos in order to sift through and find one that isn't blurry/gloomy/of your thumb. I took around thirty shots of my marauding goat-legged fuckpigs this morning, and got maybe five good photos.

Use something flat and white as a backdrop; plain paper will usually do the trick. Take pictures in good light if you can, but still mess about with having the flash on or off (I still haven't worked out which is best). Make sure you've got something stable to rest the camera on; I use the back of my chair.

It seems to be best to take the photos from a little way back, and use the zoom function to embiggen the subject, rather than just getting up close. Once the photos are loaded onto your computifying box of electro-trickery, use Microsoft Office Picture Manager to crop, and adjust the colour/light (the "auto-correct" button comes in quite handy here). See below for "before" and "after".


And that's about it, really. I'm not saying that this is THE way to take pictures of toy soldiers; merely MY way. For better advice on photography, see The Boy, who will regale you with explanations of the three point lighting system.

The toy soldiers in question are, of course, the two beastherds that form the backbone of my army/fill most of the obligatory core unit slots/give my bray shamans somewhere to hide.

They were originally painted up to go into a somewhat slightly gayer army that I took to the GT a couple of years ago. I've always considered a measure of how bent an army list is, to be how illegal it becomes when a new edition of the army book is released.

When the new Warriors of Chaos book came out, my GT army contained no core units, and five units that were from different army books entirely.