#yes i know the photo quality is shit it's a photo of my digital camera leave me be

[lordofthecoffee]

So many leucistic birds lately! This one is some sort of sparrow (Chipping? Song?) with fantastic spectacles

[littleeyesofpallas]

Was chatting with a coworker the other day and two things crossed my mind...

that I've been at this weeb shit so long that I forget what I just sort of take for granted and what might not be commonly known little factoids, and

that VIZ's attempt at a monthly Shonen Jump magazine has been gone so long most people probably never saw them. (nevermind the old RAIJIN Graphic Novels that tried the same thing)

So, here's some fun little things you might not have known about manga if you've only ever read English publications and/or digital scans...

For one, there's the matter of print formatting... In general, Japan actually uses their own standards for print that tend to differ from those in the US; The JIS(Japanese Industrial Standards) series A and B. Magazines like the typical anthology format manga are printed in JIS B5, which is comparable to the US Letter standard, or the ISO A4.

This was the same format that RAIJIN Comics printed in as well, and although I don't have a copy of the old English Shonen Jump for reference, if memory serves they printed in the same format as well in an attempt to really sell that "authentic" manga feel. Sadly, I don't know that the effort or attention to detail was much appreciated. Neither published a volume comparable to a Japanese weekly or even monthly serial magazine, though --not by a long shot. But this might not be the most practical for comparrison, since there actually just isn't much of an English language equivalent format. (unless you count actual magazines that happen to include comic illustrations or miniscule comic strip segments)

Despite the mammoth size of a serial magazine, Japanese tankoban are actually smaller than the North American equivalent. But notably the Japanese small book format isn't just a matter of contending with nearest print standards... What I believe is the JIS B40(although I could be wrong) tends to be the standard print size of small books in general, not just manga, and it's a print size that is only marginally smaller than VIZ's standard size manga, but with the very particular benefit of being deliberately portable. The small difference in size is the difference between a Japanese manga fitting in my coat pocket where as the English equivalent can't.

(I realize I photographed a copy of Shonen ACE, and not Weekly JUMP, but I measured a copy of Weekly JUMP for the thickness and not the copy of ACE; the copy of JUMP was around 506pg, while the copy of ACE was 570pg. Those are both older though, and the most recent digital copy i have of Weekly JUMP actually had around 520pg)

And I don't think it's always addressed just what a difference there is, culturally, in how Japan approaches the print medium. It's kind of an old cliche by this point, and I don't know how accurate it's remained in the past decade or so, but the quintessential image passed around between comic nerds has always been the Japanese bullet train; A place packed with commuters all passing their transit time with isolated preoccupation with music and/or reading, with manga being the king of this time killing arena. And its not just about sheer popularity driven by interest, American comic vendors have long envied the sheer accessibility of manga in Japan.

Here in the U.S. we used to have a thriving newsstand retail scene for comic books, and a kind of similar ease of grab and go comic purchase, rather than the explicitly niche interest driven "direct market" model that has been slowly but surly strangling the comic market ever since. But in Japan serialized manga has remained in relatively quick, impulse friendly, arm's reach of readers on the go. And what lubricates that business model more than anything is price.

I still remember a time when VIZ dominated the English manga market by offering at $7.95(and am I crazy or am I remembering a time when it got down to $6.99?) but now'days it's settled on a low end of $9.99. You know how much the recent vol.29 of My Hero Academia goes for? ¥484. That's less than $4.50.

You know how much that big ass magazine with 500+ pages and 21 different series goes for? Do you think it's more or less than the little pocket-size tankoban? Did you guess something close to ¥290? That's less than $2.75. But how does something bigger in both page size and page count managed to sell for less???

There are a few secrets to that, but one is that the things are packed to the gills with ads. But that's the boring answer. The other feature contributing to keeping an accessible cost on weekly/monthly manga is something we don't think about much in the U.S.; it's the paper and print quality.

The nice little books are printed in what you might expect as far as starch white paper and clean black inks, but those big honkin' phone book(do people still know what phonebooks look like??) size magazines are printed on cheap recycled pulpy newpaper with typically rough print jobs. This is most noticeable in the quality of solid blacks, and when scanning the texture of "white" space.

(I tried to take individual photos of different series chapters to show off the fact that the paper is differently colored... but my phone's camera seems to be smart enough to auto balance that kind of thing when there's no other context to anchor it to. (It doesn't help that it's night and my lights have a harsh yellowing glow to them.) but on th left you can still kind of see the different paper colors; this particular issue alternated every 3 chapters between pink-ish, green/gray, a kind of off-white/gray, and sepia, but I've also seen blue-ish, oranges, and a different shade of yellow different from the sepia-ish one.)

Back in ye olden days when it came to fan scanlations, more slapdash teams and projects would often stumble over levels in photoshop (too much black and the pulpy paper texture shows up as grainy shadows, but too far white and the edges of lineart get crunchy and ugly) but those who had more robust readership and a regular streamlined flow of work, we'd actually go in and touch up the solid blacks and whites by hand. We'd also redraw art to erase overlaid text so the type setters could lay the new English in over top.

(Weekly Jump: Left, Bleach tankoban: Right)

They do however keep a few coveted color pages in better quality paper and ink. In contrast, the standard quality tankoban actually don't include color pages at all, and just print what had been color pages in grayscale. There are also all kind of irregularities between publishers and special editions and such, but on the most basic level this difference in quality both keeps serial prices down, while also incentivizing tankoban purchase.

In the U.S. we might still have the draw of an ad-free reading experience in our TPB, but the print quality between a biweekly issue and a TPB are basically the same. Incidentally, even though manga are generally drafted at a much larger scale than even the serial magazine proportions anyway, the scaled down size of the tankoban also serves to sharpen the image. When put side by side the nice clean tankoban print looks noticeably better than the serial.

Now'days the English scanlation scene seems to be conducted almost entirely through ripped digital releases (at least as far as I can tell with popular, regular weekly titles) which is great for quality, frankly, but it does kind of lack the charm and personal touch of a band of amateurs finding round about solutions to a convoluted bootlegging pipeline. But obviously I'm a little biased.

[edit]: Oops i posted this without really ending it in any sensible ro conclusive way... I feel like ive lost sight of the point since i first drafted this but I guess its mostly just me pining after if we could just get super cheap, disposable quality, bulk manga in that classic Japanese magazine model to work here in the states. I already tend to sell manga in big runs, even at $9.99+, and frequently I'll have customers put volumes back, or clearly want the next volume but just can't afford it and wait to come back. If I could sell these customers more volumes, and more importantly more titles, at the same price, I would love to. I would love to see these things fly off the shelves. I would love to see people keeping up with multiple series. I would love to see someone look at a 44vol long series and actually feel like that's a number of volumes they can afford.

[mcrmadness]

I took some (”landscape”) photos with my DSLR camera last night and I was so excited to transfer them to my computer today to see how they turned out so that I could upload some to Tumblr. But what happens every damn time happened again: I look at the photos, go “ummm meh...” and just leave the photos sit in the folder because they are never that nice nor artistic as I would want them to be. They just look totally soulless. There’s just nothing interesting about them. Just anyone could take those! There’s nothing in them that would make people go like “oh yes, this is definitely their type of photography!” I think this is what is my major problem with my photos. I just can’t make them look like me.

And another thing that always gets on my nerves is my computer screen. It’s supposed to be a good gaming screen and all but it looks terrible when there’s darkness or blackness in photos, videos, movies or games. It’s not as bad as my old huge monitor was but sometimes it’s really difficult to play video games if there’s nighttime because I literally don’t see a thing. And with photos like these... either the white background in programs make it hard for me to see the photo itself and when I have it on full screen, the blacklight bleeding also kinda gives my brains the feeling that I don’t SEE the photos properly!!! Or maybe I just have problems with my brains and the way my eyes take in information idk.

But the first chapter is the reason why I have tons of photos saved to dvds and to my computer, photos that I have never posted to anywhere because it always goes like this. I take photos, I get excited, I look at them with my computer and feel disappointed. Either I’m stubborn or just stupid because I keep doing this from one year to another even tho nothing ever changes. And then I occassionally look at my old photos and suddenly some photo taken 9 years ago with a digital camera looks actually pretty good but the photos I took the day before with a proper DSLR camera look like shit. And I know that that 9 years ago that same photo looked as shit as the new one too, but somehow when not having it in the memory and then looking at it again feels like it’s actually not that bad.

Usually my best photos are those I have taken “accidentally”. My DSLR camera is quite old so it doesn’t show the image on the screen (only the already-taken photos) and for various reasons I can’t always look at what I’m taking photos of and I feel like these “blind photos” are usually the best ones. But it’s frustrating. And also because I don’t trust the camera screen. Things can look good on it but then not on a bigger screen. So I take 100 photos of the same thing “just in case” and I HATE the process of comparing 100 similar photos to each other to decide which one is the best. Sometimes I do the decision, regret, and start over because this other photo has actually bit better angle or so.

Often I just give up totally. I’m making new photos but I kinda don’t see any point in that so I take photos with my phone and then I’m annoyed by the phone quality. That’s why I kinda want to start making posts, maybe a blog, for my old photos but I have also had this idea for so long time now but I also don’t feel that the photos would be that interesting to look at so I feel like it would all be just a waste of time, as there’s nothing special in those.

