Thursday, January 14, 2010

Bigger Photos and Great Characters


Wow, so that's how big an extra-large photo looks on here. I upgraded the dashboard to the latest version mainly because they promised larger photos. They came through on this one. Awesome.

I took this photo a couple months back in downtown Roanoke at the same wedding where I discovered the graffiti artist. I knew immediately what I was going to do with it when I took it. It would have been posted a long time ago if not for the fact that I filed it away and stumbled across it when I was cleaning up our desktop last night.

I actually cranked the contrast all the way against the stops on this one. Twice. I love how it made the colors pop and deepen the blacks. If I had my way, I'd shoot black and white almost exclusively. Somewhere high in the mountains. But I take my photos where I find them.

I'm still recovering from the bronchitis I came down with late last week and I'm at the point where the side effects from the medicine make you feel as bad as you did when you were sick.

And as I'm writing this I have Star Trek playing on my Blu-ray player for the second time and my fourth viewing counting the theaters. I've come the conclusion that of all the new actors, Karl Urban nailed Bones better than anyone else hit their characters. I've also come to the conclusion that I'm looking forward to having enough age on me that people have to listen to me. Like Bones McCoy. Of course, Kirk as the rebel looking for a fight and believing he's better than anyone else at what he does is pretty cool too.

Writing in movies and television is something that interests me greatly. Both the big screen and small screen shows have multiple characters with wildly different personalities. I understand fitting them into archetypes and using teams of writers, but even still the skill to keep them all sounding and acting different is impressive. It's very hard to juggle inside a novel, particularly one with as many characters as The Chaos Chronicles. I'm sure that it helps having different actors bringing their own personality to each role, but I still find it interesting.

Characters are what make a story. Most people think it's plot, but if you have interesting and real characters then the story will take care of itself. Think about the shows you watch or the books you read. Chances are there's a character in there somewhere that you absolutely love to read about. A character that gets you excited so you can't wait to see what they do next.

Think about it.

Are you thinking about it?

See...told you. If I was older you'd be listening to me know.

2 comments:

  1. Hey! I like the photo but can't geek out on the camera stuff with you. I am however interested in larger photos - how do you upgrade Dashboard?

    ReplyDelete
  2. It actually offered it to me when I signed into my dashboard. There should be a small banner somewhere...look on your Dashboard.

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