portrait of a trooper

[cuilin]

stormtrooper to be exact. this is my newest toy. i shall call him bob. he's a 12" real action heroes stormtrooper. full articulation and wonderfully detailed. i'm not entirely happy with this image, but it's 10am which is past my bedtime so no reshoot today. the lighting is off and now that i have it processed and on the web it's starting to look a little cooler (wb) than i'd wanted. the lighting is a little too forward on the left side (your left, not the troopers).

to take this shot i set the camera up with a 5 second exposure on a tripod and cable release in the pitch dark. during the 5 second exposure i handheld the flash off to one side of the stormtrooper (set at 1/16 power) and pressed the test button. then repeated the process on the other side. for both shots the stormtrooper was standing on my lit laptop screen for some slightly tinted light from below. i layered the 2 images in photoshop and set the blending mode to lighten.

[Shadowman]

I think you can utilize curtain lighting setup if trooper were in a more active pose. Nice concept and capture.

[AlwaysOnAuto]

It looks like his head is squared to the camera but not his shoulders, based on the shadow on his right shoulder vs left.

[IzzieK]

A portrait of a trooper....12", my! that is big...that'll cost a bundle!! Wow!! You should put him to action shots too. Will be interesting.

[cuilin]

thanks john, alan and izzie.

john - i wasn't really looking to shoot action with this one yet, i was looking for a shot kinda like this but done correctly. the reason for the long exposure wasn't to use rear curtain sync, but because i don't have any lighting equipment. just one flash. no pc sync cord, no radio triggers, no light stands. 5 seconds was enough time for me to open the shutter, walk a few feet to the stormtrooper, flash in hand, line up the light (which i failed to line up as precisely as i wanted) and press the test button to set off the flash. rinse and repeat the whole process on the other side. in complete darkness (i have black out curtains in my bedroom so i can sleep during the day).

alan, i'm pretty sure the head, chest and arms are all pointing in different directions and none of them are perfectly squared up to the camera. i didn't really attempt to straighten anything. plus it was standing on a flat surface on top of my bed and wasn't exactly level. i worked 10 hours of snow prep and later snow ops, got home around 8:30am and didn't get around to shooting until closer to 10am. trust me when i say very little adjusting was done, but there was lots of cursing while trying to make him stand before realizing that his feet were at an angle.

izzie - it was a bit pricier than my usual toys, but who can say no to a stormtrooper? plus he was on sale and i had a gift card, so out of pocket money wasn't really that much. the 3 week wait for it to ship from japan was agonizing. he'll be put to work as soon as the snow goes away and i get some time off to go somewhere beyond my driveway.

[IzzieK]

I will be waiting with bated breath for the action shots, Beth...we got a few cms of snow so far at around 1am (a while ago) when I took my top dog out the back. Not worth the snow plow to pass by yet...but it was freaking cold.

[Loose Canon]

Bob is a very imposing figure Beth! When I first saw him I instinctively pulled my Light Sabre ready to smite something! Ended up smiting my big toe in all the excitement! Good thing the batteries were low so I only singed it!

When I first read your description I thought to myself that you did good just to hit Bob at all with a hand-held/fired flash in pitch black. But then I realized that you mentioned some continuous light hitting him from below. Once I got to looking at Bob, I could easily see the difference in the light temps.

I like the way the highlights/shadows fall on Bob. I think he looks pretty cool myself. The only thing I couldn’t decide on was the catchlights. I first thought they looked a little strange hitting the eyes (?) so far to opposite sides. But I’m starting to think maybe not so much since the eye, um, panels(?) are curved. I’ll admit Lord Vader has never let me shoot a Stormtrooper what with them being so busy destroying the Universe and all! Very uncooperative!

I wish I had some cool toys like you Beth! What I do have are pretty fun but for sure all of my crayons are broken!

[ashcroft]

I shall call him bob.

He looks a bit like me when I get my plastic trooper-suit on, so don't call him Bob... call him Rob

A good shot. He looks quite scary in that light. Well captured. May the f.... you know the rest.