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Lurking Musings

~ Musings of a newly published writer

Lurking Musings

Tag Archives: Photoshoot

Photoshoot in a windy woodland

01 Friday Nov 2013

Posted by D.A Lascelles in Musings

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Autumn colours, Edvard Vermogen, Fantasy photoshoot, Japanese undead, Location photography, models, Onryo, Onryo Empress, Photoshoot, Prestwich, Prestwich Clough, Realm, Realm Fantasy Wargame, Undead Fiends, Wizards


You may remember that over the last year or so I have been collabomartial artsrating with the team at Quattrofoto to produce a series of photographs themed around the background I wrote for the Fantasy Wargame Realm. We did the first two shoots in the studio where we met the Onryo Empress and her court, the druid Edvard Vermogen and the Vaetari Audenti – especially the Imperatrix Sanguinia. Both of these shoots were successful in achieving some awesome images. However, since shoot two was originally planned to be in a woodland and the weather scuppered our plans, we decided to get together in October 2013 to take those woodland shots.

Thankfully, it did not rain this time. However it was still October and that meant the Autumn chills were upon us. Our poor models (especially Jessica and Alex in their kimonos) were somewhat cold. Actually, all of us were cold, even those of us who had thick layers of wool or coats to wear. However, we persevered through the keeping warmhardships and produced what I hope will be some wonderful shots once they are edited. We also had tea in a flask, thick woollen cloaks and good company to keep us warm as can be seen in the photo to the right. It is unfortunately one of the disadvantages of an outdoor location shoot that we were exposed to the weather, whatever it chose to throw at us. That included a very cold and strong wind. But at least the threatened rain did not appear so we did not need the bin bags that were packed to use as emergency waterproofing for the equipment.

Note that the photos in this blog post are my shots taken on the day, mainly of things happening in set up. Samples of the official Quattrofoto shots will be posted here later, as soon as they are ready.

the backdropWe decided to set up our outdoor studio in a little clearing in the middle of Prestwich Clough which had a rather interesting looking earth mound in it that was covered in trees. This proved to be a quite impressive backdrop, especially with the bright autumn colours to create a nice contrast. It was, of course, gloomy due to the tree cover but that was not a problem. Thanks to the portable lighting rig that was brought along it was possible to create any lighting conditions we desired. Compared to the extensive kit available in the studio this set up was rather basic, only two flashes linked to the camera by a remote control. However, this simple set up could create a vast number of effects and was more than adequate for our needs.

Jess as the Empress of Onryo demonstrating the benefits of having a real wind on location.

Jess as the Empress of Onryo demonstrating the benefits of having a real wind on location.

I mentioned that the disadvantages of being out of the studio were that we were exposed to the weather. However, this was one of very few disadvantages (lugging the kit to and from the location was another…). For the most part there were many advantages. For example, that exposure to the weather also meant that we could do some floaty robe effects without thrusting a very cold fan right into the model’s face because there was a natural breeze that did that job for us perfectly. We even attempted to get some shots of the Empress and her entourage surrounded by floating leaves by having some people (the photographer’s partner and daughter) stand behind the light rig and throw leaves into the wind. This rather cool concept did not quite work, mainly because the timing of the leaves flying and the shutter activating were off by just too much. Maybe if we had persevered for a few more tries, practised the co-ordination between the models, the camera operator and the leaf throwers we may have achieved this. However, we decided to progress onto other ideas. It was, however, great fun watching the volunteer leaf throwers hurling leaves at the two models. And leaf hurler seems to be the perfect job for a young child on a photoshoot.

