Editor in Chief Bill 
asked me to prepare a farewell statement (which sounds like a termination, hmmmmm...) after losing this round of the Alpha Miniatures competition.
I pondered over the request for quite a while but, to quote one of my favorite philosophers:
I tried to think but nuthin’ happened!
- attributed to Curly Joe
So instead of a teary-eyed, sappy farewell, I have produced this brief addendum to my entry so that future generations can learn from my mistakes....
Thanksgiving holiday week provided me with the time to sit down and think a bit more about my entry for the last round of the contest. It was obvious that I lost on two specific items – the base, and the photos I took. I decided to fix both so others could learn from my mistake.
I had not based the miniature because I had flip-flopped over what I had wanted to do with it. Was it for gaming or for display? I finally decided that I would base it for gaming. The Red Sand, Blue Sky rules suggest a 1.5- or 2-inch square base, but the latter was too large - so I pulled out a 40mm square base and adopted that as a standard.
Why 40mm? It is a base size used by GW, and so I know I can get my hands on them easily. The size looked good and provided me with some space around the figure for use in gaming, another plus.
I took some Liquitex resin gel and a small trowel, and built up the sand around the base of the figure. Once it dried, I painted the sand with Delta Ceramcoat's Mudstone, and drybrushed it with GW's Bleached Bone. I painted the sides of the base with GW's Bestial Brown.
After all of this dried, I sprayed the miniature with two coats of Dullcote. The last step took the remaining sheen off of the miniature.
This was the look I wanted.
I took the pictures using my established technique, with a tan sheet for the background, a Halogen road light for illumination, and mirrors to redirect lights from the side to reduce shadows. The results are shown in the photos above.
I then took a picture using a dark blue background.
I had read about how different backgrounds affect photos, but this is a pretty dramatic example. I took the shots using the “Fine” setting, then cropped the picture. I adjusted the colors using ThumbsPlus 7 (my photo editor of choice), but made the same corrections to each photo (auto adjustments to color, two shifts to contrast, and then a sharpening).
The tan background makes for a better picture, as the dark blue results in more shine on the figure. When I took my initial photos for the contest, this is the background I used. This background makes for a better result.