So as part of mammoth photo weekend, last Sunday I was back on the set of Born of Hope, a Lord of the Rings inspired film currently being filmed in Suffolk. You can read about the previous adventures I had with the Orcs on set here.

Unfortunately this weekend I ran into something that’s normally rare for me: photographer politics. Don’t get me started on the minority of photographers who are so un-confident in their work they have to do everything in their power to stop other photographers getting a shot… I do feel that props should go out quickly here though to Jean-Luc Benazet who was brilliant to shoot alongside the previous day, and the McNallys and Hobbys out there educating our world. In today’s society, if the photographic industry is going to survive, we’re going to have to all work together and pool our knowledge. By doing so we learn lots, improve our photographs, reduce our stress levels and ultimately  knock our customers off their feet! Anyway talking of knocking people off their feet, I did manage to surreptitiously steal one of the Saxon huts on set and set up a makeshift studio for some more Orc fun…

Orc Airbourne Commander reporting for duty..

I think this might be my favorite shot of the year so far.

More photos and lighting info after the jump…

Lighting here was via three speedlights. First one was very much choked up in an umbrella as main, from camera right. I chose to choke it to create a harsh light source which would really show the wrinkles in the Orc’s face and fall deeply into shadow very quickly. The second two acted as kickers coming in from far behind both left and right. The idea here was to separate the Airborne Orc from the background, give some texture around the ear and add some light to the smoke.

Yes, Orcs use Macs and are on facebook. Watch out Gandalf…

Lighting on this one was incredibly simple and yet also complicated! It’s simply a sb900 ranked along the side of the Orc’s face to give as much texture as possible. Fill was from the Mac screen, not quite an iPhone but still very David Hobby… The trick to this one was balancing the flash with the screen on the Macbook and also gobo-ing the flash so it didn’t reflect off the screen. Quite a challenge but in the end I think it worked and I love the shot… Oh, the other complicated thing was getting Internet to a Saxon village but I’ll answer that one another day.

And finally, I decided to get a quick portrait of one of the heroes, Arathorn (played by Christopher Dane). Given time and a lack of politics I would have loved to have got a portrait of each of the leading characters. Maybe next time hey?

Again, very simple light here. Both use a choked up white shoot through as the main coming in from high camera right. If you look, you can see the really wonderful texture it gives as it rakes across the costume. The first shot here also has a kicker back left to separate, the second I just let him blend into the backdrop.

Well the majority of filming is now over so who knows when I’ll next get a chance to play with Orcs. But, if anybody else has something cool like this which you would like some photos for please feel free to hit me up!

Alex