Big adventures in a small world

Tag toy photography

More shooting in the dark

Lighting a shot is always a series of experiments. I have some very rough idea of what I want, and then I start playing around with placement and lighting. Sometimes sometimes everything looks great, and sometimes everything looks awful. I… Continue Reading →

Shadow play: Playing with flashlights in the dark

The very best thing about photographing inanimate objects is that they don’t move. So, no matter how oddly you light them up, they won’t suddenly shift and blur the shot. There’s a ton of things you can do with that… Continue Reading →

Shooting under the bed with candlelight

Sharing a few shots from last night, when the cast of Underfoot was all cozied up in their beds watching Incredible Journey. I tried out a few angles and light sources: And ended up using this shot, with a mixture… Continue Reading →

Some under-the-bed shots

My experiment with the tablet-as-a-viewfinder and the flexible tripod has been wildly successful, IMO. My sense is that most of the success is due to using a larger viewfinder. A digression: Because I spend so much time setting up my… Continue Reading →

Follow up on taking on-the-ground shots

Now that I’ve figured out how to take on the ground shots without lying on the ground myself, I had to figure out how to stabilize the camera. I have a few tripods (necessary for taking non-blurry shots with my… Continue Reading →

Old dog, new tricks

And it’s the “old” part of this that really drove me to the new tricks. In the last Underfoot episode, the pack found a safe place under a bed. So, that’s where I need to photograph them – under the… Continue Reading →

Waylaid by Waffles, or how I got totally stuck trying to take a simple shot

10 days ago, Rat and Cosette were well on their way to a waffle. Rat had read the recipe, and Cosette was breaking an egg. And then . . . everything just stopped, when the picture in my mind utterly… Continue Reading →

That first cup of coffee: Capturing the right shot for a photo story

Sharing my steps to get a good shot of Rat and Cosette getting that first cup of coffee in the morning. I start off with Rat alone, hanging onto a coffee pot. I’m dealing with that fluorescent kitchen light again,… Continue Reading →

Rat takes a bath: Behind the scenes on a single shot from a photographic novel

Sharing a series of shots I took to illustrate the Underfoot episode I’m working on. The idea was that I’d follow two of the characters through their day, starting with a shower. I thought I’d take a picture of the… Continue Reading →

Make your doll part of the crowd: Using Photoshop to add your doll to a scene

The Betwixt characters seem to spend more time out and about then any of my other dolls, so I’m forever figuring out ways to make them part of the scene. Marta and Marcelo joined the crowd in the subway in… Continue Reading →

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