The Long Road Back

In Which the

DWARVEN BATTLE MEDIC

Attempts to Reconcile

CERTAIN LAMENTABLE EVENTS 

and Makes a 

FATEFUL DECISION.

For reasons that I cannot quite understand, this expansion hasn't really caught my imagination. Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of really great things about this expansion; I'm really impressed with the levelling experience, for example, and the visuals are spectacular—probably the best that WoW has ever done. Mists of Pandaria has humour, great stories and a lot of things to do. But it just hasn't captured me: I like Pandaria, but I'm not really excited about Pandaria. And I don't know why.

Actually, I think I can make a guess. I think it has something to do with the fact that I have no goal to achieve this expansion.

Once I hit 90 I simply felt lost. Run a few heroics, get some decent gear, start running LFR. Once that was done, then what? Dailies? To what end? What is the point of gearing up a character if not to raid? It becomes rather like a girl dressing up in her best ballgown, twirling in front of her mirror night after night because she knows she's never going to get the chance to go to the dance.

At the risk of beating the same old dead horse and paraphrasing real-life Forsaken zombie James Carville, "IT'S THE RAIDING, STUPID".

Since January when some tumultuous real-life changes hit the Battle Medic household, I have essentially been taking a sabbatical from my Paladin. I've spent very little time playing WoW since then, and the vast majority of it has been on various different Alts on various different servers. Alt levelling, low level PVP, dipping my foot in the dark side of Horde levelling. Basically anything other than logging onto my main.

THE LOW POINT

So imagine my surprise when I finally do log in only to discover that my guild has transferred servers. And they went Horde as well. Double whammy.

It was a surprise, to say the least. The letter that is automatically sent from Blizzard is a terse slap in the face as far as notifications go. In fairness to the guild, I wasn't around so it's certainly not their fault that I didn't know—the website had plenty of info and I'm sure it was discussed at length in Mumble. So I don't blame them and wish them all the best on Mal'Ganis as damned, dirty Hordies.

But it did leave me feeling rather abandoned and alone. And it got me wondering whether or not I still enjoy this game enough to be paying my fifteen bucks a month for the privilege.

Blues just ain't gonna cut it anymore.

As it turns out, fuck yeah! I do.

Time to get back to work and start gearing in preparation for raiding. I'm way behind and I've got a long way to go, but damn, I'm looking forward to the challenge. I've just joined up with a new guild that has a late-night raid team that should work around the Dwarfling's schedule, and importantly, seem like fun people to be around. A fresh start, so to speak.

Look for more from Battle Medic in the very near future. I'm certain I'm going to have a lot to talk about.

Images of Azeroth: 50,000 Words (52/50)

End Time

The Well of Eternity

Dead in the Caverns of Time

Pines #2

Well, this is the final post of my Images of Azeroth: 50,000 Words challenge for November. And of course, being me I couldn't just do the challenge, I had to overachieve; so I posted 52 images. 

This challenge was a lot harder than I thought it was going to be, actually. Putting together the images - both from in game and out - took a lot of time and effort. I almost hope I don't see another screenshot for a while! But I really enjoyed doing it. I hope that you've enjoyed these images!

Angelya over at Revive and Rejuvenate has come up with another Challenge that I, as a Photographer and self-styled Visual Artist, am very excited about. It's IntPiPoMo, or International Picture Posting Month. As a picture is worth 1,000 words, the goal for this challenge is to post 50 pictures during the month of November. I will be posting 25 Images of Azeroth and 25 photographs or art projects that I have been working on personally (and no baby photos, sorry ladies). As well, I will be posting commentary and context with each image.

Please note that all World of Warcraft screenshots are copyright Blizzard Entertainment. The photographs are copyright Brad Stover and should not be reused without permission..

Images of Azeroth: 50,000 Words (48/50)

Verrall River Falls, Uldum

The Egypt themed Uldum is, in my mind, the most visually appealing of all the zones introduced in Cataclysm. It evokes a feeling of majesty and mystery - and loneliness. It reminds me of how I felt as a new player roaming the wastes of Tanaris. I have never managed to finish every quest in Uldum, but I really enjoyed the feeling of discovery as I went through it. It's got a great atmosphere, and like all the best zones it makes the player feel something while there. And creating an emotional attachment is what takes anything from being ordinary to memorable.

The Great Statues of Uldum

And besides, who didn't enjoy those whacking those thieving little pluckers with a gigantic hammer?

Cameron and Tennille

With each wedding that I booked, I included a free engagement shoot with it. This allowed the clients and I to get to know each other before the wedding so that they would be more comfortable with me as a photographer, be more relaxed and ultimately get better photos on the big day. It also gave me another opportunity to create spectacular images in a more casual and less time constrained environment. This one is another signature piece that I did, and featured prominently in a lot of the promotional material that I created for my business. This image was not cropped at all, and all colours are completely natural. It was printed as a 30x30-inch wall portrait. 


In getting this image ready to put on the blog, I remembered just how much of a pain in the ass it was working with film. The scan of this image was dirty as hell, and cleaning it took forever (and I still don't think I got everything). Viva la digital! 

Angelya over at Revive and Rejuvenate has come up with another Challenge that I, as a Photographer and self-styled Visual Artist, am very excited about. It's IntPiPoMo, or International Picture Posting Month. As a picture is worth 1,000 words, the goal for this challenge is to post 50 pictures during the month of November. I will be posting 25 Images of Azeroth and 25 photographs or art projects that I have been working on personally (and no baby photos, sorry ladies). As well, I will be posting commentary and context with each image.

Please note that all World of Warcraft screenshots are copyright Blizzard Entertainment. The photographs are copyright Brad Stover and should not be reused without permission..

