Arctic Box

I have been buying diorama bases from Amazon.

They often come with little animals and accessories.

This one just came with the photos, but I had animals and accessories from other sets.

I assume they are intended for kids school projects.

But they make a nice background for set ups.

Or the set up could be a good setting for a role playing adventure, or even a skirmish wargame.
 

Parade Test

Working on some upgrades to the parade by adding more background buildings.

Also looking at adjusting the color.

They look really good in black and white.

The look like Munchkin Land in Technicolor in a color photo.

In real life the Effiel Tower is not close to the Arc de Triuomphe.

Testing the height of the model.
 

Photo Backdrops

Food Lion Tasteeos, a sort of generic cereal.

Save the box and cut it apart.

Find an interesting photo and print it out.

Then using a spray glue or a glue stick affix the picture to the cardboard box.  Most cereal boxes will take an 8 1/2 by 11 size photo.  Trim the edges.

 Then place figures in front of the picture and take photos.

How Did That Happen?

Duke Da Dawg out in the snow with me.

We get very little snow here in southern Kentucky.  So when snow is in the forecast I always prepare troops for photography.  My table has a wire top and the snow does not build up on it well.  Once it looks like it is actually going to snow, I put out a board or in this case a vinyl mat with cobblestone pattern on the table to hold the snow.  I add a few buildings also for the coming photo shoot.  I left them outside over night to let the snow fall on them.  I live in a rural area so they are not likely to be bothered.

The next day and there is a little more than an inch of snow.  It covers the buildings as I intended.  You can see there is no build up on the gravel.  Its not cold enough and there is not enough snow for the gravel to get covered.  The grass is covered however.

I then lay out the vehicles and the troops making a lot of trips in and out of my basement bunker.  Duke likes to sniff around while I am in and out of the house.  Usually he is an indoor dog.  I like taking photos on a table so I can get down and get close to the action.  In a day all this snow was gone.  I think we got about four days of snow like this all winter.

 

Taking Photos

The photos on this blog are often taken outdoors.  Sometimes like this one, I take a bit of plywood, put it on a table and take photos.  The plywood is what I use to paint models on, so it often is different colors and adds interest to the base.

By getting down low to the figures I can give them a background of trees. It also gives nice close up photos of the army men.

Being outside usually gives me good lighting.  I often take pictures outside when the sun is below treeline.  That puts my table in shade but still gives lots of light.

My photos are taken with a Nikon Coolpix L340 camera.  I like that it gives me a nice macro lens so I can get very close up to the figures.  It also takes a large photo so I can crop them and the viewer of the blog can blow them up to see lots of detail.

I can also move up a little bit and get grass and trees in the background and it gives the impression that the troops have a vast space before them because of the way the ground slopes away.
 

Photo Tips

When taking photos of miniatures, have plenty of light.

Get down low and up close to the subject.  If you do a lot of photos of miniatures, get a real camera with a macro lens.  Your tablet or phone camera won't do good close up work and won't allow large blow ups of the photos.

Try for interesting angles, not everything has to be an up close portrait.  Don't be afraid to go outside.

Here the photo is balanced by having two subjects in different corners connected by a road.

Use the focus to help show depth.  Not every photo has to focus on the nearest object.

Put figures in the photo but make sure you can see all you want to show.