“Of all the beastly burdens that must be brought to bear upon the brain, the bewildering balance of benevolence versus barbarianism between orcish beings bewitches even the most brilliant intellect.“
This week, we introduce the eighth image in The People of Light and Shadow series, “The Orc Scribe,” featuring James Martineau.
The Orc Scribe: James Martineau
James Martineau is a Chicago actor, gamer, and an extraordinary drone photographer who, in his business captures amazing aerial views of landscapes and cityscapes that portrait photographers like me can only dream of. James came to The People of Light and Shadow series with an idea for an orc scribe, which made for a compelling contrast. Many of us were first introduced to orcs though The Lord of the Rings, where they are depicted as brutish, evil minions of the dark lord Sauron. Orcs inevitably made their way into other fantasy fiction, Dungeons & Dragons, and electronic games, where they became playable characters, and thus they have been reexamined over the years, have become more human and more interesting. James’s depiction of an orc scribe juxtaposes the original conception of orcs in Tolkein with its opposite—an orc intellectual—the sort of fellow you might encounter in a medieval English abbey. Here’s what James had to say about his inspiration to portray the orc scribe “Barty.”
I’ve always loved the allegory of the cave—the idea of only knowing the world you’re exposed to. If you don’t expose yourself to new facts and ideas, soon you’ll have convinced yourself that you’ve learned everything that’s worth knowing. Similarly I think ‘Barty’ here comes from “The more I see, the less I know.” As he travels and learns, he realizes that there’s so much more to the world than he could’ve imagined. However, being an orc and not welcome most places, he found it much easier to read texts and scrolls by candlelight. Now, his mind is free to explore countless places.
James Martineau
Photography
In what has become a tradition for this series, we used a textured brown background, a big square softbox camera left, and a V-flat on camera right. The camera settings were the ones that have become standard for this series: f/8, ISO 100, 1/200 sec. with an 85 mm lens.
While the main light for this series has often been a big rectangular softbox that suggests light from a window, we always try a few options and perhaps as often choose an image with the small, trusty, round beauty dish modifier, which offers a harder, more specific light. The choice of the lighting modifier depends on the subject and context of the portrait. The orc scribe seems lost in gentle contemplation, so the choice of a big, warm, soft window light seemed most appropriate for him.
We thought we had the image in the first half of the session, but something was missing. We found some spectacles around the house and perched them on James’s nose, and that completed the look. We refined the lighting in the second half, and then the image really began to come out. Another “found” prop was the lovely quill pen, given to me as a gift by the wonderful Matt Pierce.
Editing: Contemplating Color Schemes
Another People of Light and Shadow portrait, another “I thought this one would be easy, but then…”
James’s image seemed uncomplicated. I did some basic edits, and it looked good. Then I compared it to others in the series, and my edit didn’t fit the series. The colors were too similar: brown hair, brown robe, brown feather pen, brown background; green face, green beard. This did work for an image with an analogous (yellow) color scheme with a range of greens and browns to the left and right of yellow on the color wheel. There’s nothing wrong with that, but the image lacked the contrast in color and tone of the others in the series. I didn’t want to pile effects onto this simple image, so I tried one thing after another until it occurred to me that shifting the brown hair into red would create the contrast I desired, red and green being opposite ends of the color wheel and creating a split complementary scheme (red, green, yellow).
Shifting the eyebrows and beard from dark green to red framed the face and brought out the brown eyes. It divided the face into clear zones, making it much easier to discern. This took a while to figure out, and that ought to be the title of my autobiography.
It’s too subtle to see in these pictures, but I worked on the teeth as well, giving them a bit more texture.
In the continuing saga titled “Well, We’ve Come This Far, Why Don’t We…?” I paused this post to add some detail to the scrolls in the burlap pouch. These are illuminated manuscripts courtesy of the British Library’s Catalogue of Medieval Manuscripts, a fascinating and beautiful collection that’s easy to get lost in while browsing online, and which I encourage you to peruse. Our orc scribe is either about as organized as I am with the way his manuscripts are arranged in his pouch, or else perhaps he is gathering these miscellaneous pages in order to preserve them.
The Gallery
Here’s a before/after comparison of the original image and the final edit.
We made a ton of images in this session. James is a very animated model, and there are dozens more of the orc scribe goofing around, but I don’t want to break the internet, so here are six fun expressions.
Speaking of editing, thanks to my parents for a generous Christmas gift—I’m trying out a graphics tablet for the first time, getting used to using a stylus rather than a mouse. I’d been fine tuning edits on the iPad, which worked all right, but this has the potential to be a little more convenient. Here’s what that looks like.
Next in The People of Light and Shadow series…
James and his wife Gaby were part of a double session. Check her out next week as the Wood Wife!
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