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Location, Location, Location… Part Two: The University of Birmingham

27 Thursday Dec 2012

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A few days ago, I posted about Marsden Beach and Arbeia Roman fort. Now it is time for part two of my blog posts about locations I used in Transitions.

The university is where the contemporary action of the story happens. It also happens

The blue plaque at Sarehole Mill

to be one of the (several) universities I attended and worked at in my time as a scientist. I needed a university for my characters to be attending and it seemed a convenient one to use because I knew it so well. There were other advantages too.

One was the association with J.R.R Tolkien. As pointed out in the story, Tolkien did live for some time in the West Midlands (Kings Heath, now a suburb of Birmingham), spent a lot of time visiting places like Clent and Lickey Hills (both places we used to walk our dog) and attended school at King Edward’s school. Said school is right next to the university and does indeed have a good view of the iconic tower which was potentially the inspiration for the tower of Orthanc in Isengard (Sarehole mill being another inspiration, not to mention the dark smoke of the nearby black country). This provided a wonderful opportunity for two of the characters to be pedantic geeks.

The clock tower of the University of Birmingham

The tower itself was also a great location to use for the above scene because it looks so awesome – a huge, red brick clock tower in the middle of a courtyard made from similar red brick university buildings. Ever since I arrived in Birmingham this tower, which is visible from quite a distance away, always struck me as an ideal place for an epic battle between two powerful beings.

Of course… I use it in Transitions for a fight between two students, one drunk the other possessed. It’s hardly epic, more comedic as the drunken student is hardly competent in combat and the possessed one does not care and it ends with a piece of pedantry (like all the best arguments). However, one day I will use the tower again and this time it will be even more epic…

In the university I namecheck a number of lecturers. None of these are based on lecturers I know, though some have traits which some lecturers I have had may have shared. The names of the lecturers are, however, those of friends of mine. Professor Abigail Bath is named after two friends, one a costume maker (who also took my profile photo on this site) and the other a Doctor of History (who is also acknowledged in The Curse due to her expertise in Witchcraft). Professor Hayes is also named from a friend of mine. Not, as you may think, Ninfa Hayes (who is a friend but one I hadn’t met when I was writing Transitions) but the man she married. Finally, Dr. Gallop is named after my father in law. I do feel I have to apologise to at least two of the people namechecked here as both of the lecturers they name are not shown as the best of the breed.

The final scenes of the book centre on Selly Oak which is a place with a lot of student accomodation just outside the university. Specifically, a pub called the Bristol Pear

The Bristol Pear Pub, Selly Oak

which was for a while the home of the University Goth Society’s infamous ‘Friday Night Goth Shite’ nights (or FNGS for short). I tried to portray one of these nights as accurately as possible, including the description of one of the DJs. Unfortunately, FNGS (which was later joined by SNGS, no prizes for guessing what that means) is no longer based at the Pear but when I left Birmingham it was still going strong at a cocktail bar closer to the city centre. It may still be going somewhere. I like to think that someone in Birmingham can still wander into a small pub or cocktail bar somewhere and still find a goth night run by a student society.

So, there is a short tour of some of the Birmingham locations used in Transitions. Next up will be Aqua Sulis.

Note, unlike the previous article, none of the photographs here were taken by me. All credit for them belongs with the original artists who took them.

A traditional Christmas Dog…

25 Tuesday Dec 2012

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matrixI

It is that time of year again, that time when I post a picture of a dog to celebrate some festival or other such as [please insert appropriate midwinter religious feast name here]. This is a time honoured tradition having been done for all of, oh, a couple of years now. That is serious tradition in terms of the internet.

So here is Eddie enjoying the pleasures of the snow that hit us early in the year and playing catch with snowballs using bullet-time in a very Matrix style manner… And in the background you can also see the snow dog/cat/Teddy Bear/whatever strange beast of nightmare aspect that we attempted to build in the garden.

And because it is [insert appropriate festival] I am feeling generous so here is another from the same day…

matrixII

Of course, typically for Manchester at this time of the year, we have a wonderful example of rain, rain and possibly more rain later. Chances of snow this year incredibly minimal…

There, have a Merry [insert festival] and a Happy New Year and I will see you all when the madness of this insane period of the year is over with and we can all get back to being our usual selves…

Location, Location, Location… Part One: Arbeia Roman Fort

18 Tuesday Dec 2012

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A week ago I was at one of the somewhat irregular meetings of our relatively newlyformed writers’ group (which has yet to gain an official name but is sort of soldiering on under the name of ‘the Tea Society’). Among the many discussions and random witterings, including some interesting ideas regarding World Book Night which I will share with you later, we got onto a discussion about location photographs. Later that week, during the launch of Oblivion Storm, R.A Smith opened a thread which was a ‘virtual tour of London’ using Google Earth, Streetview and Panaramio to showcase locations from the book.

