What’s amazing about running that webcomic for four years followed by even more years of keeping the ducks stored in plastic bins is that Rei’s signature purple ribbon never tore off or came loose.
Author: Karel Kerezman
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Pumpkin Duck on a Gray Blanket
This photoshoot used most of the ducks that I keep in an under-the-bed storage bin, and while a lot of those ducks are Quacked Panes regulars, some are just random “seasonal” selections. Here’s one of those.
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Pirate Duck on a Gray Blanket
After years in the storage bins, these ducks got dusty and dingy. Cleaning them up for this photo shoot session took some work; you can tell that what this guy really needed was a proper bath and a scrubbing. The results are plenty sufficient for my purposes, honestly though.
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Two Moons In The Morning
A few years ago I took a picture of the Moon with my then-new Coolpix camera, and it didn’t turn out too badly. Today, thanks to some lovely weather and excellent timing, the opportunity to try that shot with the Lumix FZ80 came up and I couldn’t pass it up. How did the new camera do?
The Moon over Hillsboro Oregon – Taken with the Lumix FZ80 at max physical zoom, no digital zoom Not too badly, if I’m honest. Mind you, I wish I’d been able to get the remote control app for my camera (yes, such a thing exists) to work properly so I could snap the picture without actually touching the device. Despite the camera being mounted on the tripod, I still introduced a bit of wobble to the results. More’s the pity.
If you compare the two I think the Lumix did a better job, though the Coolpix result was entirely handheld, which is some kind of miracle considering how unsteady my hands are.
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Rusty on a Gray Blanket
The venerable Rusty, one of the stars of the Quacked Panes comic run, was (of course) one of the first ducks I put under the bright lights in the tent. If I couldn’t make this duck look good, what was even the point? He’s a bit the worse for wear (he’s named “Rusty” for a reason after all) but hey, he’ll probably outlive me in the long run.
Mind you, not every picture came out well. I kept tinkering with the camera settings and that made some pictures come out too bright or too dim, and I’m not enough of an image-editing guy to know how to adjust for that without making the final results even worse, so what you see is what I can give.
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Tolo on a Gray Blanket
I know, three years without posting anything at all is basically writing off the blog entirely. I know! It’s just that… well, my life got down to a certain routine and that meant not many opportunities to place ducks onto things and take pictures of them.
And then 2020 hit. Well then!
A few months ago I bought a “light tent” apparatus with the idea of doing a “glamour shots” series of pictures of the various ducks. What you see above is one of the early tests. Other pictures from the series will appear here over time. (Yes, expect a lot of “X on a Y blanket” post titles for the foreseeable future. Sorry about that. Some content is better than no content, yes?)