The leaf throwers prepare to do their duty

The leaf throwers prepare to do their duty

Space is another thing we had more of than in the studio. In the studio, with the lights in place, space was very limited and therefore shots with more than one model were difficult. Especially if you are trying to tell a story that involves two groups of characters in conflict. You don’t want to have any photographs showing backs of heads so the arrangement of your models has to avoid that.  In the open air there is a lot more space in which to spread out and get good vignettes where every character’s face is visible, even if they are apparently facing each other.

set up2Another difference between the studio and location, at least in this instance, was the time. The studio set up required a lot of time to get ready for use and a lot of faffing with settings on all the lights to get it all working the way the photographer visualised it. Here the light set up was limited – two lights – and there was an added bonus of the photographer having acquired a device which let him adjust the settings of both lights from the control system of his camera. This meant less wandering around to each light in turn to adjust them, taking a photo, doing all the adjustments again and so on. Therefore the turn around on shots was a lot quicker – we sometimes got what the photographer considered a perfect shot in a couple of minutes rather than the twenty or thirty minutes as was the case before. Initial set up was also a lot quicker. I had planned in my schedule a lot of time for this and was therefore surprised to find them all ready to go and waiting around bored when I came back from guiding some of the models to the location.

My role on the day was ostensibly ‘shoot director’ as usual as well as generally trying to get everything organised – location scouting, making sure everyone knew what was happening, sorting out the basic logistics. However, myself and Lucy (who you may remember mentioned in the previous photoshoot blogs) also had another very important role. You see, another issue with a location shoot is uneven ground and so while you might be able to leave a light stand on a smooth studio floor and expect it toa lightstands view stay standing, this is not the case on location. Especially when there is a strong wind blowing and your lights have reflector umbrellas on them. So, two able volunteers who were not taking photographs, being models or throwing leaves around had to stand next to the light stands and hold them in place. Most of the time that was me and Lucy. I like to think we performed ably as inanimate pieces of photography equipment. Certainly no lightstands fell over in the wind, though the strength of some of the gusts we experienced almost caused them to take a tumble a couple of times. This did however mean I could use my own camera, albeit one handed as one hand was always holding the lightstand, and take photos of my own from quite close to the action – literally a lightstand’s view of the models. In the photo above, you can see one such shot which includes the reflector in the top left hand corner.

Playing around with colour settings. The blurry shadow effect is a camera artefact that I decided worked for the scene being shot.

Playing around with colour settings. The blurry shadow effect is a camera artefact that I decided worked for the scene being shot.

We took two basic scenes on the day. First of all we went to the top of the mound and took some shots of Jess and Alex as the Empress and one of her sorcerer courtiers. Then, as the quite spectacular light we were getting through the trees on top of the mound faded, we moved to the base of the mound to make use of the interesting scenery there – old logs and gnarled trees and lots of undergrowth – to take some shots of our two undead fiends chasing a single wizard, played by Andy Mason. There were also individual shots of each of the characters alone. By the time we finished all that, it was getting on to sunset and so we headed home to let everyone warm up and find food. We even got a chance to preview some of the shots as they were uploaded to a tablet. Hopefully soon there will be properly edited shots with photo-shopped special effects to marvel at. Until then, please accept my efforts as a poor substitute.

An action shot my camera was too slow to catch properly so there is a lot of blurring

An action shot my camera was too slow to catch properly so there is a lot of blurring

Review of the Year

30 Sunday Dec 2012

Posted by D.A Lascelles in Musings

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

#amwriting, Absolute Write, BBW Romance writers, behaviour management, books, Judy Bagshaw, Ninfa Hayes, Photography, Photoshoot, Publication, Realm Fantasy Wargame, Rebeka Harrington, Skyla Dawn Cameron, spirit world, Vampires, writing


As Christmas ends and the New Year looms, everyone inevitably begins to think about things like resolutions and reviews of past deeds. My intention in this post is to look at this blog and consider what has been successful in the past year.

The Ten Most popular posts

[News From the Spirit World] Vampires More stats 488
[AW Blog Chain] Zompocalypse More stats 385
The Avengers UK: Crossover universes More stats 198
A day in the life of a Fantasy Photostudio More stats 155
About More stats 130
Teaching: Behaviour management on BBC Breakfast More stats 108
[AW blog chain] Otherworldly More stats 97
Photoshoot II: Attack of the texting Zombies (with Romans) More stats 91
[AW Blog chain] Rainy Days More stats 85
Weird Worlds [AW Blog chain for June] More stats 82

