PORTFOLIO
Portfolio is Electric Blue Skies main reason to exist.
As the name suggests, this section of my blog is devoted to videogame tourism using the principles of everyday photography.
Since not every game bows to the photographer’s will, I decided to approach every single game according to the freedom it left to me. So two different kind of collections were born in the process: one more “virtual geographic” oriented, the other more “storyline” driven.
The virtual geographic category is the one allowed by photo-modes (on consoles) and by the free-camera option (in PC games). Thanks to these options, I’m the director, photographer and cameraman behind my very personal screenshots. And I’m free to obey the dogmas of photography or simply answer to my personal idea of gusto and style. The games representing this approach at best are: Halo (who has a dedicated section here on EBS), Uncharted, Red Dead Redemption and Half-Life 2 among the others. All these games left to me enough freedom (also via some tricks or mods) to freely explore their architectures and landscapes (sometimes applying elaborate effects such as depth of field and focal adjustment, motion blur, tilt, FOV zoom and brightness) resulting in pulsing and colorful screenshots, mirroring the best art design in gaming. When you read about virtual tourism or videogame photography, well this is it. This is videogame photography in its purest form.
But there are some games completely closed to the exterior. They sport some fix angles, do not allow any camera-hack and what the poor game-photographer can do is just grabbing some screenshots, leaving to the game director the choice of angles and cuts. And that’s where I went for the storyline approach: while playing I follow the storyline from the beginning to the end, portraying in the process all the chapters, levels, character, bosses and action on screen. And despite all the odds I try to give my personal touch to these screenshots nonetheless, splitting my screen-grab style in two categories.
The first one is the common screen grab. It simply needs a capture device (a Blackmagic Intensity Pro) plugged into my PC to grab screenshots at will from my consoles. And when dealing with PC gaming, the work is just a key away. I grabbed this way the whole Ikaruga and Child of Eden collections. These two amazing-looking games have no photo-mode at all. The only thing I could do was chosing the right moment to stop the action and grab the screenshot, of course after removing the HUD via options. It’s not the true-photographer work, but it takes some taste and sense of look nonetheless. One second before or one second after may lead to a change in the very nature of the subject resulting in a way better/worst screenshot.
Then there’s the creative screen grab. This one is represented by my Shadow of the Colossus and Final Fantasy X collections. It’s still a screen grab but with a very personal cut, that sometimes completely changes the look of the screenshot. It consists in cutting and editing screenshots changing their format and giving them a whole new appearance. Look for example at this screenshot of Shadow of The Colossus, isn’t it gargantuan epic? And it comes from a 16:9 pic which was cut to fit at best my photography taste. And now take a look at this 16:9 Final Fantasy X screenshot. It looks fine, but the whole game is 4:3 and it was my personal intervention to change the look of it.
But still, I would hardly call this “real” videogame photography.
The games listed in the Dropdown Menu are not my whole production: it’s just my most recent production or my most requested stuff. Some titles have been removed because they just don’t keep up with my present quality requirements or because they had their time, but they they are still present in my archives! So try also use the searchbox on the top right of the web page, you might find something useful, or, if you are dangerously lazy, check my 404 error page to see all the categories (=games) I created until now, but I can’t assure you’ll find existing stuff.
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