The Power Of The Dark Side

Before we get any further along into this conversation, I suppose that full disclosure is called for.  I know that the big words on the top of the page say 'Eric Mahannah Photography', but at this moment in time the blog is going All Star Wars, All The Time.  Well, for this post.  As part of my vacation this year, My Lovely Assistant and I made the trek, err trip, down the highway to Ottawa.  Most people go to Ottawa for the museums, the flowers, the history or the Parliament buildings, and so did I.  But first, I needed to experience Star Wars Identities.  I didn't really need to travel the 200+ kilometers to see the show as it was actually one very short Metro ride away from me last year.  However, every time that I tried to see the show, it was always sold out.  In hindsight, I probably should have bought my tickets in advance.  We'll keep that lesson in mind for later.  I was planning on meeting up with my good buddy Dave as he was going to take in the show with his two kids to keep us company.  The drive up to the Aviation and Space Museum went well, but when it was time to pay the parking meter, a familiar sign from my past crept up and bit me.  The show was sold out.  We still took in the sights at the museum, but seeing old airplanes, no matter how cool some of them were, just couldn't ease my pain of not seeing X-Wing fighters, Star Destroyers and the Millennium freakin' Falcon.  Thankfully, My Lovely Assistant is patient and understand, thus we returned the next day and got in to see the exhibition.  What can I say, I was a child of the 80's.  Star Wars was just as important as...well nothing was more important than Star Wars.  My Mom was quite impressed a few weeks ago that I remembered her taking my brother and I to see a double bill matinee of Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back, back-to-back.  I was even more impressed that she managed to sit through both of those movies.  I had never known my Mom to be much of a movie person, but again, I was six years old at this point.  Other than 'This is awesome', I didn't know that much.  After the movies, came the action figures.  I still have them all, though My Lovely Assistant doesn't know why, and probably will keep them for all of time.  So, now that all of that is out in the open, how do we swing this little article back towards the topic of photography so that I don't feel like this is totally misplaced.  Well, I had my camera with me, and there was no chance that I wasn't going to be taking lots of photos, but I tried to think of a way to mix photography and Star Wars.  Then it hit me, this is the perfect place to practice taking some portrait style photos.  Mind you, I had no control over the lighting, most of my 'models' were behind glass cases and there were people walking all over the place.  My 'models' weren't very receptive to my direction either.  It's kind of hard to ask a Stormtrooper to smile, seems George Lucas had the same issues.  Other than that, it was great.  We were asked at the beginning of the exhibition not to use any flash, so I immediately cranked up the ISO to 1600.  I tried to position myself so that as little of the glass would be showing, and more importantly, there would not be any reflections of light from the other displays on my portraits.  I'm not trying to fool anyone, I know that these aren't perfect 'portraits', but I think they turned out pretty good, and I just wanted to put some Star Wars pictures up on the site because little 6-year old Eric thinks that it's pretty cool.  Darth Vader was shot at f/2.8, 1/30sec, ISO 1600, at 51mm.  Boba Fett was shot at f/2.8, 1/50sec, ISO 1600 at 32mm.  The Stormtrooper was shot at f/2.8, 1/200sec, ISO 1600 at 32mm.  Here are the rest of the photos.

f/2.8, 1/15sec, ISO 1600 at 34mm

f/2.8, 1/30sec, ISO 1600 at 32mm

f/2.8, 1/60sec, ISO 1600 at 34m

f/2.8, 1/50sec, ISO 1600 at 32mm

Those of you wondering why all of the portraits are of the 'bad' characters.  The truth is that all of the 'good' character in the movie were human, and we human's don't really like being imprisoned behind glass.  Their costumes were there, but on faceless mannequins.  Much like the one you see next to the speeder bike.  So there you have it, a little portrait taking with the Star Wars characters.  Maybe we'll find a way to get some portraits done of real people up here soon.  In the meantime, May the Force be with you.