Game Pieces and a Softbox

The theme in the Macro Mondays group on Flickr was "game pieces" this week. We don't have too many games around here anymore. Most all of the games we play are electronic, so there aren't any physical pieces to photograph.

I've been looking around for better ways to light my subjects. I've been thinking about getting an umbrella and/or reflector. While doing some research and looking at other people's photo, I noticed that soft boxes are popular for light. I forget where, but I read one article about making your own soft box. I decided to give it a try. I took a shoebox and lined it with aluminum foil. I cut a hole in one end just large enough for one of my flash units. I covered the top of the box with some tracing paper to diffuse the light. I used that as the main light in the macros below.

I couldn't resist using Scrabble tiles to spell out the name of the group. I'm sure there will be a lot of people doing something like this.



I thought the colors of the pieces used to keep track of your armies in the game of Risk would make an interesting shot. I think this photo best illustrates how the soft box placed to the right gives a soft illumination but still casts a bit of a shadow to the left of the game pieces.



Finally, here are two photos of some Hanafuda cards.

Rock, Paper, Scissors on Steroids

Most everyone has probably used the rock, paper, scissors game to decide something. On the off chance you're not familiar with the game, you can go to the World Rock Paper Scissors society web page to see the internationally recognized hand signals and learn more about the ins and outs of the game.

If that's too simple, I found out there are more advanced versions of the game thanks to the Unlikely Moose blog. The UMOP.com site has several variants that involve added hand signals. The chart for the seven signal version of rock, paper, scissors is shown to the right and the large version can be found here along with an explanation of the arrows. If that's still not enough, here is the chart for the 101 hand signal version. When you need a chart like that to learn the signals for an RPS game and decide who wins a match, things are out of hand (pun intended).

Desktop Tower Defense

I was reading Jeremy Zawodny's blog (he's a pilot) and saw his post about the on-line game called Desktop Tower Defense. It's a real time strategy game where you try to prevent invaders from passing across a desktop by using various types of towers to shoot and destroy them. It sounds too simple to be much fun. However, Jeremy's post is accurate. It's an addictive game -- don't click on the link.