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

[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.