Photography
Miniatures & Matte painting
Imagining A World
From Concept to Studio
Every great idea starts with a great concept, I like to sketch out my ideas getting it out of my head to some sort of visual medium so I can work out what I’ve imagined and start the journey to brining my ideas to life.
Building a World
First Steps
Setting the Scene
A Living, Breathing World
By this point all the heavy lifting is done and we start my favorite part, putting together the scene and setting up the shot. after combining all the elements into your miniature set now all your work you have done and all the time you spent in creation is being realized, you start to see your vision come together and the world that was once only in your head in your imagination is now sitting right in front you. there is no better part than seeing all your hard work come alive before your eyes.
Letting the Story Find You
From Dream to Reality
We’re reaching the end of our journey now, but there’s still those last few steps to take before we reach its end. Post processing, in our day and age its nearly impossible to go without some sort of digital processing on an image we create. In this final stage of the image I add the little elements that I couldn’t add in camera or I do some minor adjustments to enhance color or contrast. Its here that you are staring at your image as it becomes a realty, it is no longer just a thought you have given it life and brought it into reality, given life to your creation.
And hopefully you have something beautiful that came out of all your work or at least learned something along the way. it cant be said enough that learning thought our failures is an important part of our development and progression, failure is fine, we stand up and continue on learning from it and bettering ourselves because of it.
Now this journey has come to and end so yet another can begin, and its first steps start here…
Creature CLoseups
The first step of any journey is to find direction. Once I have a direction, its a process of determining the elements needed to build the world that I want and the story I want to tell. I start by interpreting the sketches and ideas into physical objects and characters. I use scale to tell my story and build the individual elements to bring the final piece to life.
Simple set for Boba Fett figure
Shaping Your Journey
Fabricating Your Vision
Lighting A World
Lighting is a key element in creating a beautiful scene, setting your mood and telling your story, lighting can change how your viewer sees what is on screen in your final image. Its often an overlooked part of photography, we often focus composition as being the most important element and it is certain important, though great composition and bad lighting also doesn’t work so I spend a lot of time getting the lighting for the scene just right
Once I have my set all ready to go and my lighting is excellent its time to line up the shot, this is where I can see if all the elements I have brought together work or not, if there are any changes needed to be made.
Telling the Story
Once I determine the each part that I need, I begin to build and fabricate the set for my scene. It really is like being on a mini movie set for ants or little action heroes.
The fabrication process takes a lot of time and can involve classical art processes like sculpting and painting, I sculpt a lot in epoxy and polymer clays, as well I will often employ digital methods like 3D sculpting and 3D printing and laser cut parts in my builds, whatever is required to get the job done. Now lasers and printers help speed up workflow but they are not necessary, in fact most of what they do can be done by hand in fact I still do a lot of my fabrication cutting of materials by hand. The limit really is your imagination.
Fun With Toys
Studio & Toy Photography
Fun With Toys
Photographing toys brings me back to being a kid and playing with all my action figures, now as a big kid I can pull out all of those amazing figures I had growing up and still play with them just in a new way. Once again I get to tell the story of the toys I use to play with. Further more I now create my own toys to play with as well.
Compositing Images
Photosculpts & Matte Painting
Once I have the elements that I need in camera, whether it be a studio shot or just photographic images from real environments, I then have to composite them together into a final shot, for this I use two methods.
— The first method being completely digital, I call these photosculpting, which is just a form of matte painting. In this method everything is done digitally, its a digitally created scene, I may photograph real elements but they are composited together into detailed scenes in the computer with aid computer graphics and 3D softwares.
— The second kind of image is done in camera, with this type of image I start with a studio shot that is then enhanced in the computer to create elements I could not capture in camera. I prefer this method, over the first as I get to interact with the scene physically, I have full control over lighting and exposure and really when it comes down to is, I just get to play and have fun in the real world and there is nothing better than that.
As a photographer this is the best kind of photography because I am engaged into what I am creating and I can really loose myself in a scene.
Telling A Story
When I create my illustrations I like to tell a story, I want each piece to bring the viewer into a world of my creation, bring them on a journey into someplace they may not have expected or adventure into a new world, to create an experience for the viewer that will hopefully impact them in a way that they will carry with them.
Stories are part of us its who we are and we tell stories to carry on memories to feel, journey, explore, express ourselves.
Take a look at the galleries below and I hope you enjoy the Journey!
Digitally Composited Background Image
