232. Miniature - November 26-December 2, 2017
Darin-
I wanted to submit something other than miniature horses that don't look miniature, so I present, "The Body With A Donut."
Cheerio!
I wanted to submit something other than miniature horses that don't look miniature, so I present, "The Body With A Donut."
Cheerio!
Kevin-
We have all played miniature golf, often, and frequently with each other. So it was easy, with a WPOTM theme of Miniature to imagine a mini-golf shot. But wanting to take it further it was important to show that miniature people also enjoy playing golf, and miniature-miniature golf.
The problem is that these people aren’t miniature like dwarfs and midgets. These people are tiny, tiny, tiny. If you look carefully you might see them everywhere, enjoying the same things that full size people do. Playing games, driving cars, cooking meals, having sex, or sinking a putt.
But even for us full size mini-golfers playing on a miniature golf course, standing at the tee and hitting a hard fast putt to climb up a ramp, come down the other side, bounce off of a wall, and head for the cup, they are impossible to see. If the ball doesn’t flatten them your shoes probably will. So you take your perfect hole-in-one shot out of the cup and wipe off the ball (yuck), figuring there must have been insects on the course.
Miniature golf, it happens at every level. The poor miniature ex-people though. What a shame.
Nikon D850 mounted on a Manfrotto 055CXPRO4 tripod with a Acratech GP ballhead, 105mm f/2.8 Micro-Nikkor lens, ISO 64, f/16 at 1/3 of a second. A tungsten filtered Nikon SB900 series flash in a small softbox provided the sharp image of the ball, and a Smith-Victor tungsten light provided the motion blur in the same exposure.
We have all played miniature golf, often, and frequently with each other. So it was easy, with a WPOTM theme of Miniature to imagine a mini-golf shot. But wanting to take it further it was important to show that miniature people also enjoy playing golf, and miniature-miniature golf.
The problem is that these people aren’t miniature like dwarfs and midgets. These people are tiny, tiny, tiny. If you look carefully you might see them everywhere, enjoying the same things that full size people do. Playing games, driving cars, cooking meals, having sex, or sinking a putt.
But even for us full size mini-golfers playing on a miniature golf course, standing at the tee and hitting a hard fast putt to climb up a ramp, come down the other side, bounce off of a wall, and head for the cup, they are impossible to see. If the ball doesn’t flatten them your shoes probably will. So you take your perfect hole-in-one shot out of the cup and wipe off the ball (yuck), figuring there must have been insects on the course.
Miniature golf, it happens at every level. The poor miniature ex-people though. What a shame.
Nikon D850 mounted on a Manfrotto 055CXPRO4 tripod with a Acratech GP ballhead, 105mm f/2.8 Micro-Nikkor lens, ISO 64, f/16 at 1/3 of a second. A tungsten filtered Nikon SB900 series flash in a small softbox provided the sharp image of the ball, and a Smith-Victor tungsten light provided the motion blur in the same exposure.
Paul-
It’s not for lack of reason that the metaphor of “gears turning in one’s head” seems apt and, as such, readily used to describe the process through which both malevolent machination and gifted genius come into being. (I don’t rule out the possibility that both are antithetical. For all I know they could pal around on the same end of the mortal spectrum, but that’s too thorny a topic for a group called the Weekly Photo of the Month…not the Weekly Paradox of the Month.)
The gears turn, metal teeth move with chiseled precision, and the cogs do whatever cogs are supposed to do. The organic machine starts up and plans take form. Inspiration takes hold. Dreams manifest themselves. And on some nearly imperceptible, almost tauntingly un-measurable level we save the world a tiny bit more. Or extinguish it to a similar degree.
It’s pretty much subjective at the really miniature level. Until, suddenly, it isn’t.
I wasn’t thinking about this when I took this picture, and really wasn’t thinking about this when the first round of shots the day before (when I tried to pull off something artsy with the same metal pieces) ended up looking terrible. All I’ll say about that is when you play with extension tubes don’t do it late at night when the focusing problem is really with your own eyes. So, the next morning the gears started turn…uh, I re-thought what I really wanted to submitted, and this comes pretty close to it. (Sans extension tubes.)
The more perceptive (or likely bored) among you who remember some of my older shots will recognize these miniature clockwork pieces. They didn’t come from the same movement that appears on the home page of my website. They were cannibalized from another movement (in pretty bad condition) I was given at a local clock shop. As a result, nothing “works” here. Nor did it have to. I just wanted to see if I could assemble something that looked small, delicate, purposeful, and might tick or tock its way to something bigger than itself.
As very, very small things sometimes do.
Some small details: Nikon D5200; aperture priority; 18-55mm lens focused at 18mm; ISO 2000; .4 sec. at f/16; center-weighted average metering; -2/3 EV; WB Auto. I set the camera for standard versus vivid color this time, as well. The clock movement was placed on a dark cloth a positioned below my camera which was mounted on a copy stand.