[coe-lilium]

Hey Lilium! I love your Servant redesigns! I'm starting to learn to draw digitally so that I can design Servants myself, like Kriemhild. Would you have any advice you could give me on this?

Hi! Thank you so much for your words!

I’m a bit unsure if you’re asking for tips on digital art itself or on chara design?  

In doubt, I’m going to go with “digital art” in this post, if you meant chara des hit me up with an ask and I’ll happily provide for that :) 

*necessary intro*: please consider that my art education ended 10 years ago and never prepared me for more stylized/cartoon styles, so I’m self taught for almost all intents (100% regarding digital art).

Long wall of text under the cut:

First suggestion is to get a good, reliable art program. 

Plenty of artists use Paint Tool SAI and Clip Studio Paint (currently using CSP myself and don’t plan to ever abandon it). Neither of them is free but both are less pricey than Adobe bundles and both were created more for illustrating than “photoshopping” purposes. There’s plenty more but those are two I used and can recommend. Many art programs usually offer a 30 days trial so my suggestion would be to try them out and see which is more to your liking and offers the best quality/price wise.  

By personal experience, it’s much better to pay and have support than to find a free unofficial version and then get fucked and lose all your works when you update your operating system and discover the bootleg program doesn’t work anymore. Learn from me, don’t risk it.     

Next suggestion, get a drawing tablet or a tablet. Nothing too pricey as a beginner, when paired with a good program any decent tablet will do its job. What you really need is pen pressure, everything else is optional. People draw on their iPads with great results but never having tried I can’t give suggestions here, if not to look for artist who do and see how they work (YT surely has tutorials ‘bout it).   

With hardware and software out of the way, let’s get down to proper drawing business:  

First of all, forget that “but you’re not a real artist if you use references/copy poses” noise: use references, use all the references you want. 

If you want to paint a starry sky and don’t know how to rend the effect, maybe the glowing of a nebula? Look up Youtube and Deviantart tutorials, tumblr tutorials, look up on how all the artist you like paint and their tips, all the IRL photos in google. 

Something I personally find very helpful are tutorials comparing realistic and stylized styles and showing how to go from one to another, how to simplify shapes etc.    

Renaissance artist invented the darkroom/camera oscura to help them drawing perspective and then traced over that shit. If Caravaggio traced to save time, then so can we. 

And there’s so many different ways to reach a similar result that maybe your first attempts will look like copycats of that tutorial you saw or that really inspiring artist. It’s fine. But the more attempts and the more you play with your program of choice, brushes you like/find more comfortable, the more you look up different sources and integrate bits of them all in a singular piece, the more your work will be distinct.

Now, onto one of the big elephants in the room: do you know how to correctly sketch a human body from scratch? If yes, amazing! (all my respect). 

If not, there’s plenty of solutions without having to learn how to (which is the way I currently work bc drawing is a 100% hobby and I’d rather spend my time elsewhere than in re-learning human anatomy) and working digitally makes these solutions way easier. 

After you find a “how to draw anatomy” book or blog or tutorials and safely store it somewhere safe to go back and reference, then you can 

1. find stock photos, either from google (be careful not to use copyrighted stuff) or in bundles specifically created for artists to use as bases or references. On Deviantart for example there’s SenshiStock, incredible project with hundreds of photos free to use. The anatomy book/blog here will be useful if you want a certain body shape and your reference doesn’t match with your idea. 

2. chose a program like CSP or similar that comes with 3D stock poses which you can then alter as much as you like in size, weight, rotation, light direction, position of every body part down to each finger (in CSP’s case, you can also download plenty more free to use poses, brushes, 3d objects, patterns etc created by the userbase and shared in the library bundled with the program).  

3. if your main art program doesn’t come with human poses? no problem at all, get one just for this specific purpose, like Design Doll (both free/pay ver, imo free ver is more than enough), Posemaniacs (free, online, uses flash), MagicPoser (free with option of in-app purchases, it’s an app, good reviews, just tried it a little and seems quite good). 

4. less conventional but imo still useful, especially if you want to draw in “anime” style and proportions for Servants designs: go to My figure collections and use figmas. 

They’re highly posable plastic figures from the most different jp (and not) characters, each one with a photo gallery and as long as you modify the final piece and -important!- don’t sell it if you base it on a specific user photo? I’d say go for it. Or mix body parts of different figmas, or use the “archetype” products, naked bodies made precisely for drawing bases, there’s options with both more “anime” and more realistic proportion. 

I collect them for both owning Fate/other characters without spending a fortune and for drawing references and I find them quite well suited for this purpose. Why on earth despair if I’d ever want to draw Arturia in armor when I can just grab my figma of her, pose it, take a photo and then draw on it? :P

Now, hardware and software check, way to find poses check, what else? 

Layers are your best friends. For example, Bradamante? A good 50+ layers, some of them stored in folders so I could just select and deselect them to remove or put on mantle, lance, shield, sword etc. Just... remember to name them to save yourself a lot of time.  

And changing a layer’s opacity too, especially to draw the definitive lineart over the first rough sketch or for shading or highlights.    

The more I write the more I find things to write about so I’ll call it for now, this post is already a WoT as it is. Hopefully I was of use, but if you need more, ask right away and I’ll do my best! :)               

[seatosomert]

What kit should you buy?

Ok, so you're probably expecting me to recommend cameras, tripods, lenses etc. I'm not gonna do that.

There is tonnes of content on YouTube etc to tell you all about that stuff.

So I'm going to keep it simple.

First, just scroll back up and spend a minute going through the images above. What do you notice?

I'm hoping what you'll notice are a few things.

I'm shooting different things within the images for different reasons or clients.

I have a fair few cameras (about 15 I think at my last count).

The cameras are all different. Why is that?

I'm carrying some kit on my person.

So, here is the thing.

You get to ask yourself the following questions.

What do I want to shoot?

How much kit do I want to carry?

Do I really need to carry all that kit?

So how much kit do I REALLY want to carry?

Do I want to generate an income from shooting?

Do I actually generate an income from shooting?

I have been a photographer for around 30 years now. Starting out as everyone does as a novice, then amateur, then enthusiast and progressed to a semi-pro (semi because I have another job I do I don't shoot full time but I do run my own photography and video business as well).

So my needs right now reflect the kit I buy. I've read loads of magazines with lovely flashy looking kit that I worked hard for to buy from my own day job wages. I spent a fortune. Then a year later, a new camera came out and my head was turned. Then I was lusting after that kit!

It's a never ending cycle where you can be bombarded with videos, reviews of kit and as you've probably learned,targeted adverts on Social Media.

Now my film cameras are purely a purist thing and I learned on film cameras from being a very young kid. So I am attracted to the nostalgia of it. Yes there is something about film that is so super difficult to replicate on digital, but do clients demand shoots on film? Nope!

Only one client ever asked for a shoot on medium format film on my Mamiya 645 pro camera. They had a specific look they were going for. It's expensive and it takes longer to turn the images around.

Clients want high quality media that can be manipulated by graphic designers for ad campaigns etc. And they want it quickly. So digital has to be the most efficient way to go.

I've bought kit that I've used once then stored it away for years! I've learned since then.

For several years now I only buy what I need to get the job done to the high standards that I set myself and that clients demand. If I need kit I may only use once, I'll borrow from a fellow pro shooter or I'll hire it.

So if you're not making money from your photography and unless you have more money than sense, don't waste your money on buying the best money can buy.

On saying that if you buy cheap 'tat' you'll be disappointed and buy twice.

Buy the kit you know you'll use often if you're a hobbyist, or if you want to take photos better than a smart phone can.

Remember also. You have to carry it.

I only buy stuff for my business now that I know I'm happy carrying and gets the job done. I'm fit and healthy but I'm also in my late 40s now and I've put my body through a lot of stuff over the years such as a motorbike accident, bashed about in full contact martial arts and other daft stuff, so wear and tear starts to kick in. Don't buy shit loads of kit that you'll have to carry and either injure yourself or just leave at home because it becomes a chore to carry it.

The best camera in the world is the one that is with you at the time. A £10k Leica with a Summicron lens sat at home in the drawer is useless at that point because it's not with you when you find that photographic opportunity.

So I have been switching out from DSLR to Mirrorless cameras for the last 2 years now. I'm not gonna harp on about what brands. It doesn't matter. Find what works for you.

Finally I'd like to share with you the two most important things that I've invested into my photography that supercede any fancy kit:-

Time and mentorship/lifelong learning.

Time and Mentorship.

By time I mean putting time into practising. No amount of YouTube tutorials or books will improve your photography if you're not putting the practice in. Shoot as often as you can. Practice with light, play with it.

Learn the limits of your kit and learn your own limitations and then fill the gaps by committing to learning for the long haul.

Not one successful photographer worth their salt believes they know it all. The world's best photographers have committed to life long learning.

Leads me onto the last thing.

I currently learn from many sources. Yes I'll admit, the odd YouTube video on editing techniques as software continues to develop. I'm a Pro member of the Photographer's Guild so I have access to all sorts of workshops and learning there.

I am a member of Karl Taylor Education and I've studied with Karl's many products for about 7 years now and I pay a subscription to access his classes.

