Tag: star wars

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Galactic Warming

Last year I acquired a Lego Wampa specifically for shooting outside in the coming winter snows… but the snow never came. It wasn’t till the following February that we actually got a bit of snow.

So I had to be creative. I was itching to shoot the Wampa and since the weather wasn’t cooperating I created a storyline called the Hoth Heat Wave. This storyline has since branched in many ways including a Snowtrooper Unit that has been stranded on the surface because all the ice melt has created a thick cloudy atmosphere that thwarts interstellar communications.

Special Forces Snowtrooper Unit SSF3298 works together to scale the massive cliffs that have been uncovered from the ice…

I recently acquired a Hasbro forcelink Wampa and it has spurred more Galactic Warming shots. The snow is all but gone and has turned Hoth into a swampy wet mess.

Such a Swampa mess!

This past weekend I took a group of scout out to the Arizona Strip on a campout. We hiked the next morning to what is known as the Glitter Pit. It is an active gypsum mine that is in the form of Selenite crystals. The selenite crystals are nature’s form of glass and you can actually see through the rock fairly easily.

Home Sweet Home

When I was younger I remember going down into this selenite mine and being able to see into the ground three to four feet. It was mesmerizing as the depth of the stone slowly changed from clear to blue to blackness. Utilizing an Estwing prospector pick, I could chisel a good 10-12″ slab out of the ground. Nowadays so many folks have visited this site that it has been transformed into somewhat of a tourist trap. The surface has been hacked at so much that now it’s just a white cloudy mess. Which is perfect for a Wampa Cave!

Wampa made it out just in time…

I had a volunteer scout to drop handfuls of gypsum powder over my new Hasbro forcelink Wampa. It was nearly noon and the sky was clear and blue and reflected so much light that I had to use my neutral density filter applied to my Voigtlander 25mm f0.95 lens to even get any shots. This ND filter darkened it quite a bit but I ended up utilizing my Litra Gear LitraTorch to add a few opposing highlights on Wampas legs. The contrast was a bit overwhelming and I lost a lot of my detail in the shadows so the LitraTorch was indispensable in bringing out those details.

Wampa Snow cave collapsing…

It took quite a few tries to get the “snow” captured just right. The other scout leaders watched from a distance as I pulled out my toys and worked my magic. The scouts were quite gung-ho about helping and because of them it turned out awesome!

As I was finishing up a few cars pulled up and out came some families with little kids to explore the Glitter Pit.

The Galactic Warming will continue as I find new ways to incorporate the heat into the Hoth landscapes – and I’m actually dreading snow this winter season!

All the water released from the Hoth Heat Wave has resulted in enormous plants…
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Wampa and Exploding Cat-tails

Yes it’s a rather random correlation but that’s how most of my photography happens. On Friday night my wife and I went on a date and as part of it we went shopping. When you’ve got five kiddos, any time alone together is a great time – even just shopping.

We went to the toy aisles at Walmart because I always like to peruse the aisles and see if they have anything that’ll look good in a toy photo.

They had some Lego Harry Potter minifigures (finally), but they had been picked through quite a bit. I spent some time looking for a niffler with no such luck. I did get Harry Potter with his Owl because those Lego owls are epic; and it’s white so perfect for coming wintertime shots.

I found the Star Wars Force Link 2.0 Wampa and Luke Skywalker (Hoth) Figure and bought it for the Wampa. There are some iconic characters that just work so well in photography and the Wampa is one such icon. I have the Lego Wampa, but I wanted to have something a bit more articulated for this winter season. I also wanted to tie in this new Wampa figure to my Hoth Heat Wave series.

Saturday morning Wampa joined us for breakfast and had a strange fascination with the butter. He followed it all the way to a more comfortable spot… out fridge!

After an excellent breakfast we ran some errands and went to what we call the spin park; it’s a city park that has a bunch of different spinning contraptions that the kids have a blast on. They also have a section of the park that is a drainage area that has turned into a small marsh with cattails and everything.

I went tromping through the cattails and found such a cool ecosystem. There were ladybugs galore and many spiders and wasps and such. I took quite a few shots of insects and then decided the spot would be perfect for a muddy Hoth. So out came Wampa! It was a bit tricky getting around as the ground was rather unstable and mucky. There were some stepping stones so it was a balancing act to get down low enough to shoot the Wampa.

After some tricky footwork and a few shots I whipped out my pocket knife and cut some cattails for my kiddos to play with. My youngest son Clark got the first one and he whacked it on the ground and to our amazement it exploded into a huge puff of seeds! I had no idea cattails did that…

So the rest of the morning was spent collecting and exploding cattails. I also took a few shots of the Wampa in the exploded seed clouds. It sort of looked like snow and matched my Hoth Heat Wave theme.

This is usually how my toy photography workflow happens. I just get with some toys and explore. The randomness leads to some pretty creative and epic shots. I don’t always plan for shoots but when I do the shots seem a bit more forced; I like this go with the flow way of things.

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R.O.U.S.s

So I obtained a Rizzo figure from Muppet Treasure Island the other day – Thank you to Palisades Toy (Defunct 2006).

Rizzo in the rain

The articulation and detail in their muppet figures is fantastic and the Toy Photographer Mitchel Wu pointed me in the right direction. He has all these awesome shots with Kermit and water and Indiana Jones – a perfect mashup!

I love the creativity in the toy photography niche and it really opens up the imagination to infinite possibilities.

I had the opportunity during the busy month of September to attend my cousins wedding up in Brighton, Utah. It was located at a secluded cabin in the tops of the Wasatch Mountains. It was such a beautiful location. Surrounded by large pines and mossy mountain streams flowing ice cold waters over granite stones.

I of course brought many toys with me. I never leave the house without my camera and some toys packed away in my bag. I had a random assortment of figures and went off during some downtime after we helped setup a lot of the decorations.

My cousin and her now husband
Such a beautiful place for a wedding – I am so happy for her!

I took out my Revoltech Stormtrooper because hey, it’s a stormtrooper and pretty much fits in anywhere! Then the idea of him stumbling across a giant rodent (Rizzo) popped into my head… random, yes. I find most my inspiration comes in the moment and is not planned out very well. For some reason when I plan a grand shot in my head I can never really obtain it exactly how I pictured – it tend to fall flat a bit. So I go for in the moment fleeting shoots.

R.O.U.S.s!?

The Princess Bride was one of my favorite quotable movies as a kid and the Rodents Of Unusual Size scared the tar out of me! Obviously rodents on earth do not get so large but in a galaxy far, far away anything is possible.

Star Wars, Return of the Jedi came out a year before I was born but Princess Bride came out when I was three. I figure it could just as easily be another princess story offshoot in the Star Wars universe!