(I posted these on the Legion boards as well, so sorry for the double-posting, I just loved how these turned out, I wanted to make sure I shared these with our garrison)

For my birthday today, I got to suit up and get pics taken at the stunning Goblin Valley state park here in Utah. This place has the most unbelievably cool, weird and strange rock formations, it just looks like an alien planet. My son took all the pics and we had a fun time walking around and finding interesting places to take photos. There were so many opportunities for great shots that it could have been a little bit overwhelming, but we did the best we could in the time we had.

There were plenty of other people at the park that did a double take when they saw me walking around. Had many people come and ask to take photos with me... but I expected that. They were surprised to see a stormtrooper there, but agreed it was the perfect setting.

*Disclaimer* For all of you costume purists out there: technically I am a TK and not a TD (Sandtrooper), but I just had to wear my pauldron for the pics, it just gave the armor a slightly more rugged look and seemed to fit the environment better! If you like these, I've got lots more! I HAD SO MUCH FUN!

These are awesome pic's! Looks like you had a lot of fun!

Dang, these are sweet!

Awesome! Thanks for sharing.

Pics are amazing. Look like you had a lot of fun shooting it. Makes me want to do it. It look like you had a tons of fun too. Next time invite us to come along, lol. Again great pics.

My son was planning on bringing his Jawa costume, but we forgot to pack it when we left.
We were planning on doing a bunch of shots with the two of us interacting: me searching for him, him hiding from me, me putting him under arrest, him stealing my gun and aiming it at me, etc. We were both bummed when we realized that his costume wasn't packed and was 3 hours away at home. But we'll definitely have to do it again and make sure we bring it.

Great Pics!

Those are WICKED AWESOME!!! I really like this one:


That would be so much fun to do with my Vader! I'm going to have to con someone into helping me do that! Thanks for sharing Ryan!
Where did you post it on the Legion boards? I'd like to read what others are saying about it!

Yeah, that is one of my favorite photos too. I have a couple others similar to that one, but not as close up, but unfortunately, my son left the water bottle on the ground and it made it into the shot! Need to do some Photoshop work on them before I can post them!

Here is the link on the legion boards: http://501stforums.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=56781&highlight=

I'm jealous of the range of motion you have to be able to climb around on rocks. Looks great.

Actually my son would go and scout of each spot that looked difficult to get to. He'd try to find the easiest way up and then he'd show me the way to the spot. There really wasn't much climbing, more just walking up and down hill. I was really afraid of scratching my armor up against the rocks (which I only did once on one of my shin pieces), but if I were a Sandtrooper, I'd probably have much more interactive shots with me leaning all over the rocks, since I wouldn't care about getting scratched up.

Ryan, you can just tell everyone you are a new sand trooper and you haven't had a chance to get scuffy yet. Those are some realy nice pics.

AWESOME PHOTOS, Ryan!

Goblin Valley is one of my most favorite places to visit. Back in October 2004, several of us in the Garrison camped over night down there and spent a whole Saturday filming scenes for my fanfilm. I just uploaded the photos into the new gallery HERE. I wish we had time while we were down there to do a photo shoot as well. The funniest part of our shoot was that we had a big crowd of park visitors following us everywhere asking if we were filming scenes for Episode III.

Mike, thanks for putting your photos up!

Here is another one.... I just couldn't resist!

Ummmmm..........how exactly would you be "walking" back?