Courne Supremacy

I’m a big fan of Galaxy Express 999. I heard about it after watching Kino’s Journey, which is also an excellent anime, that is if you’re into the journeying, wandering, somewhat philosophical type of anime. It’s not for everyone. Wikipedia recommended Galaxy Express 999 if I really liked Kino’s Journey. Live-Evil is currently fan subbing it. Believe me, I’d buy the series if some half-way decent American anime publishing house would put out the 113 episode television series, but seeing how the show is from 1978 and we live in America where most anime ends in the word “-mon” that’s probably never going to happen. It would probably also cost me a small fortune to purchase all 113 episodes. I showed my fandom in other ways by purchasing the Viz graphic novels that were released about 6 years ago (so I got them all used) and I’m currently trying to get my grubby freakishly large hands on the original 18 volumes written in gibberish, I mean, Japanese. It’s all the same to me. Even half of English is like that.

The photo above is of Tetsuro and Maetel from the Galaxy Express 999 movie. It’s my favorite scene in the movie as illustrated by the statue. Maetel also gives Tetsuro a great speech in the end which I won’t ruin for you, but it has to make you wonder, “just who is/where is my Maetel?” It’ll make more sense if you watch the movie, which you should. The photo is also of a toy statue that my friend Genevieve or “The Wuffles” got for me during her trip to Japan. I was actually pretty blown away that she got me this, because I had seen the statue on eBay and other anime toy sites and thought to myself, “If there was one Galaxy Express statue I’d want, that would be that one.” Somehow she read my mind. She got me some other great Galaxy Express movie/art books that have enough pictures that I don’t have to worry about reading them. If I were more of a fanboy I’d probably be cackling in glee.

I finally brought this statue home from work today where its been adorning the side of my dust covered desk. I wanted to photograph it. I figured I should also try and do a decent job of it too instead of the half-baked shaky cam affair that is my standard. I wanted to try putting together a small studio environment so I could shoot it with a matte background and some decent lighting. Here’s what I did. Using two 18in. x 24in. pieces of paper, a chair, and an arm lamp that I can hang off anything, a tripod, and my trusty Canon A80 digital camera, I put this setup together:

Nothing elaborate going on here. I don’t have filters to disperse the light. Tape is holding the paper to the chair back rest and seat, and I actually did use Galaxy Express 999 mangas to prop the statue higher for a better shooting position. I’d want to say I did a bit more of a professional job shooting the toy, but honestly, the word “professional” would be giving me too much credit. I’m an idiot with a camera and I tend to shoot from the hip — like what I try to do with the sniper rifle in Halo 3, and like Halo 3 I manage to shoot everything other than what I want. One upside to this is that a 14 year old doesn’t come and teabag my corpse if I foul up. I’ll give myself this though: it’s slightly cleverer than not setting up the makeshift studio.

Once I had things going I used the MF scale on my camera to really get the focus set properly on the model. When you look at the images you’ll see lots of dents, scratches, and divets, but I love ‘em. It’s crystal clear. You can see every little bit of dust, debris, and detail.

Here are some more photos of Maetel and Tetsuro:

If you want to see the entire photoset from my shoot you can go to Flickr and take a looksee. You can also see all the picturs in their super high-res glory.

So there you have it. A simple makeshift studio. Maybe I can play around with using tin foil as reflectors and get some rim lighting going in here. That would be something nice. Then maybe I can upgrade myself from being “slightly clever” to a full on “clever.”