I have paid to work with some leading industry photographers such as Gary Wallis from the London Photography Institute, Steve Howdle (Elinchrom Ambassador) and the Late Andrew Appleton (Former Photographers guild panel judge and very well respected photography coach and teacher).

I have developed connections with other professionals in my area and I will work with them on projects in and out of the studio.

We'll share tips and go out to other cities to shoot together or shoot together in the studio.

I'll take myself off to London for the day to shoot and I'll get into the less touristy areas of London to do this. It's a 200+ mile trip each way for me but I'll go to the effort of hopping down for the day several times a year.

The point I am trying to make here is there are always opportunities to learn. I have had to invest time and money into them all.

However, I've learned so much that when I look back it amazes me just how far I've come and what I have learned.

Just as with anything. Improving your skills requires time and commitment.

So to summarise:

Decide what you want to shoot and where and buy the camera and kit that suits that.

Travel as light as possible. Develop your knowledge before spending lots of money on more kit.

Find a mentor and ask them to help you. It might cost you money, it might not, but it's a worthwhile investment. It's massively accelerates your learning curve, cutting down your learning duration by years. If someone told you to learn your current job from YouTube videos and books how long would it take you to become proficient at it? Compared to on the job learning/training, learning from people around who are already experts at that job? It's the same principal when you work with a good mentor. Once you have the knowledge in it weighs nothing and the more you use what you've learned the stronger you become in you're art.

As usual, if this post has been of use to you, please hit the like button, subscribe for more content and fire any questions you have in the comments below.

Speak soon.

Regards.

Neil.

[sunbrights]

dvd commentary: viewfinder

(For anon, because I also have a special place in my heart for "viewfinder", and I wanted to talk about it more.

This isn't going to go on AO3, for a few reasons that I'll spare you guys from getting into, but I know that Tumblr isn't very kind to long text posts. If this is a pain to read let me know and I'll try to find another alternative!

I hope you guys enjoy!)

I originally wanted to write "viewfinder" as the first of a series of quickfics exploring friendships that have a lot of potential, in my opinion, but don't get a lot of screentime for whatever reason. I really enjoy both Peko and Mahiru as characters, though, and the longer I went the more I wanted to do a deeper dive, which is how it came to be what is now.

(I still want to do something similar to what I was originally planning, though I don't think they'll be quickfics anymore; probably longer oneshots like this one. I do have another fic planned in the same vein that's intended to be a sort of companion to "viewfinder," though that might be a while out.)

Essentially, I was interested first by the fact that Peko mentions Mahiru a few times in her FTEs, which leaves open the possibility for them to be friends even if it's never looked at explicitly in the main game. There are a lot of peppered references to both Peko's and Mahiru's FTEs in here as a result of that (which may or may not have already been obvious). Second, I was interested in the impact on Peko of having to kill her, outside of the consequences for herself and Fuyuhiko in the context of the killing game, especially if the two of them had been friends beforehand. Striking a balance between those two concepts, tonally, was really tough, but in the end I decided I didn't want to leave either one of them out.

Nitty gritty commentary under the cut!

** **

Koizumi has taken at least four photographs of her since they arrived on the island. One was a group photo, taken the first day; the other three were taken covertly, when she thought Peko wasn’t aware. (Peko cannot afford not to be aware.)

I really agonized over how many photos Mahiru would reasonably have taken at this point. I think this number (and the one later, when Mahiru shows Peko all of them) changed at least five or six times. Why?? I have no idea. Weird hang ups in editing hell.

She does the same with the others, with similar frequency; most of them rarely notice, if ever. Peko allows it because she sees no reason not to, but she does consider the possibility of Koizumi having goals beyond a few candid photographs.

(She brings this up to the young master, and he rolls his eyes.

“Koizumi’s a fucking goody-goody,” he says, feet kicked up on the edge of his desk. “She’s not worth worrying about. If it bugs you, tell her to knock it off. Otherwise, I don’t give a shit what she does.”)

The next time Koizumi takes a photo of her, Peko is out splitting coconuts on the beach. It starts out as just her, Mioda, and a handful of others, but once they start shouting about the quality of the coconut juice, it isn’t long before the rest of the class begins to file in.

This section was tough to get right, and a lot of it ended up getting cut; I almost ended up cutting the whole section (I did a couple times, I think), but I'm glad I was eventually able to get it where I wanted it. The coconut special event in particular felt like a good starting place to me because it's the earliest point that we see Peko bonding and socializing with the others, even if she didn't really intend to.

At one point Souda, Hinata, and Mioda hold six coconuts out in a line; Peko slices through all of them in a single swing, and hears the familiar snap of Koizumi’s shutter behind her.

The others all whoop as the tops of the coconuts hit the sand. Koizumi rolls her eyes, but she’s smiling even as she steps back. When they start handing out the remaining shells, Peko brings one over to her.

“I was wondering,” she says, after Koizumi has taken the first sip of her juice, “would it be all right for me to see that photo?”

“The one I just took of you? Sure, if you want.” Koizumi pulls on the strap of her camera to swing it back up towards her. It looks unwieldy to hold in one hand, but she does it without much effort at all. “Don’t worry, you look really cool in it.”

The digital display of the camera is grainy and cluttered with functional symbols, but the most important parts of the image are clear. Peko discovers that she isn’t the subject of the photo, as she’d assumed— instead, she is the dynamic foreground to the actual subjects: Souda, Hinata, and Mioda, their hands held out and their faces lit up in varying degrees of awe, fear, and delight. The line of Peko’s shoulders and the draw of her blade act as a frame for the smiles of her classmates.

(Peko can also tell that her form is off: she’s holding her right shoulder too high, and it caused the cut in the final coconut to be uneven. It’s hardly Koizumi’s fault, but having such laziness immortalized will bother her for days.)

“What do you think?”

“It’s... surprising.”

“‘Surprising’?” Koizumi draws the word out. It’s the wrong one, going by the way her brows pinch together. She twists the camera back towards herself to squint at the display. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Peko struggles to elaborate. It’s difficult to find the words to describe something when she isn’t certain of what it is in the first place. “It could have simply captured the trick they asked me to perform,” she decides on, “but instead it captures the feelings of everyone involved.” She hesitates, then clarifies: “I like it.”

Peko's much better than Hajime at giving the kind of feedback Mahiru likes to hear. She's a thoughtful character in general, but I also think she'd be familiar with what helpful feedback sounds like, sort of a counterpoint to her own criticism of herself above.

Koizumi looks up at her, eyebrows lifting. “Yeah.” She smiles, and it’s easy and friendly. “Yeah, that’s it exactly, actually. Thank you.”

Mahiru's smiles get mentioned a lot in this story, which is intentional; Peko's hyperawareness of them is meant to play into her own self-consciousness over struggling with smiling herself.

“You’re welcome,” Peko says, even if she doesn’t understand what she has to be thanked for. Koizumi seems pleased regardless, and she leans over to show Peko the other photos she’d taken so far.

There’s no harm in letting her keep taking them, she decides.

*

They have lunch together, sometimes. Both she and Koizumi tend to eat earlier than the others, so the hotel restaurant is often empty; on the days when neither of them are away doing other things, they sit out on the balcony and Koizumi shows her the photos she’d taken that morning.

“You know, I actually had something I wanted to talk to you about,” Koizumi says one day, dimming a photo of Togami and his spread of breakfast from her camera’s display. She pulls a small, squat album out of her camera bag and lays it out on the table between them. “Here. These are all the pictures I’ve taken of you so far.”

By Peko’s tally, Koizumi has taken six photos of her: the four she’d already been aware of, the one of her slicing the coconuts, and an additional group photo since.

In this album, there are eight.

I feel like a talent like Mahiru's has to be multifaceted; she's creatively and technically talented, obviously, but she also has to be adept enough to physically take photographs in a way that captures moments without imparting an observer effect.

That, and I think it creates a point of commonality between Peko's talent and Mahiru's (Peko being constantly aware of herself and her surroundings vs Mahiru separating herself from her surroundings in order to document them) that helps make them peers, in a backwards sort of way.

“I feel like I must be getting something wrong,” Koizumi says. She leans her chin on one hand, and the puff of her sigh scatters her bangs. “No matter what I do, I can’t seem to get the right shot of you.”

Peko touches the edge of a photo of herself leaning on the hotel restaurant’s railing. She tries to remember when it possibly could have been taken. “I don’t understand.”

“Well… Okay, look at this one.” Koizumi taps her nail against one of the group shots on the page: all eight girls standing together, smudged with chocolate and flour. “You had fun that day, right? At least, I thought you did.”

“Yes,” Peko answers. She studies the photo, trying to understand the flaw. The form is excellent and the colors are bright; it’s everything one would expect from Koizumi’s talent. “I… enjoy baking, sometimes. It was a welcome distraction.”

I like the idea of Peko enjoying cooking, especially baking, in spite of her not liking sweets. (The logic being that it's something fun she can do, and the results can be shared with people she cares about to make them happy, too.) Y'all probably can probably see that cropping up in a few stories of mine.

“But you’re the only one not smiling in the picture.” Koizumi flips the pages of her album back and forth. “See? You’re not smiling in any of them. This one kind of comes close,” she touches an image of Peko sitting together with Tanaka and Mioda while the Four Dark Devas of Destruction explore a sand castle, “but I’m not sure it counts. You look happy, but you’re not really smiling.”