The reconstructed gatehouse of Arbeia Roman fort in South Shields

The reconstructed gatehouse of Arbeia Roman fort in South Shields

So this got me to thinking. When writing Transitions I used a few locations which were familiar to me and as part of the research for the book I took a number of photos to get a better feel for the locations. I was also, at the time, thinking about the cover of the book and what a cover artist may want with regards to inspiration if not actual images they could use to mock up a decent composition.

cave1

One of the many caves aong Marsden beach

I had largely considered that to be that. The photos I had taken were between me and my cover artist and have since been left on my Flickr account not doing much. However, during the aforementioned discussion of my writers’s group, Ninfa Hayes mentioned that readers often like to see such things. Thinking about it, I agreed with her so I decided to share some of these location shots with you. There are three main locations discussed in Transitions – Arbeia Roman Fort and the surrounding area, the Roman City of Aqua Sulis ( which became modern day Bath) and the University of Birmingham and surrounding area.

So, this first post is all about Arbeia. This was a fort built by the Romans in 120 AD to

A shot of Marden beach showing the lift that led down into the pub (which was closed at the time).

A shot of Marden beach showing the lift that led down into the pub (which was closed at the time).

act as a resupply depot for Hadrian’s wall. Since the fort was in my hometown it seemed an obvious place to base Gaius Lucius, my Roman character. Of course, there were a number of slight historical issues I had to contend with. Gaius Lucius, for example, is not Arabic like many of the soldiers at Arbeia would have been. Though to be fair, I don’t actually mention his origin so he could well be Arabic. However, throughout the writing of the story I did imagine him as being from Gaul. Another issue is the fact that the fort was founded in 120 AD and I had originally considered the story being set much earlier, perhaps 10 – 30 year after the death of Jesus. Instead, the timing of the fort meant I had to shift my timings to post 120 AD and opted for 123 AD as being not too long after this point. I also flanged over the fact that it is likely the fort in this period was not going to be as well established as is implied in the story. I hope you consider these to be minor issues and also points which you were likely not to have noticed until I pointed them out to you just now… 🙂

A close up of one of the deeper caves

A close up of one of the deeper caves

Of course, Gaius is never seen at the fort. Instead, he is first seen travelling along a beach to find a cave in which a mad old man lives. That beach, in case anyone is interested, was what is now known as Marsden beach. I am not aware of there ever having been mad old wisemen living in caves on Marsden beach but I accept there is a chance there could have been. There have always been rumours of smugglers there in the past , using the caves to hide goods and there is a pub, the Marsden Grotto, which popular rumour has was a place where these smugglers would hang out. I am currently drawing on this in another story which I am in the middle of writing – a sequel to Gods of the Sea. The pub is also said to be haunted (one of the ghosts being that of a notorious smuggler, as it happens) and has been the subject of one of those over the top ‘Britains most haunted’ style shows.  With all of these features, it struck me as a wonderful inspiration for a location where a Roman could meet a mad old Briton for a bit of supernatural advice.

So, there you have it. How Arbeia Roman Fort and Marsden beach inspired the first part of Gaius Lucius’s story in Transitions. In a later entry I will talk about the city of Bath and the University of Birmingham and how they are linked to the story.

[AW Blog chain post] Seven

11 Tuesday Sep 2012

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The number seven has a lot connected to it: Virtues, Sins, Samurai, Sages (in both Greece and China), Dwarves and Brides (with an equal number of brothers to accompany them). There were also seven Kings of Rome and equally seven emperors not to mention Shakespeare’s ages of man, Gaiman’s Endless, Tolkien’s Valar (and stones and stars and Dwarf kings, but only one White tree) and Martin’s Kingdoms of Westeros… At one point there were also seven Doctors in Doctor Who but recently they seem to have acquired some more from somewhere. We could also talk about Seven of Nine, Blakes Seven or the fact that 7 inches is the diameter of a 45rpm gramaphone record…

One of the Seven Sages of Greece – Cleobulus of Lindos, one time Tyrant of Lindos

But what I want to talk about is none of these. I actually want to talk about one thing I have missed from that list above…

Yeah, ok, I have missed a lot from that list because 7 is a very common number in a lot of things. However, I missed one thing that is obvious and probably should not require you to check the same wikipedia page I have been looking at to know about it. What I want to talk about are the seven wonders of the ancient world.

