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Ladies and gentlemen I present to you, one half of Korrasami, Avatar Korra.

What a lovelable dumb dumb

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the amazing fire ferrets!

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Ian Navarro

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Old Zuko & his daughter Izumi, grandson Iroh II

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One long overdue Korra.

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Just a quick doodle I did of Korra. Really wanted to give her a messy baby ponytail with her season 4 hair.

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Just think when Zuko visits babyKorra they would play hide and seek together and he would find her and shout “I’VE CAPTURED THE AVATAR” holding her up like Lion King.

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Mom Adopts a “Dog”

So y’all keep blowing up my notes with the various Family Lore stories I’ve been telling, so I guess I should tell one on my parents now.

My Mother’s Father was part of the United Auto Worker’s Union, and during the 50′s and 60′s, was on strike a lot. My point is, grandpa got himself an entirely deserved reputation for being a sucker who loved animals, so people would dump thier pets on him. Hence, my mother grew up in a house with pets such as Picket the one-eyed tomcat, Tweety the Bald canary, Dummy the cat, Stupid Son of Dummy, Spooky Garbage Dog and Chiquita the Tarantula.  Eventually Grandma put her foot down when Grandpa brought home Gerta the Saint Bernard.

I say all this because it provides some context for how the following occured.

Mom and Dad had just moved in together (my parents dated for six years and were engaged for 13 days, driving everyone on both sides insane), and unfortunately, My mother’s German Shepherd, Cops, has just passed away due to bone cancer.  After mourning for a bit, Mom and Dad decided to get a dog together, as a couple.  

For context, my father had never owned a dog in his life.  His mother had ‘Pretty Bird” the budgie as a child but parrots are alien life forms, not pets.

So they go to the Palo Alto Animal shelter to adopt.  The year was 1987, and at the time, Palo Alto was… not a great place.  Lots of drugs, gangs and poor civic managment.  Mom told me that she learned to identify different types of gunfire while living there. They get there, and mom explains that she’s always had a preference for Big Dogs, and the guy’s face lights up.  Oh Yes, he says, We have a Big Dog.  For expirienced owners, yep, adoptable today, here we’ll give you a discount even-

Somehow my parents were not suspicious about this.

They were shown to the Animal in question, a Gorgeous blue-sable beastie with pretty golden eyes who immediately pressed herself against the fence and gave them the best PUH-LEEEEEEASE TAKE ME HOME puppy eyes 100lbs of canine can do.  Mom and Dad fall in love instantly.  They sign all the paperwork and take her home for $10, and name her “Mazel” as in “Mazel Tov.”

Within the hour, it becomes clear that something is amiss.

Cops had lived with his kibble stored in a plastic garbage can in the garage for six years without incident.  Mazel figured out how to open doors and got the locking lid off the can in six minutes, horking down about four pounds of the stuff before my mother notices that it’s been weirdly quiet.  Most dogs bark at or chase squirrels.  Mazel stalked and caught one the second day, presenting it to my mother like an offering.  Mazel knew all her commands but would clearly stop to consider before obeying, and trained my dad to give her good treats within a week.  The locks on the side-yard gate were undone, and she took a stroll around the neighborhood, but always retuned home for dinner.

After a week of gradually realizing that Mazel was smarter than most of the professors my mom worked with, they took her to the Vet for a routine checkup.

Dr. Hamada walked into the exam room, dropped the clip-board and said “Where the HELL did you get a Wolf?”

After a bit of prodding and a very-angry-dr.hamada-calling-the-pound, they determined Mazel was a high-content hybrid, probably with a husky, but was going to be a lil shit her entire life.  OK, said Hamada, I don’t like destroying animals and you’ve got a lot of expirience with dogs, so I’m okay with letting you keep her, but you should keep her away from small children because her Prey Drive could kick in.

Two years later, mom got pregnant with me.

Mazel noticed instantly, and reacted by digging a large hole in the yard and catching even more squirrels for mom, because she needed the protein or something.  That what you do when the Alpha Bitch is preggers, right?  Dig a den and ply her with food?  On the advice of my grandmother, my mom stayed overnight at the hospital once I was delivered, and dad went home with a shirt that had moms and my scent on it.  Mazel spent the whole night puzzling over it.

The next morning, when mom came home with me, there was the sudden and instantaneous recognition of PUPPY!!!!!! :D:D:D!!!!! PUUUUUUUPPY!!!!!!  and Mazel turned into the most aggressively maternal being I’ve ever met.  Playing with me on the blanket, sitting under my chair at meals (I was a messy eater), sleeping under my crib, teaching me to walk by letting me hang onto her fur and shuffle around.

