Week 12: Minatures

Week 12: In our Photography II Class, we are focusing on taking photographs using the idea of tilt-shift to shrink real-size objects to appear as miniatures and the reverse to create miniatures into enormous spaces where we could possibly walk and be in. Here are the results.

Craft: The Craft of this assignment is the following: Digital SLR Camera (Canon E05 Rebel T5i), a computer, photo lights-Bowens Camera Studio Lights, and the model/subject matter of the photos, miniature art galleries, etc. I used these resources to create the images above. The Bowens Camera Studio Lights came with stands as well as studio umbrellas for the lights.

Composition: For this project, we were tasked with playing with the concept of making objects either miniature using tilt-shift or larger than they are. How this worked was for the miniatures, we either used the tilt-shift option which focuses on a singular band of the photo and blurs the rest or does it manually. I tried a few versions with the tilt-shift but found that in order to be as precise as possible, I would have to manually focus on certain objects in the photo using a clipping overlay mask. This was done in photoshop by clicking the mask layer option and linking it to a copy of the photo. Once I was satisfied with the focus, I then oversaturated the images to convey the appearance of a toy which is brightly colored. In the instance of using a small object and making it appear larger, I used several mini art galleries as the setting. With specific lighting coming from the studio lights, I inserted my self into the mini-scenes by taking a picture of myself and manipulating it so that the lighting coming off me matched that of the scene. As a result, I attempted to make the miniature locations appear full scale. This was done by manipulating levels and curves in photoshop and adding color overlays to match the lighting temperature.

Concept: In this project, our concept was creating images that conveyed realistic settings in different ways. In the first part, we were tasked with creating the illusion of toy cars and other objects by manipulating focus and scale with a method called tilt-shift in which focus is relegated on a certain portion of the image. The second half was creating the illusion of full-scale scenes by taking photographs of mini-galleries with the aid of studio lights.