Sunday, January 31, 2021

Photography Scavenger Hunt Round 30: Count

This is a behind the scenes of my "count" shot for the 30th round of the Photography Scavenger Hunt

The very first thought I had when I saw the word count was Count Von Count from Sesame Street.  However I looked up figures with articulation, and I only found one, and it didn't look very good, and cost well over "Oh, hell no!" money  So I quickly nope'd out of that idea. (there are some cheaper options, but none served my rather specific needs).

So that left me with no ideas.  However one day while surfing the internet I stumbled across another idea... an awful idea.  I stumbled upon a wonderfully awful idea.

So taking a step back, in early December I added a 3D printer to my studio's arsenal of creativity.  Since then I have been spending my bored idle moments surfing sites like thingiverse.com looking for things to print.  One of those things was Deadpool's severed hand giving the finger.

I immediately knew I had my shot.  My mom likely wouldn't approve of this shot, but I am the youngest child, so I am supposed to rebel a little bit. (This is me rebelling. Pray I don't rebel further).

If you are not a fan (and why the hell not?!?), there is a scene where Deadpool cuts off his own hand to escape some handcuffs, (something one can do if one is in possession of a healing factor) leaving his hand attached by the cuffs to another character, flipping the bird in the process. Hilarity ensues.  This is what I was going to recreate(-ish).

So I immediately started 3D printing the hand.  It took all night, but when I woke up it  was done!  After work  I painted it up.


To get the cuff chain I went to Lowes and bought the shortest amount of cable I could purchase (12 inches, I needed 4), then glued it into the cuffs from the model. I drilled a hole into the model and secured it with some cyanoacrylate glue.

After that it was a simple matter of shooting it:


Once I got the basic shot, I compsoited it in front of a cloud background. I added a little bit of a glow behind the hand for emphasis and energy:

It came out pretty much exactly as I envisioned it.

This model is now hanging over my crafting desk.  I see it every day, and it pleases me much.

Friday, January 29, 2021

Photography Scavenger Hunt Round 30: Hope

This is a behind the scenes of my "hope" shot for the 30th round of the Photography Scavenger Hunt

Confession time: I actually forgot about this word.  My style when doing hunts is to write down all of the words (typically 10) into a notebook that I carry with me to capture ideas during the ideation stages of each shot.  When I wrote down this list I somehow skipped over hope (insert metaphor for 2020).  However a week into the hunt someone commented in the community about this word. I realized I forgot it, and wrote it down in my book.

2 hours later I had my shot.

I immediately thought of the Barack Obama 2008 Presidential Campaign poster.  You know the one.

However I didn't wanna use myself, so I went with my ol' standby model:  Mr. Pool.

Before I got too deep in the Photoshopping for this image I looked up a tutorial online on how to accomplish this technique (there are a lot of em), and used an image of Deadpool I downloaded from the internet.  I was worried his being most red would cause issues.  Turns out it worked just fine.

Proof of concept proven, I moved on to creating my own image.  I started by putting my Deadpool action figure in my light box, put him in a "looking towards the future" pose, and lit him strongly from one side.  The SOOC looks like this:

Then I tossed it into Photoshop, removed the background, and applied the filters to make the Hope poster look, and I had the basic shot done.   I spent some time doing tonal adjustments to get the right amount of detail from his uniform.

The hardest part was coming up with the word to use at the bottom.  I didn't want to use Hope cause it didn't fit Deadpool.  I tossed around some ideas, but eventually went with the standard Pool.

This is the final result:

Thursday, January 28, 2021

Photography Scavenger Hunt Round 30: Positive Space

 This is a behind the scenes of my "positive space" shot for the 30th round of the Photography Scavenger Hunt.

This is actually a very simple shot, so most of the BTS is concept.  There are a couple tricky things about positive space.  The first is that it is simply not a term used in photography.  Negative space is a term, and it means the empty space surrounding the interesting stuff in a photograph.  The voids between the interesting bits.  So the only way to define positive space is simply the inverse of negative space.   So if negative space is the empty spaces between the interesting stuff, then positive space is the interesting space.

Or put another way - it can be anything you want it to be, as long as its something.  

However positive space could also be defined as a place where positive things are meant to happen, or is currently happening.

So putting all of this together, I decided to make a positive space by having a lot of negative space with a simple subject of Deadpool ('natch) slipping in the side.  To add to the positive aspect Mr. Pool would give a thumbs up.

So my positive space is a negative space with a brief appearance of a positive hand signal.  Got it?

So shooting this was super simple.  I mean, it doesn't get any more simple for me.  I simply tossed a Deadpool action figure in my light box, posed him up all positive like, and clicked the shutter.  Then I composited him onto a blank background.

Originally this was meant to be a white or off-white blank screen, but that proved too boring for my tastes, so I ended up adding a simple subtle background, which was a couple textures with selective motion blurring, and a subtle hint of the oil paint filter.

The result is what you see here: