El Dave Photography

Good lord, do I suck at Halo. Sure, I do ok on the single player modes where the bad guys follow their little pre-programmed paths and I can pick them off with the sniper rifle, but as soon as I'm up against another player it's all over. In fact, I'm so terrible, I won't blame it on the horrible motion sickness I get from first person shooters. But that's not why you're here, is it?

Master Chief's bio, courtesy of Wikipedia:
Master Chief Petty Officer John-117, commonly called the Master Chief, is a fictional character and the main protagonist of the Halo universe, created by Bungie Studios, and is a player character in the trilogy of science fiction first-person shooter video games Halo: Combat Evolved, Halo 2, and Halo 3. Outside of video games, the Master Chief appears in the novels Halo: The Fall of Reach, Halo: The Flood, Halo: First Strike, and Halo: Uprising, and has cameos in Halo: Ghosts of Onyx and the Halo Graphic Novel. He is voiced by Chicago disc jockey Steve Downes in the video games in which he appears.

The Master Chief is one of the most visible symbols of the Halo series and the video game universe. Originally designed by Marcus Lehto, Rob McLees, and Shi Kai Wang, the character is a towering and faceless cybernetically enhanced supersoldier; he is never seen without his green-colored armor or helmet. Steve Downes built his personification of the Chief off a character description which called for a Clint Eastwood-type character of few words.

The Master Chief has been called an icon, a relative newcomer among more established franchise characters, such as Mario, Sonic the Hedgehog, and Lara Croft. While a widely known figure, the Master Chief has received mixed reception. Reviewers such as Kotaku have pointed to the Chief's silent and faceless nature as a weakness to the character, while other publications have stated that this attribute allows players to better assume the role of the Master Chief.

For today's shot, I actually have two pictures of the Chief. While going through my photos, my lovely assistant remarked how much she really liked this one. It seemed more cinematic, like the end credits of a movie. I disagreed and felt that it was too dark, but she's usually right about this sort of thing, so I put my pick on hold and will post about it later on.

Taking Master Chief out to the forest preserve, I found several fallen trees that made for really great stands/scenes. I posed Chief on a craggly stump, turned him around where the sun would be spilling over his shoulder and snapped the shot. In case you were wondering, I grabbed that gun from another McFarlane figure, one of their Military line. It's a little big for him, but not so large that it looks out of place.

Taking him into Photoshop, I tried a neat trick, courtesy of Digital Photography School. It involves tweaking the Lab Colors instead of the usual RGB or CMYK palattes. I like this look a LOT more than just tweaking the saturation levels and will definitely be using it going forward for anything that's a little washed out or just blah looking. After that, I added the usual gaussian blurs to soften the edges and viola! Done!

Elite soldier of the EXIF Corps

Camera:	Canon EOS Digital Rebel XTi
Exposure:	0.001 sec (1/1250)
Aperture:	f/5.6
Focal Length:	27 mm
ISO Speed:	400
Exposure Bias:	0/3 EV
Flash:	Flash did not fire

Orientation:	Horizontal (normal)
X-Resolution:	72 dpi
Y-Resolution:	72 dpi
Software:	Adobe Photoshop 7.0
Date and Time:	2008:12:01 12:50:14
YCbCr Positioning:	Co-Sited
Exposure Program:	Aperture priority
Date and Time (Original):	2008:11:28 13:22:07
Date and Time (Digitized):	2008:11:28 13:22:07
Shutter Speed:	674216/65536
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:	2592 pixels

Be good,
-Dave

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