El Dave Photography

Out of all the fighting games I've played (and there have been many), the Soulcalibur series is far and away my favorite. Sure, Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat and Tekken will always have a special place in my heart, but they'll never replace Soulcalibur.

A little background on the series, courtesy of Wikipedia:
The mystical sword of the legends, the "Soul Edge", ended in the hands of the dread pirate Cervantes of Spain. For the next 25 years he stayed dormant on the remnants of a Spanish port town, taking the souls of those who reached him during their search of the sword. His reign of terror was soon to start, but the joined efforts of a divine warrior (Sophitia) and an underground ninja (Taki) stopped him, breaking one of the twin Soul Edge blades in the process. As it was about to tear itself apart, a young knight (Siegfried) approached the port town. The moment he took the hilt of the cursed blade, Soul Edge released a bright column of light into the sky. This was known as the "Evil Seed", bound to bring calamity and death across its path.

Three years after those events, Soul Edge uses Siegfried as its host, and now Siegfried is Nightmare, a knight wearing azure armor. Europe plunges into a vortex of slaughters as he and his followers claim souls to strengthen the blade in its weakened state. Unknown to them, a group of young warriors met on their journey to stop Soul Edge, and with them three sacred weapons join once again.

This shot features the characters Astaroth and Voldo. I wanted to try and capture the atmosphere that is such a huge part of Soulcaliur and that meant light. I had to make the shot immersive. Just setting the figures in front of the backdrop would not be enough, they had to be part of the scene.

The background was graciously provided by mugley through a Creative Commons license.

In Photoshop, I did my usual gaussian blurs to soften the edges and smooth out the light, then did a slight radial blur on the background. What this did was to cause the light in the back to spill over onto the characters. Voldo, standing in the open, has much more light than Astaroth who is shadowed by the statue behind him. I'm not entirely happy with it, but it's the best I can do at the moment. It looks like I have a date with a few more digital art books before I can create the images I want. Until then, I'll just keep taking pictures and trying new things.

A tale of swords and EXIF...eternally retold

Camera:	Canon EOS Digital Rebel XTi
Exposure:	30 sec (30)
Aperture:	f/25
Focal Length:	50 mm
ISO Speed:	100
Exposure Bias:	0/3 EV
Flash:	Flash did not fire

Orientation:	Horizontal (normal)
X-Resolution:	240 dpi
Y-Resolution:	240 dpi
Software:	Adobe Photoshop CS3 Windows
Date and Time:	2008:10:20 14:29:08
Exposure Program:	Aperture priority
Date and Time (Original):	2008:10:20 13:57:32
Date and Time (Digitized):	2008:10:20 13:57:32
Shutter Speed:	-4906891/1000000
Maximum Lens Aperture:	265625/100000
Metering Mode:	Pattern
Color Space:	Uncalibrated
Focal Plane X-Resolution:	4433.295 dpi
Focal Plane Y-Resolution:	4453.608 dpi
Compression:	JPEG
Image Width:	3888 pixels
Image Height:	2632 pixels

Be good,
-Dave

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