I’ve always been fascinated by these, ever since hearing about them at primary school. Things so grand and over the top that their reputations have lasted thousands of years. Of course, I am sure you all know the names of the seven ancient wonders, but just in case here is the list:

The Great Pyramid at Giza, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, the Statue of Zeus at Olympia, the Mausoleum at Helicarnassus, the Colossus of Rhodes and the Lighthouse (or Pharos) of Alexandria.

It is interesting to note that two of them are graves (the pyramid and the mausoleum), two of them are examples of great feats of engineering for the time (the Hanging Gardens and the Lighthouse) and another two are of religious significance (the temple of Artemis and the Statue of Zeus). The odd one out is the Colossus of Rhodes which is a statue of a Titan which might therefore be considered ‘religious’ but is a bit of a weird one and could also probably count as a ‘feat of engineering’* You could therefore argue that the wonders were indicative of the interests of the cultures in those periods.

In my life, I have visited the sites of three of these monuments. I went to the outskirts of Cairo to visit the Pyramids on my Honeymoon and while I did not go into the Great Pyramid itself because of the massive queues, I did see it and went into one of the lesser ones. Quite a humbling and frightening experience – small, cramped tunnels, the ever present sensation of all those tonnes of rock above and around you. Even if you are not claustrophobic you begin to get a feel for what it is like to be claustrophobic. If you are claustrophobic, I suggest you think more than twice before going in. I also visited the island of Rhodes a few years back and saw the pillars on the mouth of the harbour of Rhodes Old Town which are supposed to indicate where the two legs of the Colossus were as they stradded the bay. I have also been to Turkey and wandered around the ruins of Ephesus, including the Temple of Artemis that was there.

One of the two monuments on Rhodes harbour indicating the possible positions of the feet of the colossus.

Of the four I have not visited, at least one is probably not accessible at this time, being in the middle of what was until recently a warzone, and may well have been a legend rather than something that actually existed**. Of the remaining three, I have seen some of the statues that were purported to come from the Mausoleum in the British Museum and there are fragments of the temple of Zeus in the Louvre, which I have also visited though apparently nothing remains of the statue which was the true Wonder***. Finally, the site of lighthouse, the island off Alexandria known as the Pharos, is still there though the lighthouse itself was finally destroyed by an earthquake in the 15th century. Maybe one day I will manage to visit the sites of these. You could argue that it is a shame that these great feats of architecture were allowed to fall into ruin. However, you could also say that it is a testement to the skills of those builders that even fragments of some of them still exist today never mind almost complete structures of one of them.

*Of course, they are all feats of engineering because of their sheer scale…. but the Pharos and Hanging Gardens are examples of someone applying a scientific principle – the use of light in navigation and the use of irrigation to turn a desert into a garden – to a practical use.

** If they didn’t, then the walls of Babylon almost certainly did and apparently also qualify for Wonder status

*** There are varying stories about the fate of the statue. Some claim Caligula ordered it beheaded and replaced with his own head, others that it was lost in a fire either at the temple itself (in 425AD) or in Constantinople in 475AD.

Yes, this is a blogchain post and that means consequences if you do not follow through and read all the other entries in the chain. This month’s comedy punishment is to be buried under 200 tonnes of masonry in a desert somewhere. So that is something for you all to look forward to enjoying…

Participants and posts:
orion_mk3 – http://nonexistentbooks.wordpress.com (link to this month’s post)
Ralph Pines – http://ralfast.wordpress.com/ (link to this month’s post)
bmadsen – http://hospitaloflife.wordpress.com (link to this month’s post)
writingismypassion – http://charityfaye.blogspot.com/ (link to this month’s
post)
pyrosama – http://matrix-hole.blogspot.com/ (link to this month’s post)
areteus – https://lurkingmusings.wordpress.com/ (link to this month’s
post)
randi.lee – http://emotionalnovel.blogspot.com/ (link to this month’s
post)
BBBurke – http://www.awritersprogression.com/ (link to this month’s
post)
BigWords – http://bigwords88.wordpress.com/ (link to this month’s
post)
meowzbark – http://erlessard.wordpress.com/ (link to this month’s
post)
SuzanneSeese – http://www.viewofsue.blogspot.com/ (link to this month’s
post)
AFord – http://writeword.blog.com/ (link to this month’s
post)
Kricket – http://kricketwrites.blogspot.com/ (link to this month’s
post)

Photoshoot II: Attack of the texting Zombies (with Romans)

02 Sunday Sep 2012

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For a lazy and disorganised person like myself, being a shoot director is HARD. You have so many things to think about – models, costumes, make up, timings of the shoot, positions, locations… There is a lot to organise.

