Happy holidays to those that observe them! Today’s deck is the Galactic Star Tarot.
It’s an alien deck but in the pulp-y “here’s an adventure in a planet of hot lion people” sort of way. It’s good, though I’ve never been a fan of space stuff. I’ve mentioned it before but the fact that I like Warhammer 40k at all is an anomaly.
Today’s reading reflects the certainty of wanting to make something specific which IS the theme today as you’ll see. Also, a curious thing about keeping track of the readings via stickers is that you start noticing when cards become more and more recurrent. Case in point, the Queen of Wands has been arguably the Queen I’ve pulled the most since I started keeping them in a journal.
It’s the one with the black cat though, so I ain’t complaining.
Today’s… a vaguely holiday adjacent day, dunno anymore.
I mean I’m gonna write it off as Christmas, but I woke up on the 24th very late so…
Speaking of waking up, holy shit the dizzy spells are kicking my ass today. It’s probably the low sleep? Mind you I woke up because I felt fully rested.
There was some tangential sorting around going on, but today’s main attraction was doing the Christmas photoshoot, so let’s get on that.
First I took a step back and realized that if I wanted everyone to properly shine through in the photo, I’d have to keep in check how many girls were on display. Sure I could crowd the photo but then it’s that: A crowd.
By this point I had dressed up: Sol, Berry, Mina, Mana, Nadeshiko, Cherry, Aurora, and Poppy.
There IS a logic to why I chose each: For starters, Berry and Sol were the ones I had with me the first time I saw snow at the end of 2022.
Also, I’ve not finished her page as of this writing, but Berry’s birthday IS on December 25th. The girls’ birthdays are on the first day I took pics with them and the first pic I ever took of Berry was the Christmas one I took on 2022.
That’s why she’s also on last year’s photo.
Mana and Mina are there because I’ve not taken them out this year and I’ve been meaning to. Poppy is there for the same reason (I did take her out once at least). Nadeshiko also, though I did take her out during late spring while E was visiting.
I had Aurora dressed up because of Sunday’s doll meetup. Which then adds to Sol being in the center of the photo.
Cherry is there because she’s been an MVP this year and this made me think about adding Halloumi. then I noticed a reindeer outfit I had.
Is it the sort of cool outfit one expect from Halloumi? No, it’s in fact more of a Cherry outfit, but you see, in the story of the photoshoot Cherry was the one that wanted that outfit but her tits were literally too big for it (this is, in fact, true), so Halloumi wore it to please her.
So I needed a last addition, a small girl. The logical addition would be Luna, so I’m checking the outfits and I notice I’m missing a base. So I go to look for a base and find an outfit I got a while ago.
A bunny kigurumi basically.
And I could just… hear the exchange in my head.
“So which outfit do you want?”
“I wanna be a bunny”
“Like… a bunnygirl type of-“
“A. Bunny.”
“Sure, it’s Christmas, not gonna say no. But are you sure?”
“How do you expect me to stand out if I dress up like everyone else?!”
And so, Luna Bunny became a thing.
I love that she fits colors-wise and she’s being extra but not in a way that’s disruptive of everything else.
And so they’re set, I put up the new lights and these ones have a bluetooth option? Turns out they’re a newer model of the ones I already had, go figure.
First attempt was mainly a test. See the line of sight and whatnot.
Not bad for the phase where I do everything with eye approximations, but there’s already a list of issues.
Berry’s face is too tilted, Sol’s eyes could be more uncovered, Luna’s ears are blocking Mina, Nadeshiko is looking away, and Aurora looks like she’s more neck than girl.
I actually like how extra dynamic Poppy looks. She’s supoposed to be doing the gyaru double peace sign thing but with the blocking she looks like she’s being very enthusiastic about peeking from the corner of the group.
Also, you might realize this already but… the lights are supposed to be on and you can barely see them.
Before sitting down to check in better detail the girls, I played with the camera’s dials for a bit to try and make the lights pop up more. First with shorter exposure.
Then I turned off all the lights except the Christmas ones and ran a test with longer exposure.
Then bigger aperture.
There’s an idea here…
For the time being I ran the adjustments. Nadeshiko now faces the camera more, I put Aurora kneeling in a cutesy way, lowered Luna’s ears…
…oh right, Berry’s head. I should adjust Poppy a little while at it.
Ok, they’re looking good, let’s use the settings from earlier.
Wait, before adjusting more, I should use the White Dust Mist filter and see what…
…
There’s always a point in every shoot where something clicks and I start grinning like an idiot and get really pumped up. Either because the vision is coming together or because I discovered something cool.
At this point I had the grin because of both.
What followed was a bunch of tests with the aperture and other settings, mainly because Aurora and Mana were a liiiiiittle bit out of focus. And that’s when I noticed I could probably adjust Sol’s head a fraction.
Speaking of Aurora and Mana…
Wait, just a little bit more…
What followed was a bunch of test with different exposures and apertures. As much to see how they look as just simple ol’ practice, really.
This is the part where I’m realizing that Nadeshiko looks neat in the green glow, but said green glow behind her is also a bit overwhelming.
There we go.
You know, I really should do more of this sort of thing where I take pics calmly at home. It’s really neat to practice poses and composition without the usual pressures that come with being out on the street doing this.
Last step was just a bit of editing with the RAW file.
Nothign too fancy, just making sure some colors looked less washed out. It made me think, however, that I should try and make something with more actual photo editing, as in, not just adjusting levels but using other tools. Just for fun.
The problem is that my approach to photography is… I don’t want to obfuscate the fiction, I want you instead to be so taken in by everything else that the fiction doesn’t matter. I call the “Ultraman’s Zipper Approach”. The idea is that while on paper a visible zipper line might be a turn off, in truth you’re so invested that it doesn’t really affect the fiction of it all.
So for example while I know how to edit out the bases of the girls, I’d much rather leave them in and make the viewer not care that there’s a base.
This whole tangent is basically to explain that I’ve not tried out anything beyond simple RAW adjustments, because my style preference just hasn’t required it.
There is one bit that I did have to do in said post-processing phase, however…
There was nothing else to my day, in fact I literally fell asleep as copies of this were being spat out by my printer.