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.

November sort of flew by without much photography activity from me.  I think the fact that it was either raining or monsooning (that’s a word, no need to look it up) for 98% of the month put a damper (that’s right, I’m telling puns now) on my creativity.  I did manage to take a single, postable photo however so the month wasn’t a total bust.

It’s pretty close to straight out of the camera with the exception of a couple of minor adjustments.  The whole thing took about a hour to set up and then about 30-40 shots to get one where I liked how the ‘snow’ was falling.  I did a couple of these for my 365 last year and I’ve now got some new Lord of the Rings lego, so expect some Middle Earth themed shots soon.

Here’s the setup shot if you’re interested.

The softbox is essentially the main light, acting as the sun in the background.  I have a wonky homemade snoot on the inverted flash at the back to give me my round hot spot for the actual sun, and the big umbrella up front is just for fill.  I used some black foil for the mountains in the background and all of the snow is just baking powder (I used baking soda in the past, but I like the snowfall look of the powder better).

Anyway, that’s it for November.