Gideon

Both the first build and the map room are awesome!

Definitely! The more we challenge ourselves by building in the other guilds the better An excellent opportunity seems likely when the challenges reach Kaliphlin.

Great to see that more people are using my definition of half-elf as a yellow elf!

A proper camera would do a lot, even though modern smartphones are getting better cameras there's nothing like using a "real" camera. It does not have to be one with fancy features and a high megapixel count however, it's more important with a good lens. I use an old DSLR from 2008, and a lens from 2004 So if budget is a constraint, I'd say go for a better second-hand camera rather than buying a simple brand new one even though the newer one might have more fancy electronical features. With a proper photo setup you hardly need to do any editing. My recent builds I've only done white balance corrections and cropping with Picasa. I definitely recognize your problem with the light...here in Scandinavia we are not blessed with a lot of daylight half the year But I do most of my photos in the evenings/nighttime anyways (as well as most of my building) when the rest of the family is sleeping. So I can't depend on natural light most of the time anyway. My solution is a decent flash which I direct up onto the white roof in my living room, creating a kind of softbox. Depending on the angle of the flash, the "light source" in the roof moves. I'm looking to buy better flashes some time however since sometimes I would like to be more flexible in which directions I can get the light from...

Very nice trees, especially the big one! Regarding post-processing of the pics I've managed to cut that time by changing my backdrop to a curved fabric (I use a roller blind)...works great instead of the tedious process of cutting away the background (of the pics in my signature, only the rightmost 3 have edited backgrounds)

Nice build! I love how you have captured the Ruadhi atmosphere here A lot of nice details, my favorites are the tree and the bed on the roof. While plates work great for the ground, I think however that at least the stairs and probably also the roofs should have been smooth. The photography is top notch!

The top of the pillars is the star of this build if you ask me

Very nice build, my favorite parts are the lower floor and the tree The tower seems to be missing some kind of windows however?

Lovely vignette! UoP +1

Thanks for all the encouraging words! I'm glad that an everyday life build can be noticed as well, GoH is so much more than just army building in my view I was turning it back and forth a few times trying to decide how to place it. On one hand I agree that the people in the square should be able to see the clock, but on the other hand this is on the outskirts of the city so the clock should be viewable from the city center In the end the deciding factor was that this build was going to be displayed and I wanted to turn it towards the visitors. Bricklink of course! They are so far only available in the Simpsons house, but fortunately the new Santa's Workshop also contains a few. Will surely pick up a lot more of these (not least because the BL order I got these from were missing 17 arches, so even though I got those missing ones refunded I still have one arch which is missing one side...) The photos with the lights were taken with between 5 s and 10 s exposure time. I also let the flash fire to light up the rest of the build somewhat, so it was a bit of experimentation before I got the balance between the rest of the build and the lights in a way I liked. In the end I think I used a tad to much flash however... I wonder if he was the guy I bought my LifeLites from at Brickworld? I'm starting to agree with this as well... It worked perfect in my imagination and quite OK irl, but when "flattened" in a photo the contrast between the tan ground and buildings is not good enough. I'm presently trying to decide if I should aim for a more gray ground (even though it contradicts my view of Barqa) or go for more non-tan building elements in my future Barqa builds. I hope your sigfig had a great time in Barqa! Unfortunately not, my wife is expecting our second kid right about at the same time as the exhibition in Uppsala. I had originally intended to tear this down quite quickly as I always do with my larger Kaliphlin builds, but since I'm not going to have a lot of time to use all these bricks for something else anytime soon I'm leaning towards keeping it in one piece for a while longer. So maybe it will turn up at some other Swebrick exhibition during 2015? Definitely! One of the reasons that I joined Kaliphlin in the first place was that I visited Israel and Jerusalem a couple of months before joining Kaliphlin. I'm very inspired by the old walled city and especially the alleyways with slightly stepped ground were attempts at recreating my memories of the old city. I probably have to blame the power requirement I specified for the lights for ending up over there. Afterwards, I realized I could probably have put this and my other builds next to the GoH display by Ecc, Legopard and Rolli since Rolli's module was killed in action when travelling on Autobahn and left enough room for this. Anyway, I hope that most GoH guys present in Skaerbaek saw it anyway...

As long as the leadership hasn't posted a new thread I suppose we go on with this one?

Very nice layout of the build! The size of the build and the stepped design are great. I also love the busy feeling As this is GoH I'm also going to give you some constructive criticism: I'm not too fond of the mixed color choices of the walls, while I like that you are mixing them the bricks get too "spotty" in my eyes (smaller plates might have worked better?). Can't decide on what I think of the sides, but the striped bands are catching my eyes a bit too much. Another piece of advice is to crop your pictures prior to publishing them to get rid of things not covered by the background. UoP +1 for Life in Kaliphlin.

Great vignette and that second MOC (/brick pile? ) looks very good as well! UoP +1 for flowing water. I don't think I've seen that many of that kind of piece used for water before?

If you go big enough inverted slopes may be a good approximation?

Square ones. Hopefully goes well with my round PaB ones Not sure if the prize of the box should be public...

I've started to recover from the LFW trip and begun to sort through the fallout. Some MOCs were quite unkindly packed and will never be repaired, but I've decided to keep the Streets of Barqa in displayable condition a while longer even though I'm missing our annual LUG exhibition in November. I've also dug out one of my Nordana Castle modules which was buried in 15 kg of lego from the random "mystery box" I bought there. A lot of completely useless parts (for example technic and weird minifig torsos) but some nice stuff as well. A highlight was 41 bags of 1x1 light bley tiles, I'm guessing about 100 in each bag so about 4k such tiles Most of the lego is not so well segregated and will take forever to sort though... With all the other sorting of half-dismantled MOCs and other stuff I'm not expecting to be building very much for a while, but I hope of course to have some time to build for Challenge 3!

We seem to be off topic already Anyway, was it your display INS (abbreviating nicknames is a long GoH tradition ) with the troll army that I saw in Skaerbaek?

A beautiful building, showing the splendor of the Kaliphlin oases! Small suggestions for improvements is to try to make the pattern of the road slightly more random and to cover up the joints between the baseplates with a plate of some other feature. I would also advice you to remove the tray under the plates when taking the pictures.

In cabin #1?

Very nice technique for that field, and great build overall! UoP +1 for the claims.

Welcome! Did I meet you there as well (I'm Jonas from Swebrick)? If you like orcs and monsters Nocturnus is an obvious choice, even though there are a lot of such beings in the South as well I would suggest reading the Guilds of Historica New Member Guide if you have not already done so. Browsing through the guild main thread(s) is also a good idea to get a feel for how this community works. Once again very welcome, and I hope you will enjoy it here and that we will se awesome builds from you!

Nocturnus, and there are a lot of people who needs help there! Edit: That would be 2 A.

I can't really blame my kid for my lego addiction as she is not allowed to touch any of it And just the prospect of having her playing with one of my MOCs scares me a lot! Duplo for a few more years it is...and then two separate collections, fortunately a lot of the useless pieces from the LFW mystery box can get that second collection started.

Good contrast between the natural rock face and the quarry! I also like the thatched roof a lot The pics seem a bit noisy however, I think you could improve that with more light when you shoot.

Nice tree! I like how you've used the teeth as icicles