Tag: Photography

For the Scavenger Hunt #37, I revisited the theme I had used in Scavenger Hunt #32 – the wooden manikins are back!

For “Box”, I wanted to go with a literal interpretation of “thinking outside the box” – so that’s exactly what I did. I was not sure I could find a box of the right size – until I got the idea of going for a lens box – of which I have kept at least the ones whose warranty is still running. The Fujifilm box is also kind of nice because it’s black – apart from the written stuff, that gets easily edited away.

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	1/100 s
ISO	800

The pictures from my fellow Scavengers are here: Box.

For the Scavenger Hunt #37, I revisited the theme I had used in Scavenger Hunt #32 – the wooden manikins are back!

For “Keyhole”, I knew fairly early that I wanted to do something about looking through a keyhole. Before I committed to going for a manikin theme again, I was thinking of using a keyhole as a frame for something (not hugely original, but working with what I have). Instead, I went for the “spying” theme.

The challenge was to get the manikin at the “right” height with the “right” pose in front of the door – that took a bit of creative posing on top of a chair’s back, but eventually I managed to get a shot I could work with.

Camera	Pentax K-1 II
Lens	smc PENTAX-D FA MACRO 100mm F2.8 WR
Focal length	100mm
F-Number	F/8
Exposure time	1/80 s
ISO	800

I went for a “noir-themed” processing – cold tones, strong vignetting and grain – and I’m quite happy with the final picture.

The pictures from my fellow Scavengers are here: Keyhole.

For the Scavenger Hunt #37, I revisited the theme I had used in Scavenger Hunt #32 – the wooden manikins are back!

“Intentional Camera Movement” almost stumped me, because it didn’t feel obvious to make that work in a very static context such as manikins in a studio. Until I remembered that playing with the focal length of the lens while shooting was also intentional camera movement! I set up my camera on a Platypod and then experimented with multiple takes, some going from the smaller focal length to the longer, some trying to move as smoothly as possible, some making a few pauses during the course of the lens. I ended up choosing a continuous move from longer length to shorter length.

Camera	Pentax K-1 II
Lens	Pentax D FA 24-70mm F2.8
Focal length	70 to 28 mm, continuous
F-Number	F/22
Exposure time	3s
ISO	100

I edited the picture to play with the “super hero zooming into the scene” aesthetics, in particular in the way I chose to tilt the image. I also processed the image to emphasize the movement trails. And I think it’s one of my favorite pictures for this Hunt 🙂

The pictures from my fellow Scavengers are here: Intentional Camera Movement.

For the Scavenger Hunt #37, I revisited the theme I had used in Scavenger Hunt #32 – the wooden manikins are back!

One of the words was “Monochrome”, with a specific “not black&white” constraint. Since I had a manikin theme, and my manikins are wooden, well, that gives me the palette for what I’m doing. So I started gathering everything that was vaguely wooden-colored in the apartment, and tried to assemble SOMETHING. My train of thoughts when building this image was “a manikin spa” – spas do have weird treatments going on, so why not an elastic-band based one for wooden manikins! I wanted to give the impression of relaxation for the one sitting, and of attending the other for the one standing. I’ve been told it could also look like the day after a student party – and I’m not disagreeing with that 🙂

Camera	Pentax K-1 II
Lens	Pentax D FA 24-70mm F2.8 smc PENTAX-D FA 50mm F2.8 Macro smc PENTAX-D FA MACRO 100mm F2.8 WR Pentax DA 18-55mm 1:3.5-5.6 AL
Focal length	63mm
F-Number	F/1.8
Exposure time	1/100 s
ISO	111

The pictures from my fellow Scavengers are here: Monochrome.

For the Scavenger Hunt #37, I revisited the theme I had used in Scavenger Hunt #32 – the wooden manikins are back!

The “Roots” image is the one where I expect the most “… I don’t get it”. I considered tree roots, hair roots – I had a vague concept for tree roots but that would be hell to process in the very little time I had left, and hair roots felt difficult to pull off with bald manikins (I do NOT have fond memories of making Spaghetti behave long enough to take pictures!). And then… square roots. Well well well! I could work with that!

I first posed both manikins in “square-root” shapes (… as best as I could – these are NOT the most flexible models). I initially wanted to use a single sheet of paper to give the rest of the context, but I had a scale issue, so I embraced the multiple sheets and made them as visible as I could. And then, square root of 3 is roughly 1.372 and square root of 7 is roughly 2.645, so I picked my prettiest pink pen and made that happen.

Shooting from above was a bit of an ordeal (and involved climbing on a chair with my camera, which I normally try to avoid.)

Camera	Pentax K-1 II
Lens	Pentax D FA 24-70mm F2.8
Focal length	33mm
F-Number	F/6.3
Exposure time	1/60 s
ISO	800

Processing was mostly straightforward – make the sheet rectangular, crop, fix exposure, done.