Dr. Hamada thought mom was a madwoman, until he saw me holding Mazel’s mouth open and sticking my face in so i could look at her teeth.  He gave up when my mom announced she was pregnant with my sister.

I’m making living with a Wolfdog sound awesome, but it did come with some drawbacks:

Mazel did have to be muzzled at the vets, because she had Opinions about having things stuck up her butt.

HAIR.  One of my chores growing up was to brush her out every week and I’d frequently end up with more hair than animal.

the only way we could reliably get her to stay in the yard was with an overhead tether with a STEEL cable, which she chewed through anyway.

Do you like waking up by being hit in the face with half a dead animal? No? Wolfdogs may not be for you.

More than capable of opening the fridge and eating everything if you’re not watching

Will get into everything if not otherwise occupied.  Including eating your tax forms.

Howls along with sirens at 4 AM.

PROS of growing up with a wolfdog, as a small child in the 90′s

I was afforded a degree of freedom normally associated with a pokemon trianer. It was no big deal for me and my sister to walk three miles through my not-really-good neighborhood to the Froyo if I took Mazel with us. People tended to leave us alone when we had 100lbs of overprotective Apex Predator following us around.

WINNING at Pet Day at school.  There wasn’t actually a compettion but Billy’s hamster sucks in comparison to an animal that is perfectly willing to demonstrate how she can snap an oak branch in half on command.

PTA moms losing their shit because Mazel would walk down the block by herself to come pick ups up from school.

Grew up associating the word “Bitch” with teeth and the willingness to rip an asshole’s face off for being rude.  Never changed the definition.

Learned the I-Own-This Strut and Murder-Stare from the absolute best.

When she was 17, Mom and Dad decided to add another room on to the house.  They rigged up the overhead tether so she could be outside but not underfoot for the contruction guys.  One morning, mom came out to notice them all milling in the side yard entrance, muttering worriedly.  When mom asked what was wrong, one of them explained that Carlos forgot to bring the Hamburger.  What do you need a hamburger for?  Asked mom, and they pointed down the side yard to where Mazel was sitting, doing her best Viscious Alpha Bitch Stare.

Apparently they’d never realized that she was on the VERY end of her tether there and couldn’t actually get to them, and had been scamming them for a big mac a day for a month.  Mom had my six-year-old sister pull her away to show she wasn’t dangerous and tired her best not to laugh but kind of failed.

Mazel ended up living to be 19 and a half, and except for some minor arthritis, remarkably hale until the day she passed away in her hole in the back yard while taking a nap.  I maintain that Death had to wait until she was sleeping to get a crack at her, or she would’ve taken his scythe for a chew toy.

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What did we do to deserve Bill Nye

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Te Fiti and Te Kā

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my feels just feel again!!:’) attack on feeeeeels!!!

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Geometric Beasts by Kerby Rosanes

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Done with commissions, so I went and colored some linearts that’s been laying around since last year! Outfit swap between symbolic leaders of the people, and between rich, genius engineers because hey hey it fits !

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Old commission, Fury Road AU. Had so much fun with this one !!

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#Why you should photoshop your cosplay pictures (Part 1)

–**WJS Cosplay Photography Blog**–

Cosplay: Anarchy Cosplay, Photo: WJS Cosplay

“Photoshop” has a negative connotation among the mainstream audience and while I’m open to the idea of people not liking any post-processing manipulation, I would like for folks to know a little more behind it before they come to the conclusion that it shouldn’t be done.

*mid-write edit* So I thought I could address the controversy that arises when a person’s body is manipulated in post-production as an aside, but I realized I needed an entire entry for that. And that really isn’t what this post is about. Body manipulation is an important topic that deserves it’s own post. This post is about showing how I edit photos and more importantly, why.

Cosplays: Anarchy Cosplay, Photo: WJS Cosplay

When I first started photography, like everyone else I had the notion that a photo captures a truth. Not some esoteric truth, I mean a truth as in physics forces it to capture a truth. Once I actually learned the mechanics behind photography, I realized that that couldn’t possibly be true and that for a lack of a better analogy, photography is like drawing but really really fast and way easier (easier to produce an ‘accurate’ image, not easier as in the art as a whole).

A lot of people believe film captured things more honestly than digital. I dropped that notion when I learned about the chemistry behind how film works. The idea that film ever captured a truth can be dis-proven by just pointing out the fact that Fuji sells Fuji Provia (mid contrast, slight saturation, medium sharpness), 400H (low contrast, low saturation, pastel-tinged soft edges), Velvia (high contrast, hyper saturation [more than most digital cameras can do]), and countless other films. Film literally **can’t** capture what the human eye sees and so they ran with it and marketed different formulas for wedding shooters, landscape shooters, etc. Digital can’t capture an accurate image for similar reasons.

