For the 32nd Scavenger Hunt, I had decided (even before the Hunt words were public!) to try to make a series with wooden manikins. Denim was one of the words for which I had little to no idea. I considered texturing a manikin in denim, and making small denim clothes for them, which would require far more skill than I have for them to look remotely okay – I have friends who I’m sure could have helped, but this felt a bit overkill.

When in lack of inspiration, I sometimes often turn to Google Images – a few well chosen words often help unlocking ideas or concepts. In that specific case, it came almost empty… except for a picture of a manikin hidden in someone’s jeans pocket. I started exploring around that idea, looking whether my manikins actually did fit in a jeans pocket, and what I could do with that.

I finally landed on the idea of “actually, this looks pretty cosy – maybe they sleep in jean pockets at night!” A few more experiments, getting on of Pierre’s jeans instead of mine (I have decently sized pockets because I wear men jeans, but Pierre is thinner than I am, which worked better for the picture 😉 ), a bit of posing the manikins in sleep-like positions, adding some tissues for the pillows, and tada! a picture!

Camera	Pentax K-1 II
Lens	Sigma 28mm f/1.8 EX Aspherical DG DF Macro
Focal length	28mm
F-Number	F/6.3
Exposure time	1/25 s
ISO	1600

The edit for this one was pretty straightforward – removing the wood texture of the table, a few stray fibers that were distracting, and color toning.

I’m a bit on the fence on my decision to have that image that dark; on the one hand, I wanted to give the impression of a dark night/room; on the other hand, I wonder if maybe I didn’t overdo it a bit; and the shadows are probably too harsh too.

Still, I’m happy with the concept and the image. I absolutely love my little pillows – I think they really help selling the picture (and they’re cute!). I also like the posing of the manikins – I think it feels realistic! And I think the idea of “night” is well conveyed by the dark blue color toning. Finally, this was a more straightforward shot than many shots in this series, which meant spending less time on it, which I appreciate 😉

The complete Scavenger album is available here: the Denim album.