This is the first reference to a FTE, specifically Peko's third one:

PEKO: Mahiru told me that... I'm the only one who doesn't smile for her pictures.

Oh. It’s about that. Peko closes her eyes.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “It wasn’t my intention to ruin your photos.” If Koizumi’s goal is to capture moments of positivity in their circumstances, it makes sense that Peko wouldn’t fit into that vision. “If you’d rather I avoid being in them from now on, I understand.”

“What?” Peko feels Koizumi’s hand clasp around her wrist. When she opens her eyes, Koizumi has her other hand splayed out over the open page of the album. “No, no. That’s not what I’m saying at all, Peko-chan. I just thought... maybe there are other times when you’re having more fun, you know? Maybe I should take pictures of you then instead.”

I think ultimately Mahiru's photos celebrate mundane joy in her friends' lives; I don't think she'd want them to be a source of anxiety for anyone, especially not a friend.

Even through Koizumi’s fingers, Peko can see how the photos of her don’t fit in well with the ones on the opposite page. There is a clear interruption in the theme of the collection. Looking again, she doesn’t know how she didn’t notice it the first time.

“It isn’t that,” she says. “Smiling can be… a challenge, for me. It may be more efficient for you to focus on the others.”

“Oh.” Koizumi’s forehead creases in what Peko assumes is a combination of sympathy and confusion. “Well, that’s okay. It’s not really about the smiles themselves, anyway. It’s more… whether or not you’re happy in the moment.” She smiles then, one that’s small and apologetic, and for a moment Peko can’t fathom it ever being that easy. “So don’t worry about it. Okay?”

Peko says, “I’ll try,” and means it.

She still thinks about it for the rest of the afternoon.

*

Koizumi takes fewer photos in the days after Hanamura’s execution. It’s understandable; there aren’t many causes for any of them to be smiling in that aftermath. She spends most of her mornings and afternoons out away from the others, but when Peko asks to see the photos, she declines. (“I’ve never been proud of my landscapes,” she admits. “It always feels like there’s something missing.”)

Little crossover tidbit: Natsumi preferring to take pictures of nature in "by the claw of dragon" is a reference to my headcanon here that Mahiru doesn't enjoy it much.

The next time she arrives at the hotel restaurant early enough for lunch, she’s the brightest Peko has seen her in days.

“Peko-chan! Look, I have a surprise for you.”

She slides onto the opposite bench and sets her lunch aside, an afterthought. “I was right, I think.” She unzips one of the outside pockets of her camera bag to produce a photo, newly printed. “I just needed to get the right shot of you.”

Having said the above re: Mahiru not wanting her photos to be a source of anxiety for people, I do think that she would keep trying, and that she probably would have been one of the best people (next to Hajime) to help Peko get past her mental blocks.

Peko doesn’t understand. She’d only been practicing with Hinata for a couple days, and his comedic timing leaves much to be desired. “Is that…?”

“It sure is.” Koizumi’s smile is proud and eager. “Here, see for yourself.”

She slides the photo across the table, and Peko draws it toward herself with the tip of her finger, careful not to smudge.

It’s a picture of her from earlier that morning. Her, and the young master.

“What do you know, right? I was so worried he was going to ruin it.” Koizumi sets her chin in both hands, and Peko can see the way her smile flattens out sardonically. “But it turns out even Kuzuryuu can take a nice picture every now and then.”

It is a nice picture. The angle is high, and neither she nor the young master have noticed the camera; Koizumi must have taken it from the restaurant stairs. She vaguely remembers the moment: she’d passed him on her way out of the hotel, and had only paused to say good morning. She remembers him, half turned towards her with his hands in his pockets, his shoulders and his smile relaxed. In Koizumi’s photo, she smiles back.

His singular order from the very first day had been to maintain the illusion that they were only classmates. They look it, in this picture. He’d be satisfied with it, she thinks.

Not sure how obvious this is, but the picture described here is intended to be the one Fuyuhiko mentions during chapter 5, if you talk to him in the hotel restaurant before going to the ruins with Sonia.

FUYUHIKO: It's the first time... I've seen a photo of Peko and me where we look like equals... FUYUHIKO: Tch, Mahiru... When the hell did she even take this photo?

“Sorry,” Koizumi says, after a moment. Her voice is gentler, and when Peko looks up her brows have drawn together, concerned. Oh. She’d misinterpreted Peko’s silence as offense. “I didn’t mean to— just be careful, Peko-chan, okay? I know you’re trying to help him and all, but that guy is bad news. You shouldn’t get involved with him.”

I figure that if anyone would have picked up on the fact that Peko is the one constantly "bumping into" Fuyuhiko and ferrying information back and forth to him, it would be Mahiru.

“He is… abrasive,” Peko allows. (She has rehearsed this answer in her head many times.) Koizumi’s brows disappear behind her bangs. “We shouldn’t let our guard down. But I think with time he might be open to cooperation.”

“Peko-chan.” Koizumi’s voice is still gentle, but has dropped low enough to not quite be called a whisper; it borderlines on conspiratorial. She chooses every word with careful deliberation. “This is the only picture I’ve been able to take of you smiling, even a little bit. Ever. Okay?”

Peko wills herself not to react, even as she feels her face and fingertips go cold. If she has in any way compromised—

“I’m not going to pretend I get it. Because I swear to every god there is, I don’t.” Her smile turns lopsided and embarrassed, and all at once Peko understands the sort of assumption she’s made. Her cold cheeks suddenly flush warm. “Seriously. That guy? Really?”

She has not rehearsed an answer for this.

Something in her expression must balk, because Koizumi holds both hands up, defensive. “No, it’s okay. I’m not going to ask, just—” She bites her lip, and Peko sees the way she rehearses her words in her head. “A guy like that, the kind of world he comes from? He’s not ever going to change. He’s too wrapped up in himself and his image to bother. Maybe he’s not dangerous yet, but he’s definitely not worth your time. Or anybody else’s, for that matter.”

Combine the above with how aggressively Mahiru and Fuyuhiko butt heads right out of the gate, and I ended up with this conversation. Mahiru wants Peko to be happy, but she also doesn't want her getting caught up with someone she sees as unreliable, self-absorbed, and dangerous. The friction that comes from that in Peko and Mahiru's friendship is inevitable, in my opinion, especially since Mahiru doesn't have all the context.

“We are in a dire situation,” Peko hears herself say. “Our only hope of success is through cooperation.”

Koizumi’s expression twists. “No, no. I know. You’re right.” She turns the photo on the table back toward her, and looks at that instead of at Peko. “But you have to admit, he’s not exactly falling over himself to cooperate with us, either.”

The young master wouldn’t disagree. Peko only shakes her head.

“I’m just saying, as a friend? You don’t need to bend over backwards to help someone who obviously doesn’t want it.” Koizumi picks the photo up by the corner, and is careful not to bend it when she puts it back in her bag. She zips the pocket closed with more force than she needs to. “Let him deal with his own problems.”

And a little dramatic irony, for flavor.

She is wrong, in more ways than she’ll ever understand.

*

That morning, the young master knocks on her door first.

Not pictured: me grappling with the timeline of chapter 2 to make any of this work, after I realized just how short it is between Fuyuhiko playing Twilight Syndrome and Mahiru's death. Say what you want about his yakuza talents, my boy can crank out a revenge plot like it's a frickin' office memo.

The photos must have been taken in the heat of the moment, but their composition is still stark and harshly beautiful. The framing of Natsumi-sama’s blood-spattered corpse makes excellent use of the rule of thirds.

Peko says, “Koizumi,” before the young master has had a chance to say anything at all.

When he throws the open envelope across the length of her cottage, the rest of the photos spill and scatter across her floor like fallen leaves.

*

Peko offers to be the one to deliver the message, but the young master insists he do it himself. She watches the mailbox instead, to ensure his message is heard and understood.

By noon, the mailbox is empty.

Koizumi doesn’t respond immediately. It’s understandable; if the young master doesn’t remember the incident, it’s unlikely she does, either. Peko watches for her anyway, and late in the afternoon, Koizumi sits on the deck of her cottage with the largest of her photo albums in her lap.

Peko knows it to be the one with the final prints of her photos, after she’s had time to crop and color balance them. Her face is lined with concentration and stress, less like reminiscing and more like personal critique, but Peko has made enough threats in her lifetime to see the fear around every edge, in the shakiness of Koizumi’s muscles and the tightness of her mouth.

If you've read some of my other stuff, you might have seen that I like to write in very, very close third person. That makes communicating the arcs of characters who aren't the POV character (through the filter of the POV character) a fun challenge for me, and this is a good example of me trying to do that with Mahiru. I wanted to highlight the point after Mahiru has seen the pictures but before she's played Twilight Syndrome, when she must have recognized the pictures as hers but been shocked and afraid by the contents. Peko interprets it a little differently.

The message has both been heard and understood.

That confirmed, there is no reason for Peko to interact with her any further, now that she’s been identified as an enemy of the Kuzuryuu Clan. Clearly, Peko has made a grave error in underestimating her as a potential threat; any further mistakes would only exacerbate the damage.

However, since arriving on the island the young master has had only one, singular request.

