TOPIC: Photos of True Dungeon 2015 - taken by Graven

Hi everyone,

This year Jeff was gracious enough to let me do something I've been wanting to do since my first TD run... take photos in the dungeon! It was by far the best part of my GenCon experience. Thanks Jeff!

So here's a link to the TD photos on my Facebook page. Btw feel free to like it

www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.418398908355558.1073741835.373471862848263&type=1&l=c858378d13

There are still lots more to post as I get time. (After getting home from GenCon I hastily went through my 24 GB of TD photos and uploaded all of the good stuff to Jeff. Life is busy and I'm finally getting some time to go through these again and edit / post the good ones. )


I want to say thank you to the NPC's, and the patient/helpful DMs. A really big thank you to Stuart, now I know why there's a token named Stu-pendous And thank you to anyone else who helped.


Enjoy


Graven
Logical Focus Photography

Getting to take photos:
Mike S asked in another thread how I got to take photos

I've offered to take photos for a couple years now. This is the first year Jeff has taken me up on it. I think it helped that I had my "True Portraits of TD" project posted (unofficially) along with other photos, so Jeff's had an opportunity to see some of my work taken in the lowlight of the storyscape. I also think Jeff was looking to get some photos of the NPCs. So maybe my portraits helped to?

I told him I wasn't looking to replace anyone as the official photographer, just the opportunity to take photos in the dungeon. I committed to do a full run of both dungeons, take any photos he needed, to give TD a copy of my photos, and to take whatever security measures he wanted to prevent cheating.

Jeff gave me a heads up about the time commitment required to take photos in the dungeon, and said if I was still interested in taking photos I could.

The Experience:
Jeff was really awesome, and sent me a list of tips on how to shoot in the dungeon based on his experience, and a list of equipment I would need. Luckily I had most equipment, along with other gear I knew would help. The only thing I was missing was a real wide-angle lens (<18mm). Once I got the go ahead to take photos, I bought a wide-angle lens to get full room shots. (The new lens single-handed wiped out my token fund.) Jeff also said that they rarely get good photos of the NPC (due to low light was implied).. So I accepted that as a challenge and focused where I could on getting NPC photos.

At GenCon, he set me up with Stuart O., who took me through both dungeons, coordinated getting NPC's for me, and in the second dungeon was a great assistant. There were lots of times he had to step out to help with TD situations, so I was lucky to have him. I also got to meet Lori who was really cool too.

I did a full run of both dungeons during break bubbles,. The photography was more difficult than I expected because of the time limitations. ~12 min to figure out what I was going to shoot and how, executing, checking if the pic turned out, repeat, and moving on before an evil party of adventures bust into the room. I expected the rooms have very low light, but I was amazed by just how dark some rooms were. In those rooms it was difficult even focus because I could not see the object clearly enough to focus on it. Comparing to my normal runs, the LEDs we carry in actually add quite a bit of light to the room as a whole. I would have loved more time to do more long exposures and compose cool photos. Sadly It worked out that I only got 2min with the Mindflayer.. So many shots I wanted to take

The NPC's were all awesome to work with, and thier costumes / makup were great. I did find that over the course of a shift the Drow makeup would significantly crack. However In normal dungeon runs I never noticed unless I really looked, (or looked back through my photos)

It was an awesome time!

Love your pics!
And thanks for shedding some light (hah!) on the difficulties of working in a dark dungeon.

I hope you get to do this again : )

Very cool pics, love it when stuff like this is made available. They make it a lot easier to explain TD to my muggle friends.

Raven wrote: Love your pics!
And thanks for shedding some light (hah!) on the difficulties of working in a dark dungeon.

I hope you get to do this again : )

Thank you! I hope so too. Sorry I didn't get time to setup a shot of a knife fight between Nightshade and a Drow Assassin… That would have been cool.

Picc wrote: Very cool pics, love it when stuff like this is made available. They make it a lot easier to explain TD to my muggle friends.

Thanks! And yes they do, which is also part of why I took them and am posting them. For me, really it's the animatronics that are the hardest to describe. I missed them this year. Looking forward to their return.

These pictures are excellent! Please let us know when you have time to sort through them all and upload more. Subscribing to this thread for updates

Graven wrote: Sorry I didn't get time to setup a shot of a knife fight between Nightshade and a Drow Assassin… That would have been cool.

:o
That would be so cool.
Maybe next year?

Posted another 13 photos.

www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.418398908355558.1073741835.373471862848263&type=1&l=c858378d13

Enjoy

They look great!

Raven wrote: They look great!

Thanks, and happy Thanksgiving

To you as well!

I hope all the Canadian forumites enjoyed a delicious Thanksgiving, and reflected on the many things they have to be Thankful for.
I hope our American friends can do the same next month!

And, um, the Aussie crew... uh. Brad: When/how/do Australians celebrate Thanksgiving? It's in a different part of the year with your upside-down seasons, right?