Ayrlego Posted February 9, 2016 Posted February 9, 2016 First Landing by David, on Flickr Sergeant Liam Gowan watched the approaching shoreline. A veteran sergeant in the Queen’s Army, Sergeant Gowan, together with a small detachment from his light company, had departed Bellson two weeks ago enroute to the new world. In the front of the boat, his Officer, Captain Dirk Allcock, stood also studying the approaching land. The rumour in the regiment before leaving Corrington was that Captain Allcock had petitioned specially for detached duty for this expedition. Surprisingly the army seemed to have approved, possibly because as another rumour had it, Captain Allcock had offered to fund the expedition. After briefly resupplying in Arlinsport, the small Sloop they were travelling in headed south east, towards the rumoured new lands. This morning land had been sighted and Captain Allcock had lowered the sloop’s boat to send a party ashore. “Reckon there are any of them savages here Sir” asked Sergeant Gowan. Captain Allcock, shaken out of his intense study of the rapidly approaching shoreline, replied “I really would not have the slightest idea Sergeant Gowan, it is entirely possible we are the first Halosians to ever set foot here.” He paused, “Then again, maybe not. If a native people do inhabit this fair island, remember your co-religious Oleander friends may have already been here, burning and slaughtering and whatnot, so we should ensure we are ready for anything.” Sergeant Gowan originally hailed from Peppin, one of the ‘Conquered Isles’ that had historically sided with Olean in the ages old conflict between Corrington and Olean. Now although firmly incorporated into Corrington, a large percentage of people from these areas retained the Faith as their religion. Despite this, a disproportionate number of men from the conquered isles served in the Queen’s Army, where they enjoyed a reputation as fierce but somewhat undisciplined soldiers. “Not to worry about that Sir, the boys are always ready for anything, so they are” said Sergeant Gowan grinning. He rather liked his aristocratic Captain, whose ambivalent and even sometimes foppish manner disguised a natural ability for all things military, a studious approach to his duties and a care for the men under his command. Soon after the party assembled on the beach while the sailors ferried supplies ashore. Although impatient to press inland and explore, Captain Allcock paused while the Corrington flag was symbolically raised on the beach. ----- Possibly the longest story I've ever written for a build, but hopefully it was worth it! Not really happy with the photography again on this build but hopefully you'll see some improvement soon! The build itself is pretty simple, but as the construction progressed I decided I liked it that way! As always comments and criticism very welcome! Opps! Topic should read [COR-Ch1B]... sorry! May I request a mod change it? Thank you *** EDIT: Added better picture - not sure about the angle now though!!*** Quote
Captain Dee Posted February 9, 2016 Posted February 9, 2016 Beautiful landing scene. I like the cluster of trees and the surf breaking on the beach is lovely. The sand has good form and color and the rest of the plants fill the background well. Your old minifigs look great in that setting and the flagpole being hoisted is a nice feature. Good work. Quote
dr_spock Posted February 9, 2016 Posted February 9, 2016 CH1B entry - fixed. Nice work on the flag raising. Looks like they also have a good supply of drinks. Quote
Graham Gidman Posted February 9, 2016 Posted February 9, 2016 Yup, that's pretty cool. Well done! Quote
TitusV Posted February 9, 2016 Posted February 9, 2016 Nice entry, IT really reminds me of my own ChIIa entry! I really like the vegetation, and that flag os also very cool! Quote
Puvel Posted February 9, 2016 Posted February 9, 2016 Nice build and well written story! The beach looks good and you have a nice variation in the trees there. The minifig posing is really well done, raising that flag looks very good too. For some reason I really like that pile of supplies, well done! Quote
Ayrlego Posted February 9, 2016 Author Posted February 9, 2016 Thank you everyone - I've added a picture to the first post which in my opinion has much better colours Quote
Garmadon Posted February 9, 2016 Posted February 9, 2016 Excellent landscaping Ayrlego, awesome work with those palm trees, and the beach, water, and vegetation are all great and the transitions are wonderfully executed as wall! Very nice base too, and last but not least, excellent job with the minifig activity and that flag! Quote
Kai NRG Posted February 9, 2016 Posted February 9, 2016 Nice build! The palm trees are great and I really like the hints of olive in the grass! The different colors of sand are nice too! The second picture is much better because it doesn't have the harsh sunlight shadows. Quote
SilentWolf Posted February 9, 2016 Posted February 9, 2016 The build is very nice. I love the transition from the water to the wet sand, and then to dry sand before transitioning to the jungle. The raising of the flag is a nice touch as well. I also love the base/edging you used for the presentation. Quote
blackdeathgr Posted February 9, 2016 Posted February 9, 2016 Excellent landing, especially regarding sand and tropic vegetation. Also really great is the pile of supplies. It is good that you wrote a nice side-story to accompany the MOC as i love reading those. And last but not least, i think i prefer your first pic. The angle is so perfect and after all, it IS sunny in those islands!! Quote
Captain Braunsfeld Posted February 9, 2016 Posted February 9, 2016 First picture is absolutely fine and sufficient - well done! Quote
Vedauwoo Posted February 10, 2016 Posted February 10, 2016 Very nice! Super build! I would kill for LEGO to produce those palm tree trunk parts again...... Quote
SkaForHire Posted February 10, 2016 Posted February 10, 2016 Wow! This is a great entry! Very nicely done, smooth, good colors, good trees! Where do those green epaulets come from? Quote
Mike S Posted February 10, 2016 Posted February 10, 2016 Where do those green epaulets come from? I noticed that too... Ninjago 2016 already out in Australia? Quote
Ayrlego Posted February 10, 2016 Author Posted February 10, 2016 Thank you everyone for your comments! Very nice! Super build! I would kill for LEGO to produce those palm tree trunk parts again...... Thanks Vedauwoo, they are all from my childhood collection, a number of the trunk parts are very loose, one had to be blue-tacked in place – probably the reason Lego stopped making them – which is a pitty as they are great! I noticed that too... Ninjago 2016 already out in Australia? Thanks Ska and Mike, yeah they are from the new Ninjago line - set 70601, I picked up two for the sole purpose of acquiring the epaulettes (although the dark orange window pieces and two black moustaches are nice as well!) Even though the set only has one pair, in good lego tradition they give you a second pair as a spare piece! That the rest of the world hasn't seen them yet would explain why I can't find them on Bricklink yet, funny I didn't think we'd be first to get anything down here!! Quote
SkaForHire Posted February 10, 2016 Posted February 10, 2016 I am really looking forward to those pieces... probably the first ninjago I will buy in a long time! They look very sharp on our red uniforms! But again, I really love this MOC. I keep coming back to see it and think, yep, those are our boys! Quote
Maxim I Posted February 10, 2016 Posted February 10, 2016 Amazing propaganda MOC for Corrington!!! I really love it :) The beach, sea and vegetation, it all looks so naturally :) Quote
Bregir Posted February 10, 2016 Posted February 10, 2016 Great looking beach and grove there, Ayrlego. I agree with the nice things already said (the story is especially well written!) and will add that you have perfectly managed to include the boat, without actually having the boat in the picture. Quote
Gideon Posted February 21, 2016 Posted February 21, 2016 (edited) Great scene! I like the fig posing a lot, and the lanscaping is very good as well Some photography advice (rather lengthy since now I'm getting technical ) is however to not shoot the builds at such a wide angle, both because your 18-200 mm lens has a lot of distortion at that focal length which can be seen as the curving of the front edge (although fairly easily corrected in post-processing if you use for example Lightroom) and because the front of the build gets magnified a lot while the back of the build is shrunk due to the perspective. I would recommend backing away at least until you can zoom to 50-75 mm. Since it looks like you wanted this shot with sunlight I'm not going to give my usual suggestion to shoot in the shade (But on your second picture without the harsh sunlight the colors come out much nicer), but you've used a very small aperture which hurts sharpness while you didn't put the ISO to the lowest possible. I would suggest to manually set the ISO to 100 (if that is the lowest on your camera?) and the shortest possible shutter speed, while setting the aperture to no bigger than about f/16. On the second picture on the other hand, the aperture is too large, which causes the front and back of the build to be slightly out of focus. (I generally shoot my builds at around f/11-f/13 to get as much depth of field as I need while avoiding the sharpness loss caused by diffraction if i were to go for a too high f-stop). To summarize: Your splendid camera has a M-mode, don't be afraid to use it! Edit: A comparision of the distortion on different focal lengths (source: DxOMark Nikon AF-S DX VR Zoom-Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6G IF-ED mounted on Nikon D300s : Measurements) Nikon 18-200 on D300s @ 18 mm Nikon 18-200 on D300s @ 70 mm Edited February 21, 2016 by Gideon Quote
Ayrlego Posted March 5, 2016 Author Posted March 5, 2016 Wow, somehow I missed this great advice Gideon! Thank you very much, I shall be studying it very closely! I tried photographing my latest build from much further away, as per your advice, still the focus isn't great. The Nikon camera I'm using at the moment is borrowed from a friend, I very much need to learn how to use the manual mode and will endeavour to master it before I submit my challenge 2 entries. Again thank very so much for taking the time to provide such detailed feedback. Quote
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