This table shows the most popular posts for the year. I have excluded the most popular post (at over 2,800 views) because that was ‘homepage/archive’ which basically means that someone viewed the first page. It is interesting that the most popular post this year was one I did as a link to News From the Spirit World for an article I wrote on Vampires. I am guessing that this is due to the overall popularity of Vampires in general. Many of the Absolute Write blog chain posts are also trending in this list which implies that the link from the other blogs in the chain is achieving something. Finally, the Avengers Crossover post and the various Photoshoot posts are perennial favourites that seem to pop up every now and again even months after being posted. Oh, and my ego feels quite pleased that people feel it necessary to view my about page…

Ten Most popular keywords

vampires 280
zombie 98
vampirler 29
avengers meme 17
writer 13
weird worlds 12
zombie lady 12
behaviour management 9
the chosen book review 9
vampire 9

There have been a number of weird and wonderful keywords used over the time this blog has been active. This table shows the most popular ones used. I am sure no one is at all surprised that Vampires come up top, especially given the result of ‘most popular post’. There are also a few variants on that – vampires and vampirler showing up a few times.  Zombie is also a search term which again shows up frequently with a couple of variants – zombie lady being the one shown here. Finally, it is probably no surprise given the popularity of that franchise that the Avengers shows up as the most popular after Vampires and Zombies in this table. The numbers here are obviously less than those for the most popular post because search terms are by their nature more variable.

This table does not show some of the weirdest search terms used to find this blog because most of those were one offs… ‘Cute Zombie Girl’ and ‘Hot Sexy Zombie’ both came up 3 times (with other variants in there as well), ‘Ninfa Goddess’ another 3 times (though I am not convinced it was not Ninfa herself doing this search out of ego…) and ‘discipline suit’ came up twice. No idea what a ‘discipline suit’ is but I am assuming that search led them to my tirade about behaviour management… There was also a weird one ‘benedict cumberbatch as lascelles’ which I assume must have been someone searching for information about the upcoming Strange and Norrell adaptation in which I think Mr Cumberbatch would indeed make a great Lascelles though I have no idea if he has been cast or not (or if anyone has been cast in this particular adaptation…).If anyone hears about any casting news for Strange and Norrell, please feel free to let me know.

Top Ten Countries Viewing the Blog

United Kingdom 1,971
United States FlagUnited States 1,968
Canada FlagCanada 308
Australia FlagAustralia 228
India FlagIndia 91
Philippines FlagPhilippines 73
Germany FlagGermany 68
Puerto Rico FlagPuerto Rico 52
France FlagFrance 51
Indonesia FlagIndonesia 49

Naturally, UK and US dominate this chart in the top two positions here with my fans in both countries vying for top spot and ending with a very close call (only three views in it in the end). This obviously comes from me being British and my books being largely published in the US. I also have a good mix of people from both countries on my facebook and twitter accounts (both of which get links to here posted) and a lot of US people come to me through the Absolute Write forums. Australia and Canada are on here for similar reasons – Australia due to the many fans of Rebekah Harrington and Canada due to Skyla Dawn Cameron and Judy Bagshaw’s occasional posts on this blog. It is also nice to see other countries on here to give the place a proper international feel with places such as the Philippines and Indonesia showing up there.

So, that is a brief overview of the state of this blog as the year comes to a close. I’ve found some interesting trends here and hope to find many more in 2013 when I repeat this process again. Of course, this year has been good for a few other things. In this year I managed to get involved in the creation of an entire world background for a fantasy wargame called Realm (today is your last chance to enter the competition to win some miniatures…) and also to finally release Transitions onto an unsuspecting public after many many years in ‘publication hell’. I’ve also managed to organise two successful photoshoots by bringing different people with different exceptional talents together then sitting back and watching them work magic.

In 2013 I have other plans afoot and hope to be able to announce other fun things very soon…

Fantasy photoshoot update

18 Monday Jun 2012

Posted by D.A Lascelles in Photos

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Druid, elves, gaming, photographer, Photography, Photos, Photoshoot, Realm Fantasy Wargame, Roleplaying games, undead, Zombies


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

Posted by D.A Lascelles in Musings, Photos

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

action roleplaying, Druid, Empress, gaming, live action roleplaying games, maelstrom games, Photography, Photoshoot, profound decision, Realm, Realm Fantasy Wargame, Roleplaying games, Scholar, Secret Project


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.

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