Round 25 Deep Dive: Newspaper

This series of posts is a deep dive into the images I created for the 25th round of the Photography Scavenger Hunt.

Todays word is newspaper.

Concept

This is another one of those words that I had a quick idea on, and wanted to get it out the door, as I had 26 words to do this round, and only 8 weeks to do them in.

The idea was simply have someone reading a newspaper, and reacting to it.  At first I didn't know what would be on the newspaper, or who would be reading it, so I spelunked thru my toybox, and soon came to the conclusion I should use Tony Stark.  Why?  Because he is the only figure I have with articulated fingers, which means I could pose his hand holding a newspaper pretty accurately.  Plus Tony's head is very well modeled.

The next question was what would be on the newspaper?   This was shot after Avengers: Infinity War came out, but before Avengers: Endgame. As a result I knew Tony had suffered a defeat, but didn't know the extent of it.  When he finally makes it back to earth he'd catch up on the news. That moment is what I wanted to capture.

Execution

The first thing I needed was a newspaper. Since my Tony Stark action figure is 12" high, I realized the scale newspaper would be big enough to see the little details, so I spent some time mocking up a detailed newspaper in Photoshop.

For the front page I actually wrote up a whole article for it.  By the time I got to the back page I got bored, so I left the text as Lorem Ipsum, but stayed creative with the headlines.

I then printed off 3 copies of this, cut them out, and then put them together like a newspaper.  I spent some time working the paper to give it creases and a "already read" look, then stuck it in Tony's hands.

The photography was pretty basic on this one.  However when I got it in Photoshop I changed Tony's expression to be sadder (using the liquify tool), and even added a little tear.  I figured Tony would be sad to see the results of his failure to defeat Thanos.  Endgame proved me right on this, which is nice.

The final image is here: