May The Fourth (be with you) 2024

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 This year's May 4th image for Emma at Motorbike Rentals & Alternate Adventures - Hopkins, Belize featured Emma riding a Speeder bike through the jungles of Belize.

There are no outlets to buy Star Wars toys here in Belize but Emma was able to use her contacts and have one brought to Belize from the USA. Once we had the toy we went out to do our shoot. A friend gave us permission to shoot amongst some trees on their property on Sittee River.
To help with getting the correct angles we had a ladder that Emma could sit on as if she was sitting on a life size Speeder bike. I also used lighting to define the direction we wanted the sunlight to be appearing from. We shot various spots around the trees and mixed poses and directions so that we could have choices when it came to putting the final image together.
Once we had the location shots, it was time to shoot the Speeder bike. The Speeder toy is 20cm in length so I was able to light and shoot it on a tabletop from various angles.
Using the location shots as reference, I could set up the lighting to simulate how the sunlight would strike the bike so that it wouldn't look odd when placed into the scene.
I shot at f/11 to keep the toy sharp without having to resort to focus stacking for sharpness. It came with a little plastic plinth which was see through which helped with lining things up with some the retouching I had to do later on. There was one more shot to do of some motorcycle luggage and we had all the elements we needed to put the final image together.

Once I had resized the Speeder to the location shots, I need to place Emma on the Speeder bike and perfect her pose. You can see adjustments were made to her overall angle, placement of her feet and I also gave her a new left arm. And finally added the bike luggage.



Once she was sitting convincingly on the Speeder I decided to raise her and the bike a little higher in the scene. I extended the trees at the top of the image and moved her up until I was happy. Afterwards there was the attention to minor details and shadows to clean up, and adjust the colour of the sky. And that's how this image was made.






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