Images of Azeroth: 50,000 Words (45/50)

The Twilight Grove, Duskwood

Seradane, Hinterlands

The two portals in the Eastern Kingdoms, as requested by Nymphy and Draccus. Places of mystery and silence, now that their dragon guardians have abandoned them.

Greg and Charla

Ahh, the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon. Without a doubt the most popular destination in Saskatoon for weddings to get portraits done. On any given Saturday during the summer the sheer number of weddings is incredible; they practically are tripping over each other. Using this very common location was quite often unavoidable, but using it in a novel way was difficult, but possible. This is one of my absolute favourite images that I did there, in a tiny little alcove between three buildings that is almost entirely covered in ivy. Very beautiful. For this particular image I chose to present it in black and white, and added a glow to the background. Greg and Charla have this hanging in their home as a 30" print.

Angelya over at Revive and Rejuvenate has come up with another Challenge that I, as a Photographer and self-styled Visual Artist, am very excited about. It's IntPiPoMo, or International Picture Posting Month. As a picture is worth 1,000 words, the goal for this challenge is to post 50 pictures during the month of November. I will be posting 25 Images of Azeroth and 25 photographs or art projects that I have been working on personally (and no baby photos, sorry ladies). As well, I will be posting commentary and context with each image.

Please note that all World of Warcraft screenshots are copyright Blizzard Entertainment. The photographs are copyright Brad Stover and should not be reused without permission..

Images of Azeroth: 50,000 Words (42/50)

The Majesty of Old Ironforge

Jackie

This is one of my favourite wedding images ever. I ended up using this for a lot of promotional materials including my business cards and ads. It was my signature image for a long time. Interestingly, it was taken on my very first shoot with a digital camera, one that I borrowed from a camera store to play with. I was so unsure as to the quality of the digital images that I took a film camera and ended up shooting half of the wedding digital and the other half traditionally. Once I took a look at the images that I had captured with the digital SLR, I was completely sold. I bought the camera the next day.

Angelya over at Revive and Rejuvenate has come up with another Challenge that I, as a Photographer and self-styled Visual Artist, am very excited about. It's IntPiPoMo, or International Picture Posting Month. As a picture is worth 1,000 words, the goal for this challenge is to post 50 pictures during the month of November. I will be posting 25 Images of Azeroth and 25 photographs or art projects that I have been working on personally (and no baby photos, sorry ladies). As well, I will be posting commentary and context with each image.

Please note that all World of Warcraft screenshots are copyright Blizzard Entertainment. The photographs are copyright Brad Stover and should not be reused without permission..

Images of Azeroth: 50,000 Words (40/50)

Surwich, Blasted Lands (By Request)

I asked on Twitter for requests for Images of Azeroth. Relysh mentioned the spooky woods in the southern Blasted Lands by Surwich. This is a neat place, nestled in between the steamy jungles of Stranglethorn and the scortched, barren Blasted Lands (right next to the rather odd Murloc slave labour camp). I love the aesthetic of the Gilnean areas, they have such a great, creepy, horror-movie atmosphere. This is a 360 degree panorama and was quite the pain to put together: The water, being essentially featureless, confused the hell out of my photostitch software (PTGui) forcing me to manually blend in clouds to fill in some gaps. And just for the hell of it, I added a bit more glow to the moon to up the eerieness factor a bit.

James

This is another wedding image, of which you'll be seeing a fair bit of over the remainder of the challenge. I worked as a professional photographer for five years and made a living off of photographing weddings, which formed the bulk of what I was shooting at the time. I like to think that I had a unique style. One aspect of the wedding that most photographers never pay quite enough attention to is the groom, and so I always like to make sure that I did something special for them. I always saved my most dramatic locations and lighting for photos of the guys. This one was taken under a rather run down bridge, and has a certain shabby chic that really appeals to me, especially when contrasted to the rest of the album, which had a certain ethereal wispiness to it.


Oh my, listen to me talkin' all artsy-like. Golly.

Angelya over at Revive and Rejuvenate has come up with another Challenge that I, as a Photographer and self-styled Visual Artist, am very excited about. It's IntPiPoMo, or International Picture Posting Month. As a picture is worth 1,000 words, the goal for this challenge is to post 50 pictures during the month of November. I will be posting 25 Images of Azeroth and 25 photographs or art projects that I have been working on personally (and no baby photos, sorry ladies). As well, I will be posting commentary and context with each image.

Please note that all World of Warcraft screenshots are copyright Blizzard Entertainment. The photographs are copyright Brad Stover and should not be reused without permission..

Images of Azeroth: 50,000 Words (38/50)

Flying Machine

A Fog at Sunrise #1

I love this image. It's probably the coolest thing I've done in a long time. It was taken on the same morning as this image, although a little earlier. The sun was just rising on a crisp, fall morning and a mist was hovering delicately over the lake. This image is a series of nine or ten different photographs stitched together, making it the most ambitious panorama I've done with actual photographs. I love the ultra-wide angle effect that this technique gives this image. I haven't printed this image yet, but I plan to create an image that spans a full seven feet and proudly display it in my house.

Angelya over at Revive and Rejuvenate has come up with another Challenge that I, as a Photographer and self-styled Visual Artist, am very excited about. It's IntPiPoMo, or International Picture Posting Month. As a picture is worth 1,000 words, the goal for this challenge is to post 50 pictures during the month of November. I will be posting 25 Images of Azeroth and 25 photographs or art projects that I have been working on personally (and no baby photos, sorry ladies). As well, I will be posting commentary and context with each image.

Please note that all World of Warcraft screenshots are copyright Blizzard Entertainment. The photographs are copyright Brad Stover and should not be reused without permission..