Tag: Photography

For the 32nd Scavenger Hunt, I had decided (even before the Hunt words were public!) to try to make a series with wooden manikins. My first idea was to use the manikin myself as a prop that would represent the lollipop in a selfie, but it didn’t feel right, somehow. And then I remembered that a lollipop person was a term for the person helping children cross the road – so that’s the interpretation I chose.

But first, I needed a lollipop! I made and printed a small sign. Since I don’t own a color printer, I printed it in black and white – with the idea that I’d add the color in post-processing. Then I used my extraordinary making skills to assemble the lollipop itself – using a pair of bamboo chopsticks and some tape. The lollipop holds on the manikin’s hand with some blu tack.

Camera	Pentax K-1 II
Lens	Sigma 28mm f/1.8 EX Aspherical DG DF Macro
Focal length	28mm
F-Number	F/11
Exposure time	1/60 s
ISO	320

Then I also needed a zebra – turns out, it’s not too much of a problem to find one.

Camera	Pentax K-1 II
Lens	Sigma 28mm f/1.8 EX Aspherical DG DF Macro
Focal length	28mm
F-Number	F/11
Exposure time	1/80 s
ISO	100

I first prepared the manikin – removing the background, added color to the sign, also added color to the torso to simulate a flashy vest. Then I added it to the other image, and I started working on making the composite work somehow. I played around with this: How To Make Realistic Shadows in Photoshop and it took me several attempts before getting the final result.

This is not my finest work – I took care of taking the pictures with the same angles with regards to the sun and so on, but the light on the balcony and the light on the street downstairs is actually quite different, which means that the composite feels wrong. But I’m not unhappy with the work I did on the shadow – and for sure I learnt a lot there. Making the sign was also fun, and worked significantly better than I expected! All in all, this is the picture I consider the weakest I entered for this Hunt, but I’m still happy with what I managed to do. And next time I’ll make the light work better for my purpose 🙂

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

For the 32nd Scavenger Hunt, I had decided (even before the Hunt words were public!) to try to make a series with wooden manikins. For Lamp, I thought it’d be nice to do something around the most famous animated lamp there is – and I decided to make my manikin cosplay for it! The major difficulty was to pose him in a way close enough from the lamp’s posture. But then, obviously it wasn’t a stable position, so I had to add some tape on his feet to make it stand still.

Camera	Pentax K-1 II
Lens	smc PENTAX-D FA MACRO 100mm F2.8 WR
Focal length	100mm
F-Number	F/7.1
Exposure time	1/40 s
ISO	125

This meant that I needed to get a picture of non-taped feet – which I did by taking another picture against a few cans and taping, this time, the head of the manikin 😉

Camera	Pentax K-1 II
Lens	smc PENTAX-D FA MACRO 100mm F2.8 WR
Focal length	100mm
F-Number	F/7.1
Exposure time	1/40 s
ISO	320

And, for good measure, I also took a picture of the metal surface in case I needed more metal texture.

Camera	Pentax K-1 II
Lens	smc PENTAX-D FA MACRO 100mm F2.8 WR
Focal length	100mm
F-Number	F/7.1
Exposure time	1/40 s
ISO	640

Once I had that, the process took a bit of time, but wasn’t particularly complicated. I created the first composite of the manikin, its feet and its reflection in the metallic surface, with the blue color toning. The lamp is a few colored circles overlaid on the picture. Add some letters, shadows, light – as well as I could, and tadaaa! A picture ready for entry!

There’s actually not much I’d do differently right now with this picture. The shadows/reflections of the letters are not the most natural things in the world, but they’re not distracting to me. The “lamp” with the concentric circles is very simple, but I think it conveys the idea better than if I had gone with a fancier way of adding it. All in all, this is one of my favorite entries for this round 🙂

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

For the 32nd Scavenger Hunt, I had decided (even before the Hunt words were public!) to try to make a series with wooden manikins. We had the Leaf theme some rounds ago – which yielded one of my favorite images ever from a fellow Scavenger (hi Dave!). I considered, somewhat in the same directions, to play around the Adam and Eve theme, and ended up deciding against that. Instead, I made a “leafitation” picture! It’s a pretty straightforward levitation composite. First step, background:

Second step, levitating object.

Camera	Pentax K-1 II
Lens	Sigma 28mm f/1.8 EX Aspherical DG DF Macro
Focal length	28mm
F-Number	F/7.1
Exposure time	1/8 s
ISO	400

And third step, editing the composite, adding a shadow, etc. I also added a movement blur on the background to give an impression of panning.