This is intended to be the first conflict between Peko's duty as a "tool" and the new friendships she's been making -- she uses her duty as an excuse to keep hanging out with Mahiru, right after she points out to herself that she shouldn't.

Peko holds out her hand to get Koizumi’s attention.

“I wasn’t back in time for lunch today,” she explains. “Could I look at your photos with you now instead?”

Koizumi still smiles, even if it’s thin. “Yeah. Here, come sit with me.”

Ordinarily, Koizumi is happy enough to talk through her photographs while Peko observes, the whens and whats more than the hows and whys. (“My work needs to speak for itself,” Koizumi had said, the one time Peko had asked, “If I have to explain it, then I didn’t do my job right.”) Today they sit in silence while she pages through the album, one by one.

Many of these final prints are ones that Peko has yet to see. Owari and Nidai, bloodied and grinning, grasping each other’s forearms. Saionji with two packets of gummy bears flared out in front of her face like twin fans. Souda with a screwdriver in one hand and Nanami’s Gamegirl in the other, and Nanami sitting beside him, reaching for it with both hands. Hanamura in the hotel kitchen, flipping flapjacks in a pan while Mioda cheers in the background.

You might have noticed by now that I had a lot of fun coming up with different scenarios for Mahiru's photos in this fic. I was always a little sad we didn't get to see more of them!

(There is exactly one picture of Koizumi herself, where she isn’t in a group. The photo isn’t candid, but she doesn’t look prepared, and the framing is sloppy. When Koizumi reaches it in the album, she’s quick to turn the page.)

This is intended to be the picture Hajime takes of her in her final FTE:

MAHIRU: So... I was thinking about taking at least one shot of myself while I'm on this island. MAHIRU: The me... who's here like this...

“I know that it’s not the most groundbreaking subject matter ever,” Koizumi says eventually, “but that’s fine. People don’t need their lives to be groundbreaking, or dramatic, or- or tragic for there to be beauty in them. You know?”

She turns the page, and her fingers land on a photograph of Hinata caught mid-sentence, his mouth open too wide and his eyes halfway through blinking. It makes her smile, a real one that isn’t pained or forced. For that moment, the lines of stress and fear on her face smooth out into nothing.

And again, this is intended to be the photo Mahiru takes of Hajime in her first FTE:

MAHIRU: Well, I guess this is good enough. Yep, that sure is a dumb-looking face.

“Yes,” Peko answers. “I think so.”

*

Koizumi’s allotted time runs out. The young master is not inclined to give her more.

More evidence of me playing fast and loose with said unreal ch 2 timeline.

This whole section actually wasn't in the original draft of this story, and I waffled a lot on whether or not I should include it; I wanted Fuyuhiko's influence to be felt, but I didn't actually want to include him in the story itself too much. In the end I decided I needed it to bridge the arc I wanted for Peko in the story, which I'll get into in a minute.

“I’ll go with you,” Peko tells him, when they’re alone.

“No.” He’s bent over his desk, which is neat and nearly empty now that Koizumi has the photographs. All that’s left are the letters he’s just written, folded and stacked and ready to set a plan in motion. He won’t look at her. “No. Your plans aren’t changing, okay? Go- go do your thing with the girls. I’ll be done before then anyway.”

That is not an option. She can’t agree, so she doesn’t.

“I’m going to talk to her,” he goes on. His voice trembles under the weight of all his anger and anxiety. “And if that bitch has something to answer for, she’ll fucking answer for it. That’s the only thing I can do, right? That’s what Natsumi deserves.”

Peko hears it, the way his resolve doesn’t shore up the way he wants it to. There are fractures in his certainty of what he’s been taught, and every day they get a little wider; his heart is too big and beats too strongly for them not to. He struggles with it, but there is strength in struggle, not shame.

One of the remaining blank sheets of paper crumples under his left hand. He hears the fractures too, but they sound different to him than they do to her.

There is so much weighing him down.

She wants to take it away from him, or at least help him shoulder the burden. But Koizumi’s philosophies, Hinata’s advice and encouragement— all of it fails her in the moment, when it matters the most. She remembers when they were small and cold and lost in the mountains, how his face had pinched with fear and tears, how she’d failed him then, too.

Like I mentioned earlier, I was interested in Peko and Mahiru's FTEs, especially in the larger context of the main plot. If you WERE to finish Peko's FTEs before the, uh, cutoff point, for example, her later ones would necessarily need to fall around/during all the behind-the-scenes fuckery happening in chapter 2. So, with that in mind, here's this from her fourth FTE:

PEKO: Mahiru showed me her photos the other day. They were filled with images of smiling faces. PEKO: I don't know how else to say this, but... they were very nice photos. I learned that smiles give people power. [ ... ] PEKO: If I had been able to smile and tell him that everything was going to be okay, even if it was a lie... PEKO: I might've been able to take away his fear.

The other piece of this is the fact that Peko wants to protect Fuyuhiko, but she doesn't do it by stopping him from killing Mahiru, which would protect everyone. In this story, I wanted to open the door to the possibility that Peko may have wanted to try and convince him away from it, through her interactions with Mahiru and Hajime and the others, but struggled with it because of the nature of her "role." In my mind, this is the point where that door shuts again, and she falls back on what she knows.

She says, “Young master—” but he’s already standing.

“Don’t call me that. Just- go, all right? I don’t have a lot of time.” He tucks the letters into the inside pocket of his jacket. “We’ll talk when it’s done.”

"I don't have a lot of time" was an inside joke with myself about how dumb the timeline of ch 2 is. That shit really got to me, y'all.

*

Koizumi is pale that morning. It makes her concealer too dark against her skin, and when she lowers her head shadows still steal into the bags under her eyes. Her hands shake when she waves at Peko from across the pool.

“Morning, Peko-chan.” Koizumi breathes in deeply, for no reason Peko can see except to steady her voice. “You’re still going to the beach with everyone today, right?”

Peko nods.

“That’s good.” Koizumi nods, too. She keeps nodding, and looks down at her hands. “I’m glad. It sounds like it’ll be a lot of fun.”

Mahiru is in a pretty dark place at this point, but her priority (like it is with Mikan and Ibuki) is still that her friends are happy and have fun. There's always tomorrow, right?

“You won’t be coming with us?”

Peko knows the answer. She asks the question anyway, because she must. Because as much as she feels for Koizumi’s position, the young master’s safety comes first, and his will comes second. There is no choice to be made.

Again: she wants to protect him, but going against his wishes to do that isn't an option. The rest of this is intended to be Peko turning to fully embrace the "tool" mentality she thinks she's supposed to have after slipping from it.

“No. I’m sorry, I wish I could.” She is hugging her arms close to herself. Her fingers tighten around her elbows until the skin under her nails turns white. “I just... I have something I need to take care of. But you should go have fun, okay?”

“You’ll be missed,” Peko tells her. It isn’t a lie, except by omission, but she still feels like something has been wedged deep beneath her sternum. “We’ll take photos. For your record.”

Peko's not talking about the beach trip. In case anybody wasn't sure.

“I’d like that. Thanks.” Even now, even with all this, Koizumi is still able to smile. For all her practicing, Peko is sure she’s learned nothing at all. “Have you seen Ibuki-chan anywhere?”

*

In the end, Koizumi never sees her approach. It’s a stroke of luck Peko doesn’t deserve, but the outcome would not have changed regardless. She will protect who she must protect. Kill who she must kill. If she can do nothing else, she can do that.

The young master reaches for his weapon, and she is there.

There was originally a transitive verb in the second clause of this sentence (I forget exactly how I phrased it) that didn't get changed to what it is now ("she is there") until the final edit. Ultimately I changed it because I wanted to emphasize Peko's attempt to take agency away from herself, especially in the context of the narrative she pushes in the trial later.

[leapesportif]

iPhone 11 vs iPhone X - and Why I Didn't Buy the iPhone 11 Pro

iPhone 11 vs iPhone X - and Why I Didn't Buy the iPhone 11 Pro

I’ll start off be talking briefly about my experience with the iPhone X.

Just over two years since Apple launched it’s flagship phone, featuring a new design, new construction and heavily updated hardware, the makers of all things sexy (that man can legally pay money for anyway) have released the iPhone 11.

While the iPhone 11 may not be distinctly different to any of its predecessors, the iPhone 11 Pro and Pro Max certainly are - just flip them over and take a look at the back - you’ll know what i mean.

Having got my hands on my iPhone X at launch in 2017, my excitement was quickly culled by a screen issue. Well, basically, it didn’t work - apart from flashing and showing me a few colourful lines, i couldn’t really use it.

A trip to the Apple Store, and an amusing comment about Samsung having supplied the screens for the X, i left with a new replacement.

Two weeks later, i was back at the Apple Store with exactly the same problem! I started November 2017 with an iPhone 7, and entered December on my third(!) iPhone X.

This third handset served me well, and didn’t really miss a beat until the summer of this year - then the problem began…

First, Face ID failed. It took me a couple of days to realise that every time i opened my phone, i had to use the passcode.

I made an appointment with apple, and they diagnosed a problem with the Face ID sensor - this despite the fact that Animoji’s still worked flawlessly! This was something no-one could really explain, and owing to the €585 repair cost from Apple, the nice employee there whispered that i could get €500 cash back for my iPhone X and then i could use the money to buy a different handset - the iPhone XR.

