BTS Photography by The Art of Mezame
#bts #theartofmezame #starwarstoys #toyphotography
As requested by some friends. This was what I had to do to get the final shot of an A-Wing which crashed in Hoth. Basically, I set the diorama up outside my place because throwing powder all over the living room is a bad idea.
Once I have set up the diorama on a piece of black corrugated cardboard (easier to bend and fold for discarding), I set up my camera on a tripod and connected it to the Phottix Odin system with a transmitter on the hot shoe and a receiver each on my two Canon 580EXII speedlights.
Final EXIF are as follows…
Camera: Canon EOS 5D Mark III
Lens: EF70-200mm f/2.8L IS II USM
Focal length: 200mm
Exposure: 1/250 sec at f/18
ISO Speed Rating: ISO 1250
Flash: Did fire, manual 1/4 for blue light from top on boom and 1/1 bounce off wall with CTB filter gel
I used the 70-200 lens because I wanted the image to look as flat as possible without any issue with the corners. I didn’t want the bokeh to be too much because I’d rather have more details around the crash site.
The hard part is getting the diorama right. The toys refuse to stand properly after the ‘snow’ was applied. About half of a bottle of powder was used to get the snow right. I had to stuff other toys underneath the A-Wing to give it a bit of elevation. The figurines had to be dug into the snow to keep standing.
Photoshopping things in was easy. I just had to find good images of the fire and ember sparks and blend them in using Photoshop blending options/tools. “Screen”, under blending options, is your best friend. It is best to use fire images with black backgrounds so you can easily remove the black background in your image.
The falling snow was made by the powder. That was a toughie. I had to use self-timer set to 10 secs and throw the powder and blow it off so it looks like snow. Unfortunately, some of the powder didn’t fly the way it was supposed to so I had to use the cloning tool. But hey, Star Wars had a lot of clones too, right?
To view the final image in its entirety, head over to http://on.fb.me/1e45f9Q
Hope you’ve enjoyed this short BTS ! If you like my stuff, be sure to LIKE my page at http://www.facebook.com/theartofmezame, or if you have a constructive suggestion, DO LEAVE A COMMENT 🙂
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