The pictures from my fellow Scavengers are here: Roots.

For the Scavenger Hunt #37, I revisited the theme I had used in Scavenger Hunt #32 – the wooden manikins are back!

The word “Tape” is the one for which I went through the most different concepts over the timeframe of the Hunt. I started thinking about putting tape on a gift to close it; same thing with a moving box; I considered an audio tape (but I don’t think I have any in the apartment), I did A Lot of attempts at making a measuring tape work (either as “measuring furniture” or “tailor measurements”… nothing quite worked. And then, I remembered that I had a VHS tape somewhere!! (This tape is coming from 3D Construction Kit, for which we have a box… containing said intro video tape.)

I had the “rewinding” notion early on, but I added the blue blanket and the “end of programmes” image on the TV/tablet behind after a few first takes to help sell the “rewinding the video rental after having watched it” – how 90s of me.

Camera	Pentax K-1 II
Lens	Pentax D FA 24-70mm F2.8
Focal length	31mm
F-Number	F/11
Exposure time	1/40 s
ISO	800

The pictures from my fellow Scavengers are here: Tape.

For the Scavenger Hunt #37, I revisited the theme I had used in Scavenger Hunt #32 – the wooden manikins are back!

I felt a bit stumped on the word “Map” – my first idea was to play around my manikins being lost and looking at a map – but making a manikin-sized map looked like it would be a hassle, especially for something that’d be readable as a map on a picture. So I went the other way around – and I decided to show the story of planning a travel to <searches the apartment for a map, any map> Scotland, and tada!

Camera	Pentax K-1 II
Lens	Pentax D FA 24-70mm F2.8
Focal length	68mm
F-Number	F/9
Exposure time	1/60 s
ISO	800

It took a little while to get the right frame and light, but once I had that, the edits were fairly straightforward.

The pictures from my fellow Scavengers are here: Map.

For the Scavenger Hunt #37, I revisited the theme I had used in Scavenger Hunt #32 – the wooden manikins are back!

The picture for Hygge is the first one I shot, and the only one I had for a long time during this hunt (I shot 7 out of 10 pictures on the last week-end before the time limit, so… not exactly early.) Looking for inspiration, hygge seems to evoke coziness, chimney fires, hot cocoa and the like. I re-used a piece of fabric that I had bought for “Cow” in a previous Hunt (yay, prop re-use!) to serve a blanket, and I cut a small book in a Nespresso ad that I had received a couple of days earlier. I’m *particularly* proud of the mug: it’s actually the cap of the box of earbuds tips that came with my new-ish earbuds – I was looking for something in that direction, was considering buying some clay to make something the right size, and… tada! A bit of blue tack to hold the mug and the book, a bit of posing and quite a few takes later, I had my picture.

Camera	Pentax K-1 II
Lens	smc PENTAX-D FA MACRO 100mm F2.8 WR
Focal length	63mm
F-Number	F/14
Exposure time	6 s
ISO	500

I processed with warm tones to give the possible impression of a fireplace in front of the manikin. The fabric and manikin were a bit same-ish in the initial processing, so I darkened the manikin to make it “pop” a bit more against the cow blanket.

The pictures from my fellow Scavengers are here: Hygge.

For the Scavenger Hunt #37, I revisited the theme I had used in Scavenger Hunt #32 – the wooden manikins are back!

For “Lost”, I went for the pretty straightforward narrative of “having lost one’s keys (or phone, or whatever else) between the cushions of the sofa”. So this was essentially posing the manikin, shooting, basic processing, and done.

Camera	Pentax K-1 II
Lens	smc PENTAX-D FA MACRO 100mm F2.8 WR
Focal length	100mm
F-Number	F/8
Exposure time	1/80 s
ISO	800

The pictures from my fellow Scavengers are here: Lost.

For the Scavenger Hunt #37, I revisited the theme I had used in Scavenger Hunt #32 – the wooden manikins are back!

For the word “Empty”, I wanted a very minimalist image, with the idea of the manikin being in a completely empty room. I wasn’t exactly sure of how to achieve that because I lack a clean seamless white background of that size. But I got the idea of shooting from above on top of our (white) coffee table.

Camera	Pentax K-1 II
Lens	Pentax D FA 24-70mm F2.8
Focal length	70mm
F-Number	F/6.3
Exposure time	1/60 s
ISO	800

This gave me a manikin on a white background with a shadow below it (shadows are important to ground things on a surface, otherwise they’re floating!). I processed it by cropping the white content, increasing the canvas size to give more space to the image (and relying on software magic and a lot of cloning tools to make said canvas increase “realistic enough”), and making the whole image black&white to emphasize the minimalist approach.

The pictures from my fellow Scavengers are here: Empty.