Hoth Wampa Cave

Today's photo is another macro Lego Star Wars shot, this one being Set 8089, the Hoth Wampa Cave. The shot recreates the scene from The Empire Strikes Back where Luke is struggling to reach his lightsaber as the Wampa approaches. Luke is ultimately able to channel the Force as the lightsaber flies into his hand, allowing him to free himself from the ice, slice one of the Wampa's arms off, and escape into the frigid cold wasteland of the planet Hoth (I would put spoiler alert at the beginning of that, but I am pretty sure everyone that reads this post has already seen this scene and knows what happens. If this is the very first time you have been exposed to it, SPOILER ALERT!)

The shot was fairly straight forward, with tissues creating the white foreground and background, with an LED flashlight lighting the left side of the Wampa behind the "ice". I took the shot at f/3.5 to give the background a little less focus, but the ultimate snow effect of this shot was something that I picked up from being a member of the National Association of Photoshop Professionals (primarily to get the Photoshop User magazine). One of the tips on the site for creating a snow effect was to visit the Obsidian Dawn website (www.obsidiandawn.com) and download one of the snow brushes. After creating two layers with different size and density "snow", I added some blurring, then some motion blur to create the overall effect.

I am totally thrilled with how the shot came out and it is by far my favorite Lego Star Wars shot to date. I still have some other sets that I have put together to shoot in the near future, but this is the kind of shot that I was hoping for when I first decided to try to build, and then shoot, Lego Star Wars sets.

Hoth Wampa Cave

Please feel free to leave comments and/or feedback below. Also remember that clicking on the photo itself lets you view the image in a variety of sizes by taking you to my online gallery hosted over at smugmug. Thanks for stopping by!