[OL - Ch 1B] Expedition into the Mangrove

[Gideon]

Expedition into the Mangrove

This is my Challenge I category B entry.

Gideon de Bothnia is leading an Oleander expedition to a newly discovered island, with a small detachment of marines sent by his brother Alexandre who is a high ranking officer in the Oleander fleet. In the great push for exploration, most people don't seem to mind if the national resources of the navy are "borrowed" by entrepreneurs who are trying to make personal gains from the exploration. After all, it's all for the glory of Oleon!

Much of the shores of the new island is covered with thick mangrove, but finally they have found a gap in the mangrove where during the low tide they are able to land with one of the smaller ship’s boats. Now they can make their first footsteps on this virgin soil, but now the members of the expedition anxiously wonder if they are the first to land on this island or if someone has come here before them?

More pictures:

For those of you interested in how I shot this, here is another "behind the scenes" shot. This time I tried to play a bit with off camera lighting with my old Olympus FL-50R and a cheap umbrella setup I bought a while ago.

[Sir Stig]

Nice swamp. Looks very jungleish. It could look even wilder with a little bit undergrowth inbetween the trees. I also really appreciate to see how you set up for photos.Thanks you I can't make it as good as that, but seeing behind the scenes makes it easier for me to understand how I can improve my own shots.

[Captain Dee]

Incredible creation, Gideon! It looks just about perfect. The technique you used on the mangroves is simply brilliant, and the rest of the scene looks really good as well. I'm curious - how many of the trunk pieces and big leaf pieces went into this? And where did the trunk pieces come from? (ie, set or part number) Excellent work, and once again the crest is flying proudly!

[Gideon]

Nice swamp. Looks very jungleish. It could look even wilder with a little bit undergrowth inbetween the trees. I also really appreciate to see how you set up for photos.Thanks you I can't make it as good as that, but seeing behind the scenes makes it easier for me to understand how I can improve my own shots.

Thanks!

The idea was that this is at low tide, so at high tide the water is almost up to the leaves. It's not the lighting setup which is the most important thing here, a good backdrop, a cheap tripod, taking a few steps backwards and using the zoom on the camera and using dim natural light can give you at least as good pictures. Only problem for me is that I always do all my shooting (and building) when the rest of the family is asleep, and natural light is not an option then...

Incredible creation, Gideon! It looks just about perfect. The technique you used on the mangroves is simply brilliant, and the rest of the scene looks really good as well. I'm curious - how many of the trunk pieces and big leaf pieces went into this? And where did the trunk pieces come from? (ie, set or part number) Excellent work, and once again the crest is flying proudly!

Thanks!

The number of dinosaur middle tails (40378) are somewhere around 65, and some more tail ends (40379) hanging from the canopy. But I have no idea how many leaves and bar 3L went into the canopy, but a fair share of last year's LUGBULK amount at least

I got the idea for the mangrove after seeing Blufiji's excellent tree trunk using the same technique in a swamp in Historica.

[Garmadon]

Excellent build Gideon, awesome work with those mangroves, and the water, sand, and posing are superb as well! And the photography, but that is a given on a Gideon build! Great touch including the wildlife too, and my only nitpick would be that some of the tails going down which don't reach the water look a bit odd. But perhaps they would all be covered at high tide? Wonderful job once again!

[Gideon]

Excellent build Gideon, awesome work with those mangroves, and the water, sand, and posing are superb as well! And the photography, but that is a given on a Gideon build! Great touch including the wildlife too, and my only nitpick would be that some of the tails going down which don't reach the water look a bit odd. But perhaps they would all be covered at high tide? Wonderful job once again!

Thanks!

Yes, the idea with the hanging roots is that they will be submerged at high tide. If I had put more time into this build I would however have tried to make more of the tails reach further down, as it was now I added the hanging tails afterwards which was a pain with my big clumsy hands...

[Mike S]

Brilliant entry!

[Captain Genaro]

Oh my, that's fantastic; I absolutely love it . The trees are nothing short of suburb, and the sheer quantity really creates the impression of a thick jungle/swamp. Of course, the beach has some great texture as well, and I really like the various minor details you included.

I can't wait to see the next installment of this story!

As for the photography, do you always keep the camera at that distance and simply zoom in for the closer shots? I may be mistaking, but I thought you would want to move the camera in closer whenever possible.

Edited February 16, 2016 by Captain Genaro

[Ayrlego]

Simply Stunning! I always look forward to seeing your work and you never disappoint! I’ve been meaning to get some of those dinosaur/trunk pieces for a while now to try out some vegetation options, this will probably ensure that I do! It looks and feels like a tidal mangrove swamp - great work and fantastic entry!

