I belong to a camera club as well as my three model clubs. That camera club has a salon each month, with an assigned subect. The subject this month was silhouettes. I decided to do my two entries, with photos of a couple of my models (one a color photo, the other a mono photo). I took the easy way out instead of waiting for unique lighting and positioning- these are composites, on two or more layers, background from seperate shot than silhouettes.
Just before the battle
E170 to the moon
Beautiful shots, Don. I’ll be interested to hear how the rest of the club receives them.
Are you going to reveal in advance that these are pictures of models?
I agree with jtilley, very beautiful shots!
Don, you need to get pictures of their facial expressions when you tell them they are in fact scale plastic models! [:D]
I will only tell if they ask how pictures are made.
My photographic mistakes vastly outnumber my successes. Don’s airliner shot reminded me of me of my more notable near not-so-near misses.
If you’ve done even a modest amount of flying (like me) you may have seen a rainbow over a cloud formation. The rainbow takes the form of a brilliantly colored perfect circle. My wife and I were flung back from Texas, and I looked out the window just in time to see the shadow of the plane pass right through the center of a big circular rainbow. By the time I made my way to the aisle and got my camera bag out of the bin l, the rainbow was gone.
Well, it would have been a nice shot.
In addition to rainbows on clouds, another interesting thing seen from the air is a light spot opposite the sun. If you are low enough, that spot will create a halo around the shadow of the aircraft. If higher, the shadow becomes too small to see and the spot is just a lighter spot on the ground moving along with the aircraft, and often with color fringes like the rainbow. This is usually seen over quite dry areas where vegetation is sparse, so you can see the dirt minerals. Most minerals have an enhanced retro-reflection (sort of like a mirror directly back at the light source. And, this retroreflection is often dispersive, creating the color fringing. Look for it when flying over western US in midday on North side of aircraft (down-sun).
Pretty cool, Don.
Don i’m going to show my complete idiocy when it comes to photography and graphics, so heres my question.
Lets say i’m shooting an AFV I want to include a background photo or solid color. How do I do it?
Thanks in advance for my kindergarten question…but i’ve never done it. Ive always been a builder and until recently never gave much thought to photos. BTW those pics you posted are incredible. How far did you have to drive to get right under that moon. LOL
Terry
Just prop it up behind the model. You may have to mount it to stiff backing- I use those foam core boards from art or office supply stores. If it is a solid color, it is easy.
If a photo background, you need to worry about depth of focus/field. That is, with automatic exposure the background photo may occur so fuzzy it is illegible. You want a little fuzziness, but not much. So you have to use manual settings- expose with a high aperture (f/#), but focus carefully on the model. That way minimizes the blur of the background photo.
That of course means you must use a camera with manual setting options. Also, even in bright sunlight (I always shoot that type of photo outdoors in sunlight) the exposure may be a bit long, so a tripod is a good idea. However, if your camera/lens has image stabilization/compensation a sunlight exposure can usually be handheld.
Don, I guess I’m mostly interested in a digitally stored photo that I can blend in behind my subject.
Terry
Ah! In that case you need a photo editor that has layer functions. The background is one layer, the model is a second layer in front of the background. You have to erase all the pixels not part of the model from the second, front layer, by various selection modes and deleting.
One problem with that method is creating the shadow of the model on the background.
Thanks, I didn’t understand deleting all the pixels, I had thought that you might pick a subject and it outlined itself, then its just a matter of laying it into the background pic. I think once I do it it’ll be a great option ive missed.
Thanks Don.
Terry
Depends on what you mean by outlining it. What I meant by deleting areas of pixels is to turn them transparent. Deleting a selection works on most art programs, but there may be other ways of making a selection transparent in other programs. So what I meant was to make all pixels outside of the model image transparent. If the model has windows, or completely enclosed areas that show background, these need to be turned transparent too.
Don, I was about to ask the FSM staff, but after looking at your superb artwork and seeing this Q&A with you, I have decided to ask this of you. Some years ago, I purchased an Olympus camera with 5.1 mega-pixels, for just under $200. I have a diorama of which I would like to take good pictures. There seems to be no way I can get a picture either in focus or that is not too light in the foreground. Recently, my son-in-law took pictures of a rifle I had for sale with his camera that were far superior to what I had taken with my “expensive” camera. I look at the pictures in FSM of how to articles or the Reader’s Gallery, and I ask myself, “How did they do that?” All I want is to take some nice well lit and well focused pictures like I see in FSM without spending too much money. Is that a reasonable goal? Thanks. ~ Clint
I suggest the series of articles on this link http://www.scalemodelguide.com/category/display-photo/photography/ All good basic information about model photography.
if you post a few of the ‘bad’ pictures, perhaps we can help more.
Clint, take a look at the articles that come up using the link that Waikong posted. I just reviewed them and they are excellent for any beginner.
Good luck, and I hope you get what you need. I would like to see that diorama.
Does the camera have manual focus and manual exposure options? Manual focus is really necessary. Aperture priority exposure can substitute for manual exposure.
Thanks, Bakster. I just finished Saving them and printing them out to go into my Tutorials book.
Thanks, Don. It has none of the Fancy-Schmancy stuff. I just got some good info and from you, too.
If you are willing to deal with the bother of film and developing, very nice used film SLR cameras with lots of the fancy shmancy stuff are available for a song.