I’m not entirely happy with this composite. Adding the shadow on the ground helped selling it, but I think I overdid it and that it’s too dark. I also have no idea how the shadow and the background blur should have played together, and I’m not convinced I made the right choices there. The manikin/wall delimitation also feels too sharp at places, especially around the leaf. I also have no idea if I did the blur in the right direction and, well, if I can’t make the difference, does it matter? (yes, yes it does 😉 )

I’m still very happy with the idea, which I find whimsical and funny. Adding the panning was definitely a good idea because it adds to the story-telling. I was also quite happy with the idea of using the stem of the leaf as a “navigating stick” of some sort!

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

For the 32nd Scavenger Hunt, I had decided (even before the Hunt words were public!) to try to make a series with wooden manikins. For the “Kitchen utensil” word, my first idea was to have my manikins chasing each other with a rolling pin, but I decided against it because this actually not an image I want to make, as pervasive in the social imaginary as it may be. I also considered bathing one in a pot, or something like that, but I didn’t want to sacrifice one just yet, and I had little hopes of being able to recover it after that.

I eventually settled on the idea that I could use the kitchen utensil as a prop and not necessarily as the main focus in that picture. I have an overly large cocktail spoon, whose scale is interesting compared to the manikin’s size, and a cocktail mixing glass – there we go, I had my idea! I wanted to make something akin to a cauldron, which obviously meant something green and vaguely shiny.

I got the idea of preparing the green mixture with some water, a bit of green coloring, and a few drops of milk to give it some opacity. I then took several pictures in a dark room, illuminated by a single Lume cube. I ended up having a few more pictures of that type, moving the cube further or closer:

Camera	Pentax K-1 II
Lens	Sigma 28mm f/1.8 EX Aspherical DG DF Macro
Focal length	28mm
F-Number	F/7.1
Exposure time	0.8 s
ISO	640

Camera	Pentax K-1 II
Lens	Sigma 28mm f/1.8 EX Aspherical DG DF Macro
Focal length	28mm
F-Number	F/7.1
Exposure time	0.8 s
ISO	200

I loaded them all into Lightroom, told it “make me an HDR out of these”, and it resulted in the above image, give or take a few edits on the fabric and the like.

I kind of regret not giving more thought/ideas to the background: it might have been better with a bit more flair. I am, however, exceedingly happy with how the bright green liquid turned out, and I’m also very happy with the light in this image. All in all, I like it a lot!

The complete Scavenger album is available here: the Kitchen utensil album.

For the 32nd Scavenger Hunt, I had decided (even before the Hunt words were public!) to try to make a series with wooden manikins. That made things Interesting when I saw that one of the words was “broccoli” – how was I supposed to make that work? Thankfully, I got the idea of Broccoli-Man pretty quickly and, once I had the idea, the implementation was…. almost straightforward.

I first shot my manikin in a “super-hero pose” and a broccoli at a reasonable height (that took a few attempts).

Camera	Pentax K-1 II
Lens	Sigma 28mm f/1.8 EX Aspherical DG DF Macro
Focal length	28mm
F-Number	F/8
Exposure time	1/25s
ISO	320

And then, Photoshop to the rescue – blend in the images, play with the color toning, done, right? Eeeh. The processing was less straightforward than I would have liked, for a few reasons.

• The removal of the metallic stand ended up being more annoying than expected.
• I should really invest in a small green screen to make its removal easier, that would make my life significantly easier.
• Relatedly to that point, I “fixed” the issue of the background by blurring the wall behind… and not realizing that my selection was far from perfect, which meant going back for more, more awkward edits.
• My Lightroom-to-Photoshop-to-Lightroom process is dubious at best and my handling of Photoshop files is laughable (it seems my layers and whatnot are actually stored in a TIF file, which is highly suspicious and probably WRONG ON SO MANY LEVELS…) – I’ll need to see how to properly do that for the next Hunt.
• The merge of the broccoli and the manikin texture at the neck level took me a long time, and is still not up to what I would have liked to get (which may be… difficult! 🙂 ).

Now that I’m writing this behind-the-scenes post, I also realize that there’s a bit of a “halo” (coming from the blur effect) around the manikin, but not around the broccoli head, which is a bit sad. I’m also a bit annoyed that I didn’t think of giving him a cape too – but oh well – next time, maybe!

I’m still happy with a number of things in this picture:

• The concept amuses me greatly.
• I really like the posing of the manikin.
• I made my life easy for the composite taking pictures at the right level and with the same light and whatnot.
• I’m very happy with the color toning (and I discovered how to do the wood coloring in PS, which makes me happy!).

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