The point? The point is that once I understood that cameras not just don’t, but **can’t** capture the truth, I had less qualms with “photoshopping.” Then, once I learned lighting and photographic techniques, I had almost no qualms about photoshopping because of the magic you can already do on set. Take this photo of Niicakes:

That’s a gif animating through all five of the Canon 6D’s profile settings: Standard, Portrait, Landscape, Neutral, Faithful. It’s been a joke among Canon shooters that Neutral and Faithful were named those because they clearly aren’t, and the Standard profile that everyone leaves their camera on is the second most “punched up” setting after Landscape. The implication is this: the photos coming off the camera are already processed and none of them represent reality. It also has implications for the “NoFilter” hashtag. 

That’s the .RAW image of Storm and Sam, straight off my Panasonic LX100 with no setting changes. I shot the two with the sun behind them because I wanted the soft quality of shade lighting. If I had assistants and a budget, I would’ve lit up their front with some strobes. I had neither. And so during .RAW conversion I bumped up the exposure to something more natural feeling and added a hint of contrast and saturation:

The result could’ve been done in camera, live. If it had been, would it have been any less “honest?”

Now, if I had the budget of a Hollywood film production, I would remove that lamp post, shoot my scene, and put it back. I don’t have that, so I rely on photoshop.

Cloning (what I just did to the lamp post) and warping/liquifying (when you stretch/shrink people’s bodies) are the two foremost things the mainstream thinks of when they hear photoshop. In this case I doubt anyone is offended because it isn’t the person’s body being manipulated.

So I’ll get started on that.

Harkening back to the lack of strobes issue, I wanted to brighten their skin, knowing that the human eye tends to fly towards the brightest part of an image and in this case, I wanted the audience’s attention on their pretty faces and awesome costumes.

The equivalent of this in real life is simply shining light on them. And once you realize that it’s light bouncing off the body and not the body actually changing, you might realize it’s not much different than walking under an archway and ‘turning dark’ under the shadow.

Now, I had my camera set to the lowest contrast. Why? Because of something the camera can’t do: see as well as we can. When I shot this, the image on my LCD screen was lower contrast than what I saw in real life. I did this because the camera cannot capture as much ‘dynamic range’ as the human eye + brain can. In this case, I believe our brains can handle 3-4 times what my Panasonic LX100 can. 3-4 times. And so I set the contrast low, knowing that in post I would increase it to something more natural-looking and still protect my extreme high tones and low tones. And so I bumped up the contrast:

I also added a custom-drawn vignette because I didn’t like that edges of the frame were pure white, which compete for attention with the subjects. Some might say that’s manipulating an image in a way that wouldn’t ever happen in real life. That’s true. But in real life the edges of the frame would never be pure white, either. Because brain power.

After I added contrast, I felt like the costumes were now too dark compared to the bodies that were brightened up earlier. So I just extended that layer to the dresses:

Now here’s something the brain is amazing at that you never noticed: it color balances. What this means is that it actually corrects color for you. Complicated story simplified, in the shade, the blue spectrum dominates. During sunset, the orange-red spectrum dominates (hence those sunset colors). You can actually force this out by staring out the window in the late afternoon for a minute straight and then turning your eyes to a white wall indoors. If you pay close attention, you’ll notice everything is blue for a few seconds. The camera? It doesn’t color compensate nearly as well. Especially my camera which tends to shoot heavily blue/green, even after I’ve nudged the settings.

And so in photoshop I pushed it back to red-yellow, because those were the colors I saw when I shot this at sunset. And then I pushed it even further, to even more red-yellow, because that’s how it felt to me when I shot this.

And so that’s what photoshop means 95% of the time. It’s correcting what the camera couldn’t do. Obviously you can go way further with it, at which point you’re focusing on “creating an image” (see my banner image) and not “recording a moment”. Which is fine, with caveats. For me, a camera is primarily an artistic tool and only secondarily a record keeping tool. I am a creative photographer, not a coverage photographer, which is its own skillset. And as such I rely on post-processing as another technique to create an image with the primary emphasis being how it feels.

I would go further but this is the second time I wrote this article because my browser crashed and it’s past midnight and I’m very tired. I’ll have to make this another two-parter. In the meantime, let’s all enjoy Sam and Storm’s amazing rendition of Cardcaptor Sakura:

So I hope that helped explain just what “photoshopping” really means to me, why I don’t shy away from it, and why I think most people should edit their cosplay photos. Next up I’ll go deeper into the “creative” photoshop mindset, which is I’m sure what a lot of people find distinctive about my cosplay portfolio (ie the ones with the energy blasts and lightning bolts).

If you enjoyed this, please follow my facebook, follow this blog, and reblog this post. I’ll be updating consistently with more topics!