The "clever" part is how the figures and the keyboard form the story. The challenge was the execution. I removed the Enter key from an old keyboard. My son helped out drilling out a whole underneath. I wanted to see the light spill out from under the Enter key, not from under the whole keyboard. In order to see the light, particles in the air were needed. I had to come up with a way to let vapes come out from under the Enter key only. I made a foam core skirt under the keyboard to block the light spill and smoke. The vapes were channeled through a straw. I placed a red and blue LED light under the keyboard, let vape come from underneath. I let it disperse in such a way it doesn't look like there is a fire going on. The whole scene is lit with room light that is reflected from the ceiling. An additional challenge was to clean up all the dust speckles I had missed blowing off the keyboard. I used the spot healing brush for at least half an hour...

Imagine some muffled pumping beat and the story is complete!

lens: 90mm 2.8 @ f/8
ISO 200
5 second exposure

4 Comments

Just an amazing idea and perfectly executed.

Thank you! I was very taken when I got the idea. (I also made 2 versions of criminals escaping from prison guards and police and pirates digging up treasure from under X).

Today a classmate told me that his portfolio class project was going to photograph toys to share his emotional journey, I think he said. I immediately thought of these pictures. But I don't want to tell him about them, sometimes we need to find our own way, I think.

Absolutely. And there are many ways. Toy photography covers a lot: portraiture (often 1/6 scale), environmental portraits, landscape photography, product photography. Then there are all kinds of genres: low/high key, action, expressive, cartoonish, submersive, you name it. One is limited by their imagination and creativity what one puts/builds in front of the camera.

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