Category: Photography

From quick snapshots to more elaborate set ups.

Building an IKEA Studio

MavArt Sound Studio A ProgressI’m currently building a small recording booth in my study using mostly IKEA furniture, so this article on MusicRadar How to Build Your Own Studio in 11 Easy Steps was a well-timed read for me (even if not all of their eleven steps seem that easy to me!).  I like their idea of plonking a whole new pre-built building down and fitting it out from scratch, but that’s not an option for me right now, so I’m using one side of my study/granny flat, some large IKEA cupboards, and some padding from IKEA and Clarke Rubber.  I’ll post photos of my progress as I go.

It’s not designed for music production, with sound proofing strong enough to acoustically isolate a drum kit.  I just need the ability to record voice and Foley performances without the sound of my PC fan and hard drives chattering coming through onto the recordings.

It’s coming along, but it’s taking longer than I expected (of course) and the booth door is still going to be a challenge.

Star Wars Episode III

I just watched the trailer for the next (last?) Star Wars film. Almost the entire first half was footage and audio from the original Star Wars film (the film everyone else now calls “Episode Four”, but what most of my generation just call “Star Wars”) and the other previous films. The trailer looks great, with lots of shots that suggest some fun scenes. One shot that caught my eye was a brief one of C3PO standing in what looked like the hallway of the Tantive IV Rebel Blockade Runner, a ship we first saw in the opening shot of the first film. Interesting…

Will it be a good movie? There’s no doubt that it will be a great moment when Anakin Skywalker puts on the Darth Vader mask, breathes like Darth Vader, speaks with James Earl Jones’ voice, and is backed up with John Williams‘ Darth Vader Theme – I hope that moment is handled well. But will it be a good movie? Hmmm… It’s got Chewie in it (and a whole load of other Wookies). It’s got a big lightsaber fight between Anakin and Kenobi. Hmmm… Yes, it will rock. Yes. It will. It will (performs Jedi-mind-trick on self).

The trailer reminded me of my trip to Sydney in December 2002 where I saw the Star Wars exhibition. I took a few snaps with my 2MP digital camera of the props, costumes, and models on display. Here are some of them:

Star Wars Exhibition

(click for a larger version)

Digital Photos

Skevos shows off some of his less-awful digital photos.

I’ve rediscovered still photography thanks to my two mega-pixel Canon digital camera. The camera doesn’t really offer full manual controls, but it’s so easy to experiment with I’ve taken literally over five thousand photos with it (yes, most of which are awful).

I’ve placed some of my less-awful digital photographs on a seperate server (the deviantart service). You can view them here:

MavArt digital photos

They mostly consist of panorama images created by stitching several digital images together using several pieces of panorama software (mostly I just use the one that came with the camera).

Farewell Singapore

Skevos and Kareena say a fond farewell to Singapore.

Our ten day holiday in Singapore is ending, and it was really great – how people can visit Singapore for only two days and think they’ve seen even a fraction of what we’ve seen these last ten days is beyond us. What a great country – so much to see and do, especially for people like us who like to eat yummy food and wander through beautiful places. Speaking of food, I’m pretty sure that there are more vegetarian eating joints in Little India alone than there were meal times in our entire stay.
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