Behind the Scene

The Royal portrait story had been in the works for some time.  It all started when I saw  a painting online of King Theodan in LOTR like he was standing for a portrait with his horse.
It was called King of the Golden Hall, by Magdalena Katanska.

I wanted to try and recreate something similar with Lawrence and his horse to mark the tenth anniversary of his reign. I wanted to shoot it at our son's movie studio, and also planned on including the artist, working on painting the portrait.

So, last summer I started by making the armour for his horse...

Then I added fur around the bottom edge of Lawrence's royal robes, and took photos of him with his horse like they were posing for the painting...

It took me a few days to do the painting ...

...and with the movie studio photo shoot coming up in the end of November, I practiced the set up at home on the dining room table...

When we arrived at the movie studio, I proceeded to set up the scene. My sister had asked to come come along, and took some photos as well...

Lawrence looked magnificent...

Then I set up Narin and his easel....

Then it was time to light the candles...

...and Lawrence and his horse were ready to have their portrait painted. 
​I was basically shooting forced perspective against the movie background

My sister took some photos as well...

Each time I was finished photographing a pose, all the candles would get blown out, only to be lit again for the next scene.

The set was on a moveable riser, which would need to be rotated to photograph Narin and Monica from the side or front...

When I was done, I took everything down, and set up the scene with the Christening of Baron and Naomi's twins...