Onryo Necromancer played by Wednesday

Thankfully, as a lazy and disorganised person I have over the years spent much time developing an invaluable skill – delegation. Using this extremely useful ability I was able to fob off all the difficult bits to other people, not least onto the head of Jessica Newey who so ably performed duties as model for the Empress at the previous shoot and was now serving as Make Up Director, Warderobe Mistress and general maintainer of sanity …

However, one issue I could not solve was the weather.

I seem to talk about the weather a lot on this blog, most recently in my Fire and Ice entry where I talk about the extreme storm we had. The reason is because the UK and Manchester in particular is known for its chaotic and unpredictable weather patterns. In the case of this photoshoot, the weather was doubly critical because we intended to go outside and shoot in a local woodland.

So, with everything planned and prepared to meticulous detail, our only wild card factor was whether the rain would stop play.With models coming vast distances (well, vast in UK terms, ‘just down the road’ in American terms and ‘from next door’ in Australian) we needed to make a call to cancel as soon as possible to avoid unecessary trips. However, the weather reports were sketchy and unreliable and we oscillated between joy at a reasonably clear report and despair at one which showed storms. With photography equipment costing something up to the budget of a small South American state at risk we realised we would have to cancel.

The Minidress hits Elf botiques this autumn… Alex poses with half her costume

But then PLAN B was mooted! There was a suggestion from the photographer that as everyone was already free that weekend, no one seemed to be free for any other weekend in the near future and the studio we used last time was free we could shift plans and do it in the studio where rain was not an issue. It only took a minor bit of plan jiggling and suddenly we were on again!

Saturday morning dawned bright and sunny. Yes, the predicted rain and storms were not to be seen, the skies were clear. Cursing whichever deities or Meteorologists were to blame for the inconsistancies in weather reporting, we headed into deepest, darkest Yorkshire. All the way there I kept wondering if we should have reverted to plan A because the weather was fine but at that point we had already gone too far.

Luckily, we were justified in sticking to plan B because midway through the day there was a massive rainstrom that took everyone by surprise…

Look… no rain. Or trees… Rich in the studio

Now, the studio, with its convenient roof, solved the pressing issue of the equipment getting wet… However, the plan was to shoot in a woodland and the shots were arranged to suit this. Generally speaking, you rarely find trees or other woodland foliage inside a studio. I had assumed that the photographer was planning to repeat what we did before – single shots of characters against a black backdrop. However, I was wrong. His plans were far more ambitious.

His idea was to do some compositing. Essentially, take photos of all the models in costume against a white background and then superimpose them onto the backdrop of our choice. It requires a lot more editing work than simply doing it in a real woodland but it was our only choice at present and, besides, I think he relished the technical challenge. More to the point, while the layout of the shots I had planned called for two or three figures in each one, his plan was to shoot each figure individually against the white background and work from that to get the required vingettes.

Personally, I have doubts as to whether this will work or not. However, I am willing to wait and see what the final results look like. Past results where I have doubted have been awesome.

There were two vingettes I wanted to see. One, possibly the simplest technically, was an image of the three Vaetari Audenti – the historic leaders of the elven race in Realm. This required two female models and one male dressed in the Roman style costume. This required little make up other than a pair of latex elf ears each. The second was to represent the Onryo – the cursed undead race with a distinct Japanese theme. This involved a significant amount of make up.

Injuries

While Jess fussed around with costume and make up, creating some wonderfully realistic wounds, the photographer worked on the lighting. This took even longer than it did for the previous shoot as he needed to get a completely white background without shadows. This was not as easy as you might think and probably needed at least one more light to properly drench the area but after a lot of faffing he finally achieved it.

There was then the same process there had been last time of posing and taking shots, critically appraising them and suggesting changes. However, because we had a lot more figures to shoot, this process had to be more condensed to allow time for all the subjects to be covered. There was also the added complication of pondering how the figures would eventually be placed in the final vingette.

