El Dave Photography

Taking a quick step back from the usual today and trying something different. Just as a fun experiment, I wanted to see if I could take photos like some of my friends, and today I'm trying to imitate Jaganatha.

First a little info about Marcus Fenix, courtesy of Wikipedia:
Marcus Fenix (voiced by John Di Maggio) is the main protagonist of the series. He is first introduced as an inmate, serving a prison sentence for abandoning his military post in order to make a vain attempt to save his father, Adam Fenix. Prior to the Locust Invasion, Fenix is noted for having a famed military career, during which he played a notable part in the Pendulum Wars. Despite this, Fenix is left for dead in a dilapidated penitentiary, until Dominic "Dom" Santiago, his friend and former comrade, saves him in the first act of Gears of War. After being freed from prison, Fenix is immediately reinstated into the military and is assigned to serve with Delta Squad. He is later promoted to sergeant and becomes commander of Delta squad shortly after their previous squad commander, Lieutenant Kim, is killed by General RAAM. Fenix leads his comrades across the ruins of Sera, in an attempt to activate the light mass bomb against the Locust. One of the goals when being designed by Epic games was to be an "intelligent bad-ass", to summarize the style of the game at one glance.

Fenix, along with the other Gears of War figures, is made by NECA Toys.

What drew me to Jaganatha's work was his pop portrait style. Funky angles and swirling lights made it really look like he was hanging out with these figures. A drunken Cobra Commander complaining about the Joes; an awkwardly stoic Galactus standing by the wall because he lacks the social graces to mingle. The one recurring thing that he does so well is his use of the flash, and that's what I've attempted to do here. This is probably the first time I've used the flash on my camera and I'm pretty sure the first flash send a cloud of dust into the air.

Setup for this consisted of getting Fenix to stand still with his chainsaw gun raised and use the flash. Taking him into Photoshop, I added the blue glow on his gun and shoulders (with a little blurring for the shoulder lights), then played with the RAW white balance, setting it to Flash for that great orangey, red light. All in all, not too technically difficult, but amazingly frustrating to capture as much soul as Jaganatha does.

It's funny because EXIF works for Bungie:

Camera:	Canon EOS Digital Rebel XTi
Exposure:	13 sec (13)
Aperture:	f/5.6
Focal Length:	55 mm
ISO Speed:	100
Exposure Bias:	0/3 EV
Flash:	Flash fired

Orientation:	Horizontal (normal)
X-Resolution:	72 dpi
Y-Resolution:	72 dpi
Software:	Adobe Photoshop 7.0
Date and Time:	2009:01:09 08:17:26
YCbCr Positioning:	Co-Sited
Exposure Program:	Manual
Date and Time (Original):	2009:01:01 21:18:31
Date and Time (Digitized):	2009:01:01 21:18:31
Shutter Speed:	-242512/65536
Metering Mode:	Pattern
Color Space:	sRGB
Focal Plane X-Resolution:	4433.295 dpi
Focal Plane Y-Resolution:	4453.608 dpi
Exposure Mode:	Manual
White Balance:	Manual
Compression:	JPEG
XMP Date and Time (Original):	2009-01-01T21:18:31-06:00
Image Width:	3888 pixels
Image Height:	2592 pixels

Be good,
-Dave

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