Hot Toys Jake Sully *and* Neytiri (new pix Oct. 24)

[davidd]

I'm impressed by your butterfly wrangling talent! These are fun pix. Thanks for including the image you were emulating for comparison.

Since you haven't found a place to move to, have you considered perhaps planting your own forest with some kind of fast-growing trees, maybe aspens or poplars? String an electrified barbwire fence along the perimeter, lay down a mine field a yard (meter) or two wide, and then plant several rows of hybrid poplar saplings.

The pictures are cool. Your Na'vi figures are fun and photogenic action figures and you make the most of them in your photos!

[Alliecat]

Show us, rubyperidot?




I'd like to have done more photos of Jake & Neytiri with more butterflies, but, there isn't a lot of nice space left to do it in the yard, and things get more complicated with multiple butterflies.  Maybe next year.





I'm so disappointed at Jake's eyes having clouded; don't know yet what to do about that... On the other hand they made Neytiri's rather stare-y, so there are bad photo angles for both of them.  Although it kinda works here.



There's just the smallest area left out back to do this.  My beautiful mossy woodland setting is no more.  I have to be very creative with angles.






I wasn't real happy with a lot of these.  The light was hard to catch, and many weren't sharp.  They should've been tripod shots.  Oh well -- you can't tell with the small versions!











If we EVER get any rain, maybe I'll take them back to the waterfall and find some water in it.  By then there'll be autumn leaves though, and that doesn't look very Pandoran!

Thanks for looking.

[rubyperidot]

https://www.ebay.com/itm/226682681819

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/396756517169

Are the eBay listings for the blue baby/elf dolls.

They are all vinyl as purchased but I swapped them onto (sadly not blue) soft bodies and dressed them as boys.

Edit to add that if you click on the see original listing on completed listings you can still see all the photos.

[davidd]

I suppose you could paint over Jake's existing eyes. Well, I don't know if you could, or would; but one of those doll hobbyists with mad eye painting skillz might tackle such a project.

Nevertheless, Jake looks super cool in these woodland photos. They both do. You used the dappled sunlight to dramatic effect here, creating a sense of a sylvan glen, an escape from the developed world.

Did mosquitoes accompany your woodland adventure? From what you have said in the past, it seems like mosquitoes are a regular fixture among the scenic vistas in your part of the world.

[Alliecat]

No mosquitoes this time.  Yes, normally they're a problem.  The only benefit of the summer-long drought that has dried up some island wells is, it's dried up most of the mozzies too.

...................................


I was hoping to do another shoot with Jake & Neytiri in the creek gorge and have some spots of sun, but that would involve getting up WAY earlier than usual, in order to catch the very short window of time when some sun might reach way down there.  Haven't so far, and autumn leaves aren't very Pandoran.
Anyway though, when I stopped by to check the water level in the falls after a wee little bit of rain, I had a brainstorm... LIGHT PAINTING.... IN THE GORGE.... IN THE DARK!!!!1!1!!
Given how little I get done these days, I am really chuffed with myself for acting on this plan within 24 hours.  Next day I packed the Na'vi and a bunch of lights and went out at twilight.  It's a lovely spot, and aside from the odd car on the road above, there was no human sound.  Wonderful.
It is also very, very, VERY DARK.  Cloudy night and no moon, so without the headlamp it was truly pitch dark.  Add some moisture on the rocks from dew and a few spits of rain, and the footing was really tricky too, as was keeping track of everything and just getting set up in a stable spot.
I am dedicated to doing as much in camera as possible and have always disliked "digital cheating".... but I will admit these needed a lot of work on the shadows.  
Mission success! and boy was I tired from crouching and climbing around on the rocks for nearly 3 hours.








You never know what you're gonna get with light painting, and with every take the light's in a different spot.  This one was sooooo hard to pick a "best one".  I really only needed one to be "right", but ended up keeping 8, all just a bit different.






This one took a lot of takes too as I kind of kept missing where I wanted the light to be.  Lots of walking back & forth through the frame!



For context, all except the path one were shot on parts of this waterfall (it is a falls in the wet).



Did I mention it was dark????  Intentionally bad pic 

This was a really fun shoot, and I packed it in just as it started to really rain.  As a bonus, the night before when I was checking out the spot, the stars were lovely and I heard a barred owl.

Thanks for looking! 

[davidd]

A three-hour dead-of-night woodland adventure! How cool izzat?

Plus wet and slippery as well as dark, plus the ever-present possibility of rabid wolverines, so it was a genuinely dangerous adventure! Probably more from the wet slippery rocks than the chance of wolverines.

The results were worth the effort! Those pics look soooo cooool! I particularly like the one where Neytiri and Jake are walking up the slope. The posing is wonderfully natural and the light is just right!

What is your usual eosure length for a light painting pic? Or do you set the camera to aperture priority and "paint" until the shutter clicks? The eosures must be fairly long for the flowing water to appear so misty.

So you lugged quite a bit of gear down in to the gully, huh, in addition to the figures? Could you carry it all in one trip, or was it multiple treks to and from the car?

I'm genuinely impressed that you "went for it" even though the weather took a turn toward the dismal, culminating in rain. That's dedication to the craft, and you achieved some impressive images as a result.

And, I gather, had some fun in the process!

[Alliecat]

Thank you, glad you liked them   That one is my favourite too.
The only rabid things in the woods here this time of year are on 2 legs.  Deer season, ayuh   

Ex-posures average 20-30s... depends on how many dolls are in a shot, whether they're light or dark, and how much else needs to be lit.  Dark hair & skin, like Catwoman, or dark clothes, need more light than someone very light-haired like Daesani.  I'll pick an aperture based on desired DoF but often have to shrink it because I need more time to paint.  And often knock the ISO down to 200 (which I prefer anyway cos it's less grainy).  Will always be thankful for having learned about reciprocity with my K1000!    There are flash focus-checks and tweaking poses, and then a few test shots to get the general ex-posure for any ambient light, and then it's just a case of messing around with flashlights to get the spot lighting in the right place.  Someone's face is lit nicely and someone else's is not.  Too much light on the body and not enough on the face.  Didn't get someone else lit enough at all.  Missed that spot, overex-posed this spot.  And so on.  The minis' Christmas party shots take a long time. 
It's a very meditative thing in that you have to be totally focused and mindful: count how many seconds of light here and there, and how many seconds of ex-posure, etc.  5 seconds of light in the last shot was too much, 3 seconds in this one is not enough, flashlight too far away = too blue, flashlight too close looks like, well, flash, and so on.  It's given me back some of the "participation" in creating the photo that I loved with film, where you had to know how to manage the light, and which I lost with digital, which is too often more like programming the VCR!!    So it's one lovely little bit of therapy that takes me out of my life for a while.

Just one trip.  Camera bag, backpack, tripod.