While the models were waiting for their turn in front of the camera, there were a number of activities to keep them amused. Some read, some slept, some played with mobile phones and some posed for joke shots as 1960’s style elves…

21st Century Zombies all have smart phones

By the end of the day, we were all exhausted but left the studio with a sense that we had created something great in our time there. Now it is just a question of waiting for the shots to be edited…. Once that has happened, I will post more on the subject.

Fantasy Photoshoot – The end (or is it?)

16 Monday Jul 2012

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Earlier this week I got the CD of images from Quattrofoto for the fantasy photoshoot studio session. Unlike previously published photos, which were either mine or Lucy’s ‘photostory’ of the day in the studio or ‘rough cuts’ with little or no editing, these were the final versions of the shots with all the special effects and photostudio tricks added to them. In fact, the person who did the editing (the wonderful Isabella Favilli) did admit they went somewhat mad with special effects on this one mainly because it was a fantasy theme.

Some of the changes are subtle, very subtle. A change of eye colour can be seen in some of them, for example.

can you spot the difference between these two images?

 

Click the photo to get a closer look at them…

Others are far more blatant. For example, in this shot we have a little more magic added to an already fascinating lighting effect.

Sparkles!

Here we have some magical sparkles added to the object our Druid is holding in his hand (it was actually a glass pot stuffed with grass and leaves to represent a selection of herbs) which were definitely not there when the photo was taken.

If anyone is curious about how these effects were achieved, you are going to be out of luck asking me. I know nothing about it. However, if you do have any burning questions, I am happy to pass them onto Isabella for you. I can’t guarantee she will answer but I can pass them on. Feel free to leave a comment with the questions…

In all, I am very pleased with the way this has come out. The shots have come out better than expected, but then I would expect that when using a professional instead of a rank amateur like myself.

So, this is the final post I will make about the day we spent in a photostudio. However, ‘adventures in fantasy photography’ is far from over. Plans are already afoot for the next stage which will be the location shoot, which we hope to manage to get done sometime before the end of summer. Provided, that is, the rain stops long enough for us to get the cameras out from under the waterproofing. It also depends on me managing to acquire all of a long list of esoteric items to use as costume and props and some more innocent victims to force at gunpoint to stand in front of a camera. However, at the time of writing, things are coming together so there may be more to report very soon…

Fantasy photoshoot update

18 Monday Jun 2012

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The undead empress

You may remember this post from not very long ago https://lurkingmusings.wordpress.com/2012/06/03/a-day-in-the-life-of-a-fantasy-photostudio/

Well, the photographer has now posted his account of the day:

http://quattrofoto.co.uk/2012/06/12/the-druid-and-the-empress/

Hopefully soon we will be able to organise the second part of this complicated arrangement and hie ourselves to a woodland to shoot zombies (with cameras) and maybe show off some Roman elves… We are also hoping to soon have the edited photos with the magic of photoshop used to make them even more awesome (these are only roughly edited). In the meantime, enjoy the shots showcased on the above link.

A day in the life of a Fantasy Photostudio

03 Sunday Jun 2012

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While I was in the middle of writing the background material for Realm, there was a discussion about the need for more artwork for the website and I wondered if it was possible to use photographs to achieve the same visual impact as drawings and colour art in a roleplaying or wargame. I knew that they had been used to great effect by live action roleplaying games – particularly the rulebooks and websites for Profound Decision’s Odyssey and Maelstrom games which make great use of the medium – and in theory there was no reason why it should not work for fantasy games in other formats.

The lighting set up around Andy as he plays Edvard

The main objections to the use of photos seemed to revolve around the old ‘LARP does not look as good as what you can imagine when playing a wargame or tabletop game’ argument. This is a fair argument, though one which is becoming increasingly stale in light of improving kit standards across the board at UK based LRP events over the past decade. The other main argument seems to be tradition – wargames and roleplaying games have always had artwork rather than photos. Why change what people expect to see?

There is nothing which can be done about the latter opinion other than to be a trailblazer and let people see what you have done and decide based on that. I am not trailblazer though hopefully others might follow my example here. For the former, I could take more direct action and attempt to set up a photoshoot to try to achieve something as good as what can be achieved with artwork.

The lights and fans around Jess as she plays the Empress

My initial plan was to take my camera, a couple of models drawn from the LRP community and a load of kit to some locations in and around Manchester and take some photos. However, a photography keen friend by the name of Lucy put me in touch with a professional photographer (Ste Manns of Quattrophoto) who was interested in doing some fantasy themed shoots to expand his portfolio. Suddenly, my modest plan became a complicated operation and we had access to a studio…

So, yesterday saw myself, Lucy and two friends by the names of Jessica Newey and Andy Mason travelling to a small town near Dewsbury to meet with Ste and his family at the studio he uses – a small corner of an industrial estate modified with the equipment and other requirements of a professional space.

