Guest Blog by Mxyl: More Basilica and Walters

WARNING: as I run a blog on technical things, this may contain a few notes on photo taking.  Feel free to skip over any of it.

Anyway: after a crash course on camera shooting, I'm back as well.

As the Prime Minister said, the Basilica is a beautiful place dedicated to Our Lady of the World, where all sorts of shines are devoted to Mary as certain countries honor her.  Here's a shot of Our Lady of Portugal using framing (looking for frames within frames can make for great pictures--see?  Here's one already):

The main hall was great for leading lines.  Also, just for fun, I took a separate photo with an object in the foreground to indicate depth.

Absolutely beautiful place.

At the Walters, I had a lot of fun with sculptures.  One of the best way to take photos of sculptures is to shoot from a point of view which people generally don't look at it from; getting closer to the sculpture and focusing on the face can dramatically change the meaning.

The man now looks almost like a philosopher.

After that, I took a bust of an actress (for Athena?) and modified the shot in different ways:

Probably my favorite--the statue "looks" with us

Rows are also fun ways to take pictures, like the evangelists as described in Revelation.


More characterization of sculptures and such:

 And here's my favorite:

More Rows!!

Perfect placement!!!

And stuff like that!!!!


This shot, as you can see, has been perfectly executed, with--
welllll, okay, maybe the rows aren't perfect, but they're still...
Uh...
They're... kind of okay?

Alright, fine, so maybe the first one's head is flat, the second one doesn't have a nose and the third one isn't even the same material, but still...

Erm...

Well, I'll be back sometime before Easter!