Mitama Matsuri (Lantern Festival)

Over the 3 day weekend (thanks to Marine Day) I was able to travel up to Tokyo and explore Yasukuni Shrine for the first time. It's out near Akiba in the Chuo Ward so it took me quite a while to get up to the East side of Tokyo. The following photos were shot on my D40X.

Red Bubble Shirts

More t-shirt photos sent in from supporters who've purchased my shirts. Thanks so much guys for the support. It means the world to me and I really really appreciate it.

Instagram Sketches

Oh hey. I got an instagram account. I'm honestly surprised my terrible AU android can handle it. Here are some doodles from this past month from my journal taken with instagram. My name on there is wastedwings. Follow me?

Skyrim Hoodie Pictures

Varg (who originally commissioned me) finally got his Skyrim hoodie in the mail. These are his photos. You can view his blog here: http://deadandaway.blogspot.com.au/2012/05/hedengangen.html

Skyrim Hoodie Design

My first zipped hoodie design! I'm pretty pleased with this. The creative idea and initial sketch was done by my friend Varg (who commissioned me to do this). It's a 6 color design based on the game Skyrim. Completed in Adobe Illustrator and the mock-up was done in photoshop to show placement.

Hanami/ Cherry Blossom Viewing

I haven't uploaded any of my photography in ages on this blog. Once a year (for about 2 weeks) a major event happens in Japan; cherry blossoms are in bloom! This year I travelled to Shinjuku and Ueno to celebrate. The following photos were taken w/ my Nikon D40X.

Fabric for Sale

My test swatches finally arrived in the mail this past Friday. I waited almost a month for overseas shipping from Spoonflower, but the result is worth it. I apologize that I took these photos with my cellphone camera, but the colors are true and quite vibrant. I really like the way the digital printing looks. I made some minor adjusts to 2 of the prints, but otherwise, these came out PERFECT.

This is a shot of swatches uncut:

This is my stack of 8"x8" swatches all nice and neat:

All 21 of my patterns are available for purchase over on Spoonflower here: link

I have girls, boys, floral and anime collections currently available for sale. I will be adding more adult collections in the future.

T-Shirts for Sale/ Competition

Awesome photos of my 99 Red Balloons shirt and Alice In Wonderland shirt sent in by Royce and Caryn. You can follow Royce on twitter here. If you would like to buy either of these shirts, I have them on sale over on my Red Bubble page here: http://www.redbubble.com/people/wastedwings

Also, I am still competing in the Daily Shirt competition over on Design By Humans. Please go vote for my shirt! Registration takes less than 30 seconds. You can vote for that here: http://www.designbyhumans.com/vote/detail/97575

Photo Restoration

So this week I took on a big challenge, I decided to restore an old family photo from 1933 of my great grandparents (on my dad's side). The original size of the image (barrel and all) is about 4" x 3". The image itself is about 2.5" x 1.75". My family is pretty sure they are at the World's Fair on Lake Michigan. The first image is the unrestored image and the latter is my restoration work.

Development problems...

When I received my negatives back from Sam's Club two days ago I was mortified with what they called processing film. My negatives had residue on them (it looks to me like they didn't do a perma wash) and I had to give all of the prints back and only pay for the negatives because they had printed one roll backwards and then there was residue coating the other roll.

Since I don't have photo chemicals or a large industrial dryer at home I made due with my hair dryer and bathroom sink to wash the negatives off that were coated with water marks. God they put me through a huge hassle over something that was supposed to be so easy. So I scanned in all the negatives and just like I thought, the graduation pictures came out pretty dark (due to the horrible lighting provided by the Van Wezel) and since I was sitting so far back the faces are tiny. Thus I am only including a couple of pictures from both of the rolls of film. At least I got a good portrait of Jack out of all of this, which I am going to upload on DA as well because I really like the photo. ^_^

I will be getting my 7 rolls of film back from Boston this coming week. I shot these using an old Yashika camera and 400 Fujifilm.