[Tezclatipoca]

Excellent entry !

Great build, as always ! Your building skills are just amazing !

You gave that mangrove a really jungly atmosphere ! I like it !

[CelesAurivern]

Very nice and mangrovish. If you had some mudkips you'd be all set!

[The Sarge]

Very nice, although the water looks really clear for a swamp!

[dr_spock]

Excellent build. Nice detail touch putting macaws on top of the forest canopy.

[SkaForHire]

Another stroke of genius from Gideon! You should have been a Corrie!!!! :) I guess I will just have to be glad your in Kaliphlin with me.

Thanks for the pictures of your photo set up. Is the flash on the umbrella a slave to the one on the camera, or are you not firing the camera's flash? Also, what is the backdrop, a projection screen? That is a really neat way to set it up, and it looks like you can take it down easily.

[kabel]

Mangroves, what a great idea to build those! And it's phantastic how you carried it out. Much to admire here!

[TitusV]

Holy ****! That's just awesome! These trees are just marvellous! Great job!

[Puvel]

That’s a great looking mangrove indeed!

I can imagine a bit of cursing when adding leaves and then the rest of them falling of the tree trunks. That’s what happens whenever I try to build trees anyway

The minifig posing is also very excellent

[Sir Iron]

Wow! Its beatifull! The trees capture the feeling of strange new land, so well.

[Kai NRG]

A fantastic build, those mangroves are just excellent and I really like the water as well. The parrots add a great bit of color as do the shells on the ground! One of my favorite entries to this category!

[Capt Wolf]

That mangrove is stunning! The water is quite good, too, and the whole composition of the build is well done. Beautiful entry!

[Franco Clarke]

Wow that scene perfectly captures the appearance of mangroves, something not commonly seen on the pirate forums.

[Captain Braunsfeld]

Extraordinary build - I am very much impressed!

[Gideon]

Thanks for the comments everyone!

Very nice, although the water looks really clear for a swamp!

The idea was that this depicts the edge of the mangrove at low tide, so the water is pretty much the clear open ocean water.

It was something like this I had in mind:

Thanks for the pictures of your photo set up. Is the flash on the umbrella a slave to the one on the camera, or are you not firing the camera's flash? Also, what is the backdrop, a projection screen? That is a really neat way to set it up, and it looks like you can take it down easily.

Exactly, the flash on my camera is my usual light source but in this case I experimented with some light from another direction as well. Partly to compensate for the fact that I had for the first time rotated my setup 90 degrees so I no longer had a white wall behind me to rely on for bouncing a bit of flash from the front and not only from above (usually I shoot my pictures with the camera on the right in the room on that picture).

Since the old Olympus flash cannot use the more advanced Nikon flash control system, I simply put it as a stupid slave and set it to 25-50 % of what the on-camera flash was outputting.

The backdrop can be put up and taken down in less than 5 minutes each so it is very neat. The backdrop itself is a "Tupplur" roller blind from Ikea. I also have a white and a black one, but the gray one is my favorite as long as I'm not shooting gray castles

As for the photography, do you always keep the camera at that distance and simply zoom in for the closer shots? I may be mistaking, but I thought you would want to move the camera in closer whenever possible.

The reason for moving further away and zooming in is that the perspective gets much better then. In this build it was maybe not that necessary, but in builds with pronounced vertical lines the closer you go the more the vertical lines will be "sloping" outwards on each side. By standing further away that slope gets much less. It also helps me getting the whole build in focus, since the closer you go the shorter the depth of field becomes. On a small compact camera that is not such a big issue but with my full frame camera short depth of field is troublesome when I try to get a whole build in focus.

I can imagine a bit of cursing when adding leaves and then the rest of them falling of the tree trunks. That’s what happens whenever I try to build trees anyway

The leaves are actually fairly sturdy attatched since I've used a lot of bar 3L, but adding new leaves was a pain since if I wanted to push another bar in some leaf I needed to get my fingers in to hold on the other side of the leave to not bend the leave instead of getting the bar through one of the holes...

[Blufiji]

I said it only flicker, Ill say it here. You nailed the concept..took something so simple and made it gorgeous.

[Gideon]

I said it only flicker, Ill say it here. You nailed the concept..took something so simple and made it gorgeous.

Thanks! As I said before, if it wasn't for the inspiration from your swamp tree I never would have come up with this tree design