I was apparently a well behaved little boy this year.  Well enough to warrant and excellent gift of Lego from my visiting mom which just so happened to provide me with the rest of the cast to complete the fellowship.

I’ve been putting together a few bits and bobs that I’d need to try to recreate this movie poster with Lego minifigs and finally had everything I needed.  So, this is how it turned out:

I’m quite pleased with the final result.  I think the mountains in the background are the real weak point overall and I know what I’d do differently if I were to shoot as similar image again.  Just about everything on the minifigs is Lego with a few exceptions.  Gimli’s axe is blu-tac’d to his helmet, Bormir’s shield is actually a Euro 5¢ coin and Aragorn has a bit of floral foam as a blowing cloak plus a blu-tac backpack and a needle for whatever that skinny thing is supposed to be sticking out there.  An arrow maybe?  Who carries one arrow?  Especially with Legolas right there.  You’re hardly going to add much to his ranged offensive power with a single arrow.  Now that I mention it, he’s not actually carrying a bow.  Maybe he’s at the back of the line because he’s just another pack mule?  It’s possible I may have been staring at this setup for too long…

Here’s a quick shot of the setup.  I had my lovely assistant/wife Danni hold some lumps of stuffing (aka: clouds) just above the mountains for the upper cloud effect in the image.  Apart from that, it was pretty much as you see it here in the setup.  Well, and some minor colour tweaks in Photoshop.

So, this year was my second attempt (first attempt here) at an all night photo shoot throughout the streets of London.  The plan was to all meet up on one of the shortest nights of the year, stay up all night and end up at Westminster bridge to try and recreate a few of the iconic images seen in the opening sequences of the film 28 Days Later.

We all met up around 7:30 (baring a few stragglers) on the south side of Tower Bridge for a few sunset photo opportunities.  As I have about 200 images of Tower Bridge already, I took a couple of snaps and then spent most of my time chatting with the other folks.

After everyone arrived, I set up a couple of lights and made everyone pose for a big group photo before we started our slow trek to Westminster.

The POTN Gang
L to R: Matt, Steve, Brett, Paul, Neal, Angus, Bonnie, Scott, Me

Our walk took us from Tower Bridge to Westminster Bridge via the Gherkin, Bank, St. Pauls, Smithfields and Holburn before finally catching a bus from the Strand for our final leg of the journey.  We were running short on time to catch sunrise at Westminster, so we’ll plan a bit better next year I think.

While the sunrise we had wasn’t brilliant, it did provide some terrific light at Westminster which enabled me to get the photo I’d had in my head for a few days prior to the outing.

We were expecting the area to be completely quiet, but London being the city is it there was still a fair amount of traffic and quite a few people heading home from a long night out at 4:30 in the morning.  Still, there were few enough people that we got the shots we wanted without having to photoshop anyone out of the scene.

Definitely a great night out and worth the red bull shakes I had the following day.

As always, there are a few more shots in the gallery.

At the beginning of the year I spent quite a lot of time flat hunting for a place that was not only big enough for two people, but also close to Danni for the interim while we weren’t living together.  Because Danni was still in China for a lot of this process, all I could really do was to take photos of the flats and send her the agency listings to get her opinion.

I viewed a lot of overpriced dives (as well as a few really overpriced nice places) before we finally settled on my current flat in Brompton Park Crescent.

This photo shoot was inspired by one of my 365 project photos.  I went there a few weeks earlier to get this shot, something I’d been thinking about since moving and finally got around to doing.  I was impressed by the cemetery as a whole and decided I needed to come back and shoot a few more spots that weren’t specific to my project.

These were all shot in the middle of the day, but I played with the settings to keep things dark and added a flash to a few of the shots where needed.

More photos of my new neighbour can be found here.

A friend had organized another Trash the Dress shoot, this time to take place in central London near Tower Hill. In the end, the wedding dress that was brought along was far too large for our ‘bride’, so we went with a backup cocktail style dress and some kooky wellies.

It was mostly just an exercise in using some off camera lighting as well as working with a model (something I need a lot of practice with!).

These were all shot within 5 minutes walking distance of my old flat, so it was nice to be back in the neighbourhood again.  I miss it out there.  It was nice being able to be a bit of a tour guide instead of wandering around aimlessly for once though.

There are a few more shots of Marina in the photo gallery.

I was out shooting with my good friend Rob and a few others this past weekend in Grays.  Ordinarily our shoots involve buildings, scenery or light painting but today was a bit different.  One of our fellow POTN members had set up a day of shooting with a few lovely models (are there any other kind?) for a Trash the Dress practice shoot.

If you’re unfamiliar with the concept and don’t like following links in blogs, it generally involves a wedding dress or equally elegant gown and a setting you wouldn’t normally wear such an outfit in.  In today’s case, we had the sunny Amy and Natasha modeling a couple of eBay wedding dresses out on some estates and a beach in Essex.

The day started off slow as we (the photographers) were all more or less new to this type of shoot and we were tripping ourselves up trying to get different light synching methods to all work together.  In the end, we stuck to my trusty pocket wizard Plus II’s and just shot everything in manual.  After that, it was just a question of trying to figure out where and how to pose the models, which for me is the trickiest part of a shoot like this.  Fortunately, both of the girls had done this before and didn’t need a whole lot of direction.

Setup shot by Rob Bridgens

The main event of the day was to end up down at the beach to shoot a bit of a paint fight in front of the wreck of an old lightship called The Gull.  Rob and I snuck in a few more final shots in the dwindling light while everyone else waited patiently.

The paint fight itself was a bit chaotic; 6 photographers and a videographer all vying for a better vantage point while simultaneously avoiding paint splatter is not conducive to an organized shoot.  It was fun (for the girls especially), but there were lessons to be learned for the next attempt.

In the end, I think everyone walked away with some decent shots and picked up a few new skills or ideas which was what the entire process was about.

Thanks again to Steve for organizing it all.  Also thanks to Razvan for taking the videos of us shooting all day (and for holding light stands as well!).  The first video of our daytime shooting is available here and the second video which covers the paint fight is here.

There are a few more photos in the gallery.  It was hard to pick my favourites to post in the blog this time, so check out the rest!