Post: I did most of the tidying up in Lightroom, I added a bit more appearance of depth (not field depth), de-colored the image slightly, and gave it a Fujifilm Provia look in PhotoScape.
It’s not for lack of reason that the metaphor of “gears turning in one’s head” seems apt and, as such, readily used to describe the process through which both malevolent machination and gifted genius come into being. (I don’t rule out the possibility that both are antithetical. For all I know they could pal around on the same end of the mortal spectrum, but that’s too thorny a topic for a group called the Weekly Photo of the Month…not the Weekly Paradox of the Month.)
The gears turn, metal teeth move with chiseled precision, and the cogs do whatever cogs are supposed to do. The organic machine starts up and plans take form. Inspiration takes hold. Dreams manifest themselves. And on some nearly imperceptible, almost tauntingly un-measurable level we save the world a tiny bit more. Or extinguish it to a similar degree.
It’s pretty much subjective at the really miniature level. Until, suddenly, it isn’t.
I wasn’t thinking about this when I took this picture, and really wasn’t thinking about this when the first round of shots the day before (when I tried to pull off something artsy with the same metal pieces) ended up looking terrible. All I’ll say about that is when you play with extension tubes don’t do it late at night when the focusing problem is really with your own eyes. So, the next morning the gears started turn…uh, I re-thought what I really wanted to submitted, and this comes pretty close to it. (Sans extension tubes.)
The more perceptive (or likely bored) among you who remember some of my older shots will recognize these miniature clockwork pieces. They didn’t come from the same movement that appears on the home page of my website. They were cannibalized from another movement (in pretty bad condition) I was given at a local clock shop. As a result, nothing “works” here. Nor did it have to. I just wanted to see if I could assemble something that looked small, delicate, purposeful, and might tick or tock its way to something bigger than itself.
As very, very small things sometimes do.
Some small details: Nikon D5200; aperture priority; 18-55mm lens focused at 18mm; ISO 2000; .4 sec. at f/16; center-weighted average metering; -2/3 EV; WB Auto. I set the camera for standard versus vivid color this time, as well. The clock movement was placed on a dark cloth a positioned below my camera which was mounted on a copy stand.
Post: I did most of the tidying up in Lightroom, I added a bit more appearance of depth (not field depth), de-colored the image slightly, and gave it a Fujifilm Provia look in PhotoScape.
Jerry-
Here's my mini photo held between my grubby fingers. Original photo was taken by Byron and I made a tiny little print of it. Camera was the Sony A6300 with 55 Micro Nikkor lens. I believe the exposure was 1/50 @ f16, ISO 1600, light from a LED panel with a diffuser attached.
And I added Byron's photo of me after I returned from a trip to the Amazon jungle to photograph a recently discovered native tribe.
Here's my mini photo held between my grubby fingers. Original photo was taken by Byron and I made a tiny little print of it. Camera was the Sony A6300 with 55 Micro Nikkor lens. I believe the exposure was 1/50 @ f16, ISO 1600, light from a LED panel with a diffuser attached.
And I added Byron's photo of me after I returned from a trip to the Amazon jungle to photograph a recently discovered native tribe.
Don-
My final photo assignment for school was 'food' and the assignment for
WPOTM was 'miniature.' I chose to combine both into one picture and
likely offend everyone. I shot this in a video studio with a green screen
background using one Digibee 800 Studio Strobe with a diffuser head with
"Barn Doors." 24-70mm lens set at about 40mm. Exposure was 1/200 sec; f/8;
and ISO 100. Combined 4 photos in Photoshop.
My final photo assignment for school was 'food' and the assignment for
WPOTM was 'miniature.' I chose to combine both into one picture and
likely offend everyone. I shot this in a video studio with a green screen
background using one Digibee 800 Studio Strobe with a diffuser head with
"Barn Doors." 24-70mm lens set at about 40mm. Exposure was 1/200 sec; f/8;
and ISO 100. Combined 4 photos in Photoshop.
Byron-
No spy from the 1950s would be fully equipped if they weren't carrying a camera. Not a big imposing camera but a miniature camera that could easily slip out of a pocket, take the picture and slip back in without being noticed. To emphasize the smallness of the camera, the hand pulling the camera out of the pocket belongs to Erleen. Her hands, in comparison to most peoples hands, are miniature.
I used 2 light sources. One was a Nikon flash in a softbox. It is giving overall illumination but is set to underexpose by 2 stops. The other source is a Nikon flash equipped with a modified Byro-snoot. It is modified by putting 2 layers of wide masking tape across the top and 2 layers of tape across the bottom leaving a small gap across the opening of the snoot. That gave me the "slash" of light across the photo that happens to highlight the camera.
50mm lens f8, 100th sec.
No spy from the 1950s would be fully equipped if they weren't carrying a camera. Not a big imposing camera but a miniature camera that could easily slip out of a pocket, take the picture and slip back in without being noticed. To emphasize the smallness of the camera, the hand pulling the camera out of the pocket belongs to Erleen. Her hands, in comparison to most peoples hands, are miniature.
I