It was a long, tiring and very educational day. Both myself and Lucy learned a lot about photography using a proper studio set up and I got to play with a 50mm Prime lens belonging to Ste and see the difference in the quality of my shots with it. Andy and Jess may also have picked up some information about lighting but mostly they seemed to get an education in patience and how to follow direction (specifically how difficult it is to convey an emotion or action on cue).

The plan for the day was to create images of two characters I had written into the Realm background history. One was the Empress of Onryo – the undead Necromancer who was trapped by a curse to live forever in the caves beneath her palace on the Island of Onryo. For this we needed a vague mythical Japanese theme. The other character was Edvard Vermogen of Hohle, the author of several important magical texts in the game. For Edvard, we needed to get the idea of a civilised scholar who had headed off into the wilderness to research his books.

A compromise: Turn the photos into a pencil sketch, using photo processing software…

We decided to start with the Empress so Jess got dressed into her kimono* and made herself up to look undead. There was then several hours of test shots – trying to get the exact lighting effects that were desired. As this was largely an experimental shoot, there were no standard lighting set up guidelines for this so there was a lot of trial and error. Once the correct conditions were achieved there was even more work to try to get the right poses and facial expressions to ‘tell the story’ of the character. Fans were used to make the kimono flutter and many attempts (some more successful than others) were made to try to time Jess making a movement to coincide with the shutter on the camera being activated. Each shot was transmitted to two laptops (one connected directly by a wire, the other using a wireless internet card in a slot on the camera) and critically appraised by all involved before the next shot was set up. To my limited technical experience, almost every shot looked fantastic (yeah, ok, quite a few were amusing due to mistimed movement or inappropriate facial expressions) but to the experienced professionals there were minor flaws with almost all of them which needed to be corrected with either another adjustment of the lights or a new set of instructions to the model. By the end of it, Jess had sore muscles from holding poses and was a little chilly from standing in front of a fan in a flimsy kimono.

The Empress

We began photographing sometime between 11 and 12. We finally finished with the first model at around 4. That’s a lot of time to be standing in a big white space with lots of people telling you what to do. When we finally got round to shooting Andy, I think Jess was pleased to be able to sit down and relax.

For Edvard Vermogen, I had brought along a selection of wool and fur clothing – including a heavy wool cloak covered in a patchwork of fur**. I also brought along a selection of props that a magician or scholar might happen to have on his travels such as a staff topped with an antler, a small chest and a selection of bottles and stones. Andy then posed with these while there was another series of lighting changes and more critical appraisal of the results. Tricks used this time included hiding a wireless remote flash filtered with a coloured gel (first purple, then green) inside the box so that it appeared as if a magical light was coming from it. Andy’s main hazard here was looking down at the wrong time and getting an eyeful of flash. There was also an issue of his hair being too clean and brushed. This was resolved with some backcombing and a handful of leaves and twigs.

If you look closely, you can see the wireless flash in the box

Lucy and I spent the time when we were not helping with the shoot or making sure the models were ok (including finding a drink that could be drunk without spoiling make up) taking photos. Some of Lucy’s can be seen on the blog post linked above and are fantastic. Some of mine are shown on this post, the rest can be seen here. Our main focus was not to take phenomenal quality shots of the models with great artistic quality (we both left that to the Pros) but rather to take photos of the process – behind the scenes footage of the equipment used and the people involved. I hope that between  us we manage to convey the way the day went.

Sometime in the next few weeks, once Ste finishes doing whatever arcane things he intends to do to them with computer software, I will hopefully be able to share some of the final processed photos from the actual shoot and show you all the dramatic difference between the shots taken in ‘ambient light’ and those taken using the special lighting rigs…

Also, in a few weeks time we should be getting prepared for ‘part two’ of this shoot where we take some models to the woods and get some images of some other fantasy characters… One of these will hopefully be the second half of the Empress shoot, involving some undead samurai in a woodland.

*She made this herself. She is a talented seamstress.

** This belongs to and was made by Sarah, my wife… yes, I know a lot of talented people who can do wonderful things with material… It was originally made for a norse based LRP character but has been used several times since. The furs, by the way, are all second hand and some of them date from the 1950s. They were acquired from a re-enactment market.