Visit Ian Brodie at HobbitonTours!

Little did I know that one of my newsletter subscribers is also an HDR enthusiast and one of the guys at HobbitonTours.com! How cool! He sent me a nice note before I came, offering to take my family and I on a private tour of the Shire. Anyway, I wanted to make sure to link back to his website, even though he did not ask me for any favors. Also, I should tell you that Ian Brodie made the official guidebook for the Lord of the Rings tour around New Zealand, and it shows where every scene was filmed… kind of a fun way to do a travel guide!

One of the coolest things about this is that the set is currently being rebuilt for the two-part move of The Hobbit! The landscaping crew is already there, moving around trees, shrubs, and they even have the stakes in the ground to rebuild the Green Dragon. I understand that tours of the Hobbiton Movie Set will still go on, even while they are getting ready to film The Hobbit.

Much of the original set has been destroyed from rain and storms and general wear-and-tear, but you can still see where many of the main Shire shots were taken. If you are a fan of Hobbits, then you simply have to go!

Behind-the-scenes Video

Want to see how I made this shot? Here is a behind-the-scenes video of me talking about the shot with Ian.

Daily Photo – Bilbo’s Hobbit Hole and the Party Tree in the Shire

I showed my 8-year-old son all the Lord of the Rings movies prior to our trip to NZ. He then re-watched the first one three times on the car trip… so he was just as excited as I when we arrived.

You might remember Bilbo Baggins’ hobbit hole and all the scenes with Frodo and Gandalf inside. That is it right there, on the right hand side at the top. The huge tree on the left is the “party tree”, which was the centerpiece for the big party for Bilbo’s birthday. It was the one of the main reasons that Peter Jackson chose this remote farm outside of Matamata on the North Island.