Now, i had done my homework before making this trip to the Genius Bar. I know, at worst, the Face ID sensor would cost around €90, and i’m no stranger to taking apart iPhones (I have daughters who like to break the screens on the things), so i thought i would repair it myself.

One hour, and €24 later, i had installed the new Face ID sensor, which by the way also contains the front camera and proximity sensor (the part which automatically adjusts the brightness, and plays voice messages through the ear piece when you lift the phone to your head). The problem still remained. Everything worked as it should - just no Face ID.

I decided to leave things as they were - there was no way i was paying Apples repair cost - they would probably have done the exact same thing i just did, with the same result!

Going back two months ago, the shit really started to hit the fan as far as my phone was concerned!

I noticed apps were complaining about not being able to use location services. Sure enough, when i opened maps i had no location. My family couldn’t find me anymore on apples stalking service either! GPS dead now too?

Then, sure enough, the next problem occurred. And then the next. And then the next.

At the point where it (or I) finally gave up, my as new on the outside, but completly rotten on the inside, boasted the following list of ailments:

Face ID sensor failure

Proximity sensor failure

GPS failure

Battery in 'service' condition

It rattled (?)

Battery from full would run down to 3% in a matter of minutes, then stay at 3% for several hours

SIM card not recognised / Searching for network

Screen hanged or shudder while animating

Gyroscopic senor failure (this is a guess, but when you picked the phone up and tilted it in any way it would swith off)

Eventually, 10 days ago, my iPhone X decided enough is enough, and refused to switch on for any longer than flashing the Apple logo at me for a second or two.

So, with all this in mind, a had to pull the trigger and get a new iPhone - but which of the iPhone 11 range would be best suited to me?

Being a photographer of course, the new tripple lens system of the 11 Pro really appealed. However, the standard Pro has the same size as the X, and i wanted more real-estate under my thumbs. So, the Pro Max was clearly the way to go right? Wrong. Here's why. In one sentence. 4 characters...

€450

Yes, four-hundred-and-fifty-euros is what Apple deems a necessary bounty over the price of the standard iPhone 11. Why? Well, that's the big question! The short answer: A bigger, better screen, bigger battery (of course, it's a bigger phone) and the tripple lens rear camera.

My reasons for wanting the Pro Max were the camera system and the big-assed screen. However, there are two points of contention here for me where it makes it really difficult to justify the extra money:

1. The Pro Max features the tripple lens camera. BUT, the sparkly new toy of the ultrawide lens is available on the standard 11 at the cost of the telephoto lens of it's predecessor. The wide angle lens is the toy i wanted most, and the standard wide angle lens of the 11 is stablised and has up to 5x digital zoom - which in fairness is only really usable up to 2x - which is perfectly acceptable in most use cases.

2. The 11 is built around the chassis of the iPhone XR - which makes it, and therefore it's screen bigger that that of the iPhone 11 Pro. It's not that easy for me to understand why apple did this - they must of had a bunch of unused X and XR chassis hanging around in storage somewhere.

Of course, the 11 Pro Max is better, but just how much better? Here's a little, to-the-point-comparision to help you decide:

The Pro Max (both Pro's) has more RAM 6GB vs 4GB

The Pro Max has a better screen: 6.5'' vs 6.1'', 1242x2688 463dpi vs 828x1792 324dpi resolution and Retina vs LCD (as far as screen sizes go....it's a bigger phone! The 11 Pro for reference has a 5.8'' 463dpi retina display with 1125x2436 resolution.)

The 11 has the Aluminium/Glass construction, similar to that of the iPhone XR vs Stainless Steel / Glass akin to the rest of the X series - is this really a big concern?

Both Pro handsets have the tripple camera system - which we already covered.

The 11 Pro Max has 3400mAh battery - again, like the screen, it's a bigger phone, and that bigger screen needs more power - so this makes sense - and is it really an issue. The extra juice equates to about 3 hours more contiuous use over the 11 standard.

The forces swinging in favour of the 11 Standard vs the 11 Pro Max

Massive price saving - on contract up to €15 per month.

Same A13 processor as the Pro's.

Same 12mp f2.2 front facing camera with up to 120fps (in 1080p) video

Lighter weight compared to the Pros

Same 4k 60fps capability with the rear camera array.

Waterproof - just like the Pro's, allbeit up to two meters and not 4.

Same sound system as the Pro's.

Range of colours available (not that important to most).

All in all, my decision to pull the trigger on the 11 over the 11 Pro Max was influenced by not being able to justify the higher cost against the better quality screen, which most users won't notice anyway, and the extra camera, which the majority of users wouldn't miss either. Plus, i don't think i have any pants or jackets with pockets big enough for the Pro Max, which would mean i'd need to buy one of those silly round-the-neck-pouch-thingies!

Living with the iPhone 11

Well, it's been a good start!

There are, needless to say, some really noticable improvements in this phone when comparted to my iPhone X - apart from the obvious fact that it works!

The A13 processor is markedly faster than the A11 of the X. Lightning fast in fact. This has, so far, been most noticable for me when using Face ID. You look at the phone and it opens in the exact instant your face is in front of it. 4GB of RAM, compared to 3GB in X certainly play a role here too.

The screen is clear, sharp and blacks are nicer than on the X dispite only having an IPS LCD here - i really see no real disadvantage of not having the OLED of the X - it really is a pleasant experience. The larger screen of the 11 is really nice to have in a phone that is only 20g heavier. A 3110mAh battery means extra play-time when compared to the 2617mAh cell in the X. And the final, really noticable thing is the front camera. Snapping a selfie for the Mrs, it really is noticable there is an addition 5mp in the front camera!

So, what about the camera?

This is where things get fun.

Enter the camera app, and you're by default in the standard wide angle mode. Hit the 1x button to jump to ultra wide angle, and, fuuuuuuck! How does that happen! I love having a really wide, border fish-eye lens on a DSLR - and this thing is just as much fun!

Even though the screen is of a lesser resolution and pixel-density when compared to the iPhone X, images and videos just look so much better. This is potentially down to the new, faster A13 Processor combining with the new IPS LCD.

Portrait mode looks great and focuses better and faster than before. Although the filters on offer in portrait mode still leave something to be desired! One really cool feature of portrait mode, is now you can adjust the aperture when editing the shot afterwards, this adjusts how blurred the background is, which is pretty cool!

We also now have the ability to shoot 4k video at 60fps, which means when using the clips in editing software you can slow these down to 24-30fps and have slow motion which remains crystal clear and natively in 4k resolution!

As mentioned, the iPhone 11 packs 2 cameras, but unlike the X the 2x Optical telephone lens has given way to an ultra wide angle lens.

The specs:

26mm f1.8 Wide Angle, 6 element lens with 100% focus coverage and on-board image stabilisation. Focus areas as before can be selected in the camera app. This lens uses Apples new Deep Fusion engine. There’s no setting for this, and it only works with the ‘Photo Capture Outside the Frame’ turned off - more on this soon!

13mm f2.4 Ultra Wide Angle, 5 element lens with 120 degree field of view. Focusing on this lens is Phase Detection auto-focus. Which essential means you can't, and don't need to select your focus area. Selecting areas of the screen while in Ultra Wide will of course set your exposure levels as always in iOS.

Night Mode

Night mode is only available when using the default wide-angle lens. It effectively lengthens the shutter speed depending on what the phone decides the available light is. It really does work well, but i suspect there is some serious ISO hocus pocus going on behind the scenes, which could have a negative effect on what you can achieve in this mode.

So, be warned, Night Mode is cool, but your phone is slowing down it’s shutter speed, and it can shoot at 10 seconds depending on the light - so you need to keep still. The on board stabilisation of the wide angle lens will help you out to a degree - but anything over 2 seconds (which is shown in the moon logo on the top of the screen, and you’re gonna need some kind of tripod.).

Ready for something clever? And confusing?

Deep Fusion. Yeah we mentioned that already. Some kind of Apple hocus pocus going on in the background that only those in cahoots with the dark arts will understand. It makes pictures with the default lens look sexier - and that’s about it. We don’t need to know any more.

BUT

The camera has one final cool-assed feature…

When shooting in a 4:3 or similar ratio, the phone will effectively take an image of everything outside of the ratio up to the maximum ratio available. This means, you can come back later and expand the crop of an image to add the parts that were outside the frame of the original shot. Neat. Watch out though - this feature only works when it’s activated in the camera settings in the settings menu. Aaaaand when it is active, then Deep Fusion is no longer active! I said it was confusing right?!

Missing 3d touch?

Yup! It’s gone. Did you ever used to test your strength by pressing the bathroom weighing scales as hard as you could? Well, that experience with the iPhone has finally been taking away from us. Is it an issue? Well, we used to long press things to get them to move or provide an expanded menu so i’m not really seeing the issue. Many have complained, but many also complained when the headphone jack disappeared. No-one died right?

Conclusion

Well, it’s early days, and as you’ve seen by my two lazy-arsed pictures taken with the phone to demonstrate the wide-angle lens, i’ve not done much shooting with it. But i’m excited to. The ultra wide angle lens looks a lot of fun!

