» Photography

Building an IKEA Studio

Skevos Mavros — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 13:17:20 +0000

I’m currently building a small recording booth in my study using mostly IKEA furniture, so this article on MusicRadar How to Build Your Own Studio in 11 Easy Steps was a well-timed read for me (even if not all of their eleven steps seem that easy to me!). I like their idea of plonking a whole new pre-built building down and fitting it out from scratch, but that’s not an option for me right now, so I’m using one side of my study/granny flat, some large IKEA cupboards, and some padding from IKEA and Clarke Rubber. I’ll post photos of my progress as I go.

It’s not designed for music production, with sound proofing strong enough to acoustically isolate a drum kit. I just need the ability to record voice and Foley performances without the sound of my PC fan and hard drives chattering coming through onto the recordings.

It’s coming along, but it’s taking longer than I expected (of course) and the booth door is still going to be a challenge.

Snake Season

Skevos Mavros — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 05:17:31 +0000

Maisy

We’ve seen a couple of snakes on the property in the last few weeks, but today I heard the dogs (Jed and Maisy) barking and went out to discover their latest kill – a green snake. Combined with the large brown snake Kareena saw yesterday, and it’s definitely snake season here…

Ninderry Manor

Skevos Mavros — Mon, 15 Nov 2004 16:10:54 +0000

We spent the weekend at Ninderry Manor for Kareena’s birthday. Had a great time, the hosts were wonderful, the food was amazingly good. We did a bit of Japanese calligraphy, a bit of reading, even a bit of watercolour painting. And I took a few snapshots.

(click for a larger version)

Star Wars Episode III

Skevos Mavros — Fri, 05 Nov 2004 15:36:36 +0000

I just watched the trailer for the next (last?) Star Wars film. Almost the entire first half was footage and audio from the original Star Wars film (the film everyone else now calls “Episode Four”, but what most of my generation just call “Star Wars”) and the other previous films. The trailer looks great, with lots of shots that suggest some fun scenes. One shot that caught my eye was a brief one of C3PO standing in what looked like the hallway of the Tantive IV Rebel Blockade Runner, a ship we first saw in the opening shot of the first film. Interesting…

Will it be a good movie? There’s no doubt that it will be a great moment when Anakin Skywalker puts on the Darth Vader mask, breathes like Darth Vader, speaks with James Earl Jones’ voice, and is backed up with John Williams‘ Darth Vader Theme – I hope that moment is handled well. But will it be a good movie? Hmmm… It’s got Chewie in it (and a whole load of other Wookies). It’s got a big lightsaber fight between Anakin and Kenobi. Hmmm… Yes, it will rock. Yes. It will. It will (performs Jedi-mind-trick on self).

The trailer reminded me of my trip to Sydney in December 2002 where I saw the Star Wars exhibition. I took a few snaps with my 2MP digital camera of the props, costumes, and models on display. Here are some of them:

(click for a larger version)

City Botanic Gardens

Skevos Mavros — Wed, 29 Sep 2004 16:05:47 +0000

At one of our favourite picnic spots, the Brisbane City Botanic Gardens, I took a few snapshots.

(click for a larger version)

Turkish Delight

Skevos Mavros — Fri, 17 Sep 2004 17:33:57 +0000

We just ate at a wonderful Turkish resaurant, complete with belly dancer. Absolutely delicious. Er, the food that is. Well, and the belly dancer. I had my Canon EOS300D digital SLR with me:

(click for a larger version)

Digital Photos

Skevos Mavros — Mon, 16 Feb 2004 20:34:48 +0000

I’ve rediscovered still photography thanks to my two mega-pixel Canon digital camera. The camera doesn’t really offer full manual controls, but it’s so easy to experiment with I’ve taken literally over five thousand photos with it (yes, most of which are awful).

I’ve placed some of my less-awful digital photographs on a seperate server (the deviantart service). You can view them here:

MavArt digital photos

They mostly consist of panorama images created by stitching several digital images together using several pieces of panorama software (mostly I just use the one that came with the camera).

Farewell Singapore

Skevos Mavros — Sat, 02 Aug 2003 18:17:31 +0000

Our ten day holiday in Singapore is ending, and it was really great – how people can visit Singapore for only two days and think they’ve seen even a fraction of what we’ve seen these last ten days is beyond us. What a great country – so much to see and do, especially for people like us who like to eat yummy food and wander through beautiful places. Speaking of food, I’m pretty sure that there are more vegetarian eating joints in Little India alone than there were meal times in our entire stay.

I’m only posting this note now, at the end of our holiday, because I told a few people I would update my website from Singapore, and it occurs to me that they might think we’ve dropped off the face of the planet by now (assuming anyone even noticed that I was gone – I lead a hermit’s life). We’ve been so busy that this is the first time I’ve sat in front of a computer in ten days (I’m on an internet PC in the Singapore Qantas lounge).

Ten days without any computer time at all – quite a feat for me. That’s a sobering thought – I haven’t gone ten days without some computer time in, hmmm, since I was sixteen I think. That’s nineteen years ago. Even longer if you include the Mavros Family Atari 2600 games machine…

I’ve taken well over 2,000 digital photos while on holiday (I took a digital stills camera, a portable USB hard-drive/card-reader, and no video camera), and will post some of the better images soon – Singapore is a very photographer-friendly place. If I had been smart enough to put my USB cable in my carry on luggage, I could upload them now. Dang.

UPDATE: Oh great, it sounds like there may be a delay in our flight due to bad weather. We were meant to leave at 10:50pm local time (8:50pm Brisbane time), but it’s a bit thundery outside and the flight before ours has been rerouted. Looks like we might be in Singapore a bit longer than we planned. Which could be interesting, as I have a lecture to give the day after I return…