Photoblog: 2010

Today's photos

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

This one is already in my dA gallery. A sunny afternoon. Too bad this light didn’t last much longer
since the Sun practically jumps over Estonia during winter. It’s 15.49 now and guess what? It’s dark.

Windows 95

Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Ahh yes! Those good old days…Win95 was my first operating system and I can still remember the day we got it (although I was only 5-6 years old and I usually can’t recall much of what happened back then).

The following quote by Alex from “A Clockwork Orange” describes pretty well how I felt: “Oh bliss! Bliss and heaven! Oh, it was gorgeousness and gorgeousity made flesh. (It was like a bird of rarest-spun heaven metal or like silvery wine flowing in a spaceship, gravity all nonsense now. As I slooshied, I knew such lovely pictures!)”

It had tons of games: Doom, Dangerous Dave, Wolfenstein 3D, Paperboy II, Pipe dream, SkiFree, Sky roads, Chess, Minesweeper, Tetris, Supaplex, The Lion King, Prince of Persia…the list goes on. As I discovered today I had Microsoft Entertainment Pack ver 1.0 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Entertainment_Pack) along with some other games as well. I can safely say that I had the greatest piece of technology among my friends back then :D

Well anyways, I was looking for Win95 screenshots today (I felt kind of nostalgic) when I stumbled upon the game I had been looking for for years. It was a game I had discovered quite late in my time of using Win95 (it was hidden in some secret folder). I didn’t know its name, I only remembered how I had loved playing it.
So, without further ado I introduce you to…“Chip’s Challenge” *the crowd goes wild*
And, to my great pleasure, it was actually available for download as well! I was able to play it again for the first time in over 12-13 years. F*ck yes! I still love it. And even though I also enjoy playing GTA etc. it’s still such a badass game.

Notice how Chip moves like John Travolta :D
Yes, he might be nerdy (according to Wikipedia) and spend time collecting computer chips but he’s definitely got the moves ;D

And the game has like 149 levels!

And since I can’t upload this post just yet (thanks, Tumblr, I finally have something to write about and you decide to be “We’ll be back shortly”) I shall continue babbling about old (dos) games and stuff.

Now, I never really got to play Wolfenstein 3D. After years of having my computer, I discovered some new games and, eagerly, clicked on them. I don’t know what happened but after clicking on Wolfenstein 3D icon something went terribly wrong. Once we restarted our computer, it automatically opened Paperboy II and we were forced to play it for months (we didn’t even get see the actual Windows desktop anymore). Some IT guys tried to fix it and I guess they re-installed Win95 with the price of almost every game I had on that PC being deleted.
When I was still using Vista, I had a SEGA genesis emulator and I could play older games (ROMs) on that. Paperboy II was the first ROM I was dying to get :D And I was absolutely addicted to playing Aladdin.

http://www.youtube.com/v/bp1XvV8BBfQ?fs=1

Coming back to Win95 I had a pretty lonely life after the re-installation, almost no games and definitely no Internet (I got the Internet when I was 13-14 on Win98). So I played around in MS Paint :D
We had a book, called “Windows 98 for beginners” and although we had Win95, I could still use some tricks&tips from that book. One of them was, um, about creating a nice text effect which I shall gladly demonstrate for you (the original screenshot was “Tere talv!” - “Hello winter!”)

Tadaa! I can’t believe I spent 10 minutes looking for the snowflake in the Wingdings font. And I used to have all of them memorized before!
And btw, I used Photoshop for this, MS Paint gave me weird edges when I placed one “Hello winter!” on top of the other (yes-yes, I could’ve cheated by just using drop shadow but for the sake of accurately displaying this technique I went for it the old way).

I also remember seeing Paint Shop Pro for the first time in our computer. Filling the image with a gradient was mind-blowing :D I’m dead serious, our whole family was impressed by that. I guess it was the most high quality thing we had ever seen on that screen.

Hmm, now that I think of it, isn’t it funny how things have changed just in 15 years?

Wounded dandelion

Sunday, November 14, 2010

Wounded dandelion.

Angela Talbot's Old Lady

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

youtube=http://www.youtube.com/v/N3U2u1IC78U?fs=1

So there’s this video, transforming Angela Talbot’s Old Lady into a young woman. I really love that kind of before/after videos and photos. Needless to say the photo is quite a challenge for almost anyone. Couple of months ago I was bored, really-really bored and decided to give this lady a shot. My idea was not to transform her into a young woman or to use body parts from other people. I wanted to make her about 20 years younger using only my Photoshop tools and the very same photo of that statue. And this is what I came up with:

I realize the photo I uploaded is a mere 500px in width but I do have it in 1200px in width as well.

And a closer look. By the time I got around to making her hand I was already pretty tired :D
That’s why the outcome is rather sloppy.

EDIT: I added a closer look of the original image.

EDIT#2: Okay, so I couldn’t help myself and created a younger version as well :D
I used my previous photo (20 years younger) as a base and added various parts of 3 other images: hair, cleavage, face: skin texture, jaw line, nose reshaping, brows, lips, iris of the eye and eyelashes.

Sunday and Helena

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Wow. That day was a dream. Seriously. I’m still speechless. I really think we took a lot of gorgeous photos that day. She has never been a “stiff-poser”, meaning that I took shots of her while we were talking, walking etc. So these photos of her are natural, no fake modeling involved.
I’m not going to post every fantastic photo I took of Helena, because that would be a tad too much :D
But I am going to upload some of my faves. I had a very hard time choosing them, though…so plenty to choose from.
Oh, and in case you’re wondering - she’s quite tall, like a real model :)

Oldie b&w. Wearing my sunglasses, her high school ring and leaning on a railing.

The stairs. I’m not going into detail about getting this shot, but I must say…it wasn’t the most comfortable position for me :D

Posing in this one :D Something in ANTM style. But still a great photo ;P

Sitting on a bench. It was a bit over exposed due to the Sun.

Standing on the roots of a pine tree. Leaving behind the hill of Nõmme. Also holding a leaf.

On a ski jumping tower. I don’t know why I like this shot so much. I just do :D

Anyways! I hope you’ve enjoyed seeing my latest creations and see you next time ;P

Yesterday, lake Harku

Thursday, September 30, 2010

It was a sunny evening, not something I’ve seen in a while. I took my bike and went to the lake, I only had 20 minutes or so before the Sun would finally set. Unfortunately my usual way to the lake was unpassable, tall grass (with snakes and ticks in it) everywhere.
I must say, I am getting a bit tired of that place because I’ve taken so many photos there. It’s like it hasn’t got anything new to offer to me anymore. Then again, it’s the only beautiful place so close to me.
Actually I wanted to take photos of autumn leaves in that light, that would’ve been beautiful. But -you guessed it- there were no “appropriate” trees around.
So I guess if I really want to take that kind of shots this year, I’m going to have to travel some serious miles to find a place like that :)

The water was quite still, with only a slight wave, giving the water a desert-like texture. And I totally ignored the Sun in this shot, you can only see a bit of it.

Taken from a bit different place than the previous photo. This time I went to the actual beach.

And now the tower, visible in both previous photos, zoomed in.

This & that

Sunday, August 22, 2010

Totally random but…I love the end of summer for only one reason: the stars become more visible.
Oh, and could anyone please help me to change the Tumblr-500px-width for photos? I’ve Googled but I couldn’t find anything useful. Usually my photos are 700px in width, so sorry if some of my stuff appears to be blurry :) - Swtiched to blogger, not a problem anymore ;)
2 photos I took, one last week and the other this week. The same road, only a different shade of the sunset.