For users of the iPhone X, upgrading to the 11 is a must! For XR/XS users, if you don’t care too much for taking pictures then stay maybe stay where you are. The speed advantages of the new processor are really cool if you’re into gaming, but otherwise, sit it out - in September you’ll most likely be able to get the 11 at a bargain price.

If you’ve money to throw away, then get the normal iPhone 11 and send me the €450! Of course, if you’re a rapper, then your trousers will most likely have pockets large enough to accommodate the 11 Pro Max’s girth!

Get the iPhone 11 here!

[theetherrealm-blog]

ZAY MAVERICK INTERVIEW. 1. How did you get into photography ? I first got into photography in september of 2016. i was going to a trade school called EMCC for photography. I’ve always loved movies and cinema and the thought of documenting everything was always so cool to me. so i was like fuck it ima go to this school for the next two years, for photography and see what happens hahaha. Ive always been into color theory & art, and especially fashion & music. it all ties in with photography you know. so i know i had to do something in that realm. all my friends make music so i was like well i’m always around music, so i might as well just document & see what happens. So at first i would just take a bunch pictures of my friends. i thought i was such hot shit. I had no clue what i was doing but it felt right somehow. 2. What was your first camera that you picked up ? And how does it differ from what you’re using now ? Sheeeesh um the first camera i ever picked up was a nikon d60, it was the one the trade school gave me for the year. I was super nervous because i felt like i was gonna get made fun of because i had no idea what i was doing hahahahaha. didn’t kno anything about photography at that point. but i’ve always been a visual person even with learning things like in school, i just had to “see” how it was done with like images or something. idk. But now, like i’m really good with digital & all that but i’ve always wanted to shoot with film, so that’s what i’ve been using for a while now. 3. Digital or film and why ? Film anyday. At the school i was going to, we only used digital and i was like i really wanna shoot film tho that’s kinda what i came here for. So outside of school one day i just bought myself like a bunch of film cameras. i think i have like 9 or 10 now. But i just taught myself how to shoot film, studied it, and even took some classes on b&w film too, just to make sure i really knew what i was doing. I got OD serious with it as soon as i noticed how fun it was. with film, the pictures just come out more raw & genuine. in the moment type shit. you can’t go back and check if the picture was fire or not, u just kinda gotta hope your lighting was right, everything was in focus, your composition came out good, etc. With film it’s like a “hit or a miss” , but once you notice your hitting more than your missing, then you know ur doing something really good. 4. Who or what has influenced your style of photography ? Music helps a ton. it plays a big part in everything in my life. for most shoots i put on music. it just helps. and now since i take pics of artist it just reflects on how much music really effects me. I love it. Old movies & cinema & cut scenes and shit like that also helped my style with photography. i can think of a scene from a movie or a music video that i love and just try to recreate with my own style added to it. I get really inspired from movies. Some of my favorites are “ Palo Alto” & “Dazed and Confused”. I just try have to have really strong colors in every shot too. Other than that i just find influence in myself. in some shots you can tell how important that picture was to me, just by the quality of the picture. 5. What has been your proudest and most memorable moment since you’ve began your career my proudest moment was when i went to xxl. they had me sign the red stereo block that all the rappers signed, i took some pictures there and talked to everyone there and just built great relationships. i was already in contact with them for a while and they told me to come through which was nice. shout out xxl, they always show love, i fuck with them heavy. They actually just had me take flicks for their freshman show in nyc which was fire. And my most memorable moment since i’ve started my career was when i shot carti. if you know me, you know playboi is like my favorite artist so when i took a couple of flicks of him it made me realize that this is exactly what i want to do, for a long time. 6. Who has been your favorite person to shoot with and why ? my favorite person to shoot with is probably my brother, & favorite artist, Tyreckdagoat. We been bestfriends for like ten years now. So we just have this super genuine connection so it just makes things go smoother. He’s super comfortable behind the camera too and goofy so that just makes the flicks come out even more fye. Also shooting with my bro Leigh Paris is always fun. I always been a fan of his music & found out about him through instagram in early 2016. We met around last summer in soho and just instantly clicked. We been best friends ever since then. The both of them just know exactly what to do behind a camera. I really don’t have to direct them or anything. They’re always in their own little world when we shoot. Shout out to the both of them. 7. What’s your creative process like ? i just try to put out the most genuine content. i hate staged pictures. i want them to mostly be off guard but if not i just want them to be as comfortable as they can behind a camera. eye contact is key. so the work that i put out literally represents that person, in one picture. by their facial expression or whatever they’re doing. i try to have every picture directly reflecting their personality. i think i did that best with the post malone pictures. easily. 8. Does your preferences of Music influence your pictures and how ? yes hahaha a bunch.. i mostly listen to rap but i really do listen to everything (except country). you can catch me bumping playboi carti one second than bieber the next then like earth wind & fire or something. it just varies all over the place i like all genres. especially with a specific artist, sometimes the music that they make directly reflects in a picture i take of them. i try to do that a lot too. idk, but i just kno that music influences me a lot. 9. What other talents do you have ? i swear i can sing. ask Anthony Iglesia. we do duets in the Wegmans parking lot every now & then hahahahaha. But nah in all seriousness i mean i can hoop. Ball was life before any of this to be honest. You can catch me at the east rochester courts every now & then. 10. Who would you like to capture in the future? bro i wanna shoot obama so bad. also Odell Beckham. and lil skies, i really like his aesthetic. of course like drake & kanye n stuff like that but i really wish i took flicks of xxxtentaction or michael jackson before they passed shit is crazy. RIP X! 11. What would be your dream job that has to do with photography ? i want to go on tour with an artist more than anything. That’s my #1 goal right now. Or becoming Justin Bieber’s personal photographer. That would be dope. Also to have a photo exhibit this year or next & a photo book of my best work. That’s going to happen real soon. Aside from that, I really want to get into directing music videos & movies. after i’m satisfied with my photography career & accomplished everything I wanted to do with photography i’ll def look into directing. That’s a move for sure. 12. Where can people view your extensive portfolio of portraits ? i’m currently making a website of all my work. i’ve been slacking on that but i’ve been super busy lately. but be on the look out for that. there will be poster sized prints up for sale for most pictures too so it’s lit. but for now you can see all my work on my instagram & twitter, @zaymaverick.

[misscrowthorn-blog]

Why I don’t flood facebook with pictures of my baby (and why you shouldn’t either)

I think I may have put maybe two or three pictures of my daughter on Facebook since she has been born, and you may have noticed I have not mentioned her by name on this blog.

That's not to say I don't take pictures of her. Oh hell no. I compile and order a book of her antics every month, and dump every adorable picture of her into a private group filled with my family and close friends. I love this kid. She's photogenic as fuck and the camera adores her.

So why don't I share her perfection with the general public on a day to day basis?

Because the internet is forever, kids.

Pictured: A series of tubes

You see. It’s weird to think about it, but this tiny baby is in fact a fully autonomous person. She is going to grow up and unlike my generation and the generations before that, she is born into a digital footprint, largely one that is crafted by her parents.

I like to say I’m from the internet. I’ve stomped around the internet long enough to remember chatting on AIM with strangers on dialup. I remember a time before the terms “meme” and “social media” were a thing.

Back then we were more careful on the internet. We knew not to tell our real name, or post pictures of ourselves, or if we do so to layer it under screen names and passwords. For the most part, most of us followed those rules. The ones that didn’t became lessons, digital age Morality Plays to scare us into guarding our asses. Ever heard of Christian Weston Chandler? He’s one of many poor shmucks that had their life ruined by the internet for oversharing.

For a good portion of us, there is very little to be found as far as internet footprint connectable to our real selves before facebook came on the scene. Before that, we lived relatively private lives. Our daily awkwardness was experienced and forgotten. Our adventures, our thoughts, our whole lives were allowed to be ours and ours alone, save photos stuffed in an album in the dresser.

Like this should be. I’m the midget.

We were allowed the privilege to control our online personas. We lived our lives. Meanwhile, the children that are being born and growing up in this day and age will have their entire lives documented forever on the internet from conception, including hers:

So whats so wrong about that?

Well. Lets review. I’ve personally had my facebook since sometime in highschool. So from excruciating things Ive posted myself:

Oh god. 

To flattering pictures posted by others:

Im so glad this hideous picture exists forever on the internet. Thanks, Mosey. 

From then on is available for public record. Now multiply that by years. Imagine if your awkward baby pictures from when you pooped in a bucket were a thing of public record like your weird highschool posts were.

Yeah.

My daughter deserves the autonomy she is owed as a human being, the autonomy and privacy we had, and literally every generation up until now had. She deserves the privacy to grow up and make mistakes and be goofy without the threat of permanent record like we had.

 Until she is of an age that she can make these decisions by herself, it is the responsibility of her family to sculpt her social media world. In this case, my husband and I have decided that less is more.

Yes, we post some big events. Her birth. Her milestones. But we leave the small day to day events to private groups and sharing with family. That way, when she is old enough to monitor and sculpt her social media herself, she is not faced with a lifetime of potentially embarrassing content. Her identity, her presence, how SHE wants to show herself is in her hands.

It’s hard. We want to share. I know. Our kids are amazing, and we are so proud of them and we want to show everyone how amazing they are.

But you have to remember, the internet is forever, and it is public record.

Including this shit. 

But I implore you, if you have children consider restricting how much you share about them. Give them at least as much control as you had.

In a world where social media can affect relationships, employment, and quality of life, the human you made deserves to own their own destiny and craft their persona how they see fit. That means as a parent, your responsibility is to limit what is made public.

Your child is a person, just like you.

[otmaromanovas]

those asks??? do em all buddy go nuts

ask and ye shall recieve

1: 6 of the songs you listen to most?When You Believe, You Will Be Found, Danse Macarbe, 96000, Africa, and Hey Jude2: If you could meet anyone on this earth, who would it be?Queen Elizabeth. She’s an absolute legend, and I’m going to be devastated when she dies. 3: Grab the book nearest to you, turn to page 23, give me line 17.Maria Eva Duarte de Peron had in large quantities many of the qualities needed to lift her from obscurity to fame4: What do you think about most?What the hell I’m going to do with my life5: What does your latest text message from someone else say?“You up for DTBD tonight??”6: Do you sleep with or without clothes on?Depends on the season. In autumn and winter I do, but sometimes summer can be way too warm (even at night)7: What’s your strangest talent?I can sightread sheet music perfectly8: Girls… (finish the sentence); Boys… (finish the sentence)Girls will be girls. Boys need to grow the hell up.9: Ever had a poem or song written about you?Not explicitly, no. 10: When is the last time you played the air guitar?I honestly can’t remember11: Do you have any strange phobias?No12: Ever stuck a foreign object up your nose?I had a piece of lego up there when I was a little kid13: What’s your religion?I’m Roman Catholic14: If you are outside, what are you most likely doing?Tanning, taking photos or reading in the shade15: Do you prefer to be behind the camera or in front of it?Behind it.16: Simple but extremely complex. Favorite band?I don’t think I have one. I fluctuate between favourite songs, and bands are even harder17: What was the last lie you told?I claimed having to work so I could be designated driver so I didn’t have to drink18: Do you believe in karma?I do. I try to do good things so good things happen to me. 19: What does your URL mean?I’ve loved Elizabeth Schuyler since I was an actual child, and her familial nicknames were Liza and Betsey20: What is your greatest weakness; your greatest strength?I’m so awkward around people I don’t know. I like to think I am the most supportive person you will ever knoe21: Who is your celebrity crush?Gal Gadot22: Have you ever gone skinny dipping?No!23: How do you vent your anger?Throwing pillows around and screaming24: Do you have a collection of anything?I’m working on a playbill collection of shows helmed by women. I started collecting shells from every beach I visit when I was a kid, and I still do that now. 

25: Do you prefer talking on the phone or video chatting online?Video chatting- I love seeing peoples faces when I talk to them26: Are you happy with the person you’ve become?I’m content. I wouldn’t say happy yet, but I’m getting there27: What’s a sound you hate; sound you love?Microphone feedback is literally the worst. Orchestras warming up is the greatest sound you will ever hear28: What’s your biggest “what if”?What if I dropped out of my degree and moved down to Canberra now, rather than in two years?29: Do you believe in ghosts? How about aliens?I think ghosts are just the memory of people who have lived. I do believe people see them. I absolutely refuse to think that humans are the only sentient species in the entire universe. 30: Stick your right arm out; what do you touch first? Do the same with your left arm.A mug of tea. A potted plant31: Smell the air. What do you smell?Freshly cut grass and cold air32: What’s the worst place you have ever been to?A B&B in Sydney that boiled the sausages for breakfast33: Choose: East Coast or West Coast?I live on an east coast, so I’m biased34: Most attractive singer of your opposite gender?If I had to choose, probably Calvin Harris35: To you, what is the meaning of life?Living to the best of your ability36: Define Art.Subjective37: Do you believe in luck?Yes38: What’s the weather like right now?Windy and kind of chilly. But not cold yet.39: What time is it?10:25am40: Do you drive? If so, have you ever crashed?I do! No (knock on wood). I’ve been in the car when it has crashed, but I’ve never caused it.41: What was the last book you read?The Book of the Dead by the New York Times. It’s a collection of the obituaries they’ve published since they were founded. It’s grim, but so interesting42: Do you like the smell of gasoline?A little, yes43: Do you have any nicknames?So many! My favourite is Goldilocks (I used to have really long, blonde, curly hair) 44: What was the last film you saw?Moana. I was babysitting my neighbours daughters and they suggested it. 

45: What’s the worst injury you’ve ever had?Okay so I was a water polo player for years, and had some major beef with this girl. We played against each other in an interschool competition. It was a REALLY violent game. I ended up giving her a black eyes and I loosened some of her teeth- she gave me a concussion, a cracked rib, and managed to nearly dislocate my knee. Oh yeah, and I nearly drowned. Great times. We aren’t allowed to play on opposing teams anymore.

46: Have you ever caught a butterfly?I almost always have a bouquet of flowers with me, and they like to land on me, but I’ve never caught one47: Do you have any obsessions right now?Vinyl records48: What’s your sexual orientation?Cis-straight49: Ever had a rumour spread about you?That I had sex with four people in a tent on the one night. Yeah, nope. This girl doesn’t have sex in tents. This girl doesn’t even camp.50: Do you believe in magic?Not the fairy magic, but yes51: Do you tend to hold grudges against people who have done you wrong?Oh my god yes52: What is your astrological sign?Aries53: Do you save money or spend it?I try to save, but usually end up spending it all.54: What’s the last thing you purchased?A pair of Rosie the Riveter-style overalls for a 1940′s themed costume party55: Love or lust?Love. It’ll last longer56: In a relationship?Not right now57: How many relationships have you had?Two. Maybe three, but we never defined what it was58: Can you touch your nose with your tongue?No.59: Where were you yesterday?I was at work60: Is there anything pink within 10 feet of you?My headphones, mouse pad and fingernails61: Are you wearing socks right now?No62: What’s your favourite animal?Quokkas. Literally the cutest things I have ever seen63: What is your secret weapon to get someone to like you?64: Where is your best friend?In Sydney (I only see her once a year, which is just not good enough for me)65: Give me your top 5 favourite blogs on Tumblr.lucreziaborgia, runawayforthesummer, and that’s literally it. 66: What is your heritage?My dad is Italian, my mother is Australian. His family are Italian, her family are Irish and English67: What were you doing last night at 12AM?Drinking the university bar dry68: What do you think is Satan’s last name?Smith or Jones. Lucifer Smith sounds terrifying, does it not?69: Biggest turn ons?Neck kisses, a well-tailored suit, button up shirts with the sleeve pushed up over the elbow, a uniform (especially army), just a little bit of scruff70: Are you the kind of friend you would want to have as a friend?I think so, yes.71: You are walking down the street on your way to work. There is a dog drowning in the canal on the side of the street. Your boss has told you if you are late one more time you get fired. What do you do?Save the dog. I’m the boss at work, so if I get fired, everything collapses.72: You are at the doctor’s office and she has just informed you that you have approximately one month to live. a) Do you tell anyone/everyone you are going to die? b) What do you do with your remaining days? c) Would you be afraid?I’d tell my family and close friends. I’d spend all my money on travel- see more shows, roadtrip, party. I wouldn’t be afraid.73: You can only have one of these things; trust or love.Trust.74: What’s a song that always makes you happy when you hear it?The Cha Cha Slide. so many good memories attached to that song, and it’s impossible not to smile when you’re dancing to it.75: What are the last four digits in your cell phone number?346276: In your opinion, what makes a great relationship?Trust and openness 77: How can I win your heart?Flowers, a new edition of a classic book, and a love of music and theatre78: Can insanity bring on more creativity?Yes. It gives you a perspective that not a lot of other people have79: What is the single best decision you have made in your life so far?Dumping my last boyfriend. That little shit was going nowhere in life. 80: What size shoes do you wear?I’m an 1181: What would you want to be written on your tombstone?“You still owe me money”82: What is your favourite word?Fuck. or serendipity because it’s so fun to say83: Give me the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the word; heart.Warm84: What is a saying you say a lot?“I’m just putting it out there”85: What’s the last song you listened to?Hello Hurricane by Switchfoot86: Basic question; what’s your favourite colour/colours?Rose pink, mint green and sky blue87: What is your current desktop picture?My best friend and dabbing on top of the Sydney Harbour Bridge

88: If you could press a button and make anyone in the world instantaneously explode, who would it be?Donald Trump

89: What would be a question you’d be afraid to tell the truth on?Have you ever gotten pregnant?90: Turn offs?Not showering, sexism/racism, cargo pants, CROCS91: You accidentally eat some radioactive vegetables. They were good, and what’s even cooler is that they endow you with the super-power of your choice! What is that power?Invisibility92: where are your parents from? Dad is from Tully, mum is from Longreach93: You can erase any horrible experience from your past. What will it be?First boyfriend cheating on me. 94: You have the opportunity to sleep with the music-celebrity of your choice. Who would it be?I dont’ know.95: You just got a free plane ticket to anywhere. You have to depart right now. Where are you gonna go?New York City96: Do you have any relatives in jail?Not that I know of97: Have you ever thrown up in the car?Nope. I’ve been driving when someone has thrown up, but never done it myself98: Ever been on a plane?All the time!99: If the whole world were listening to you right now, what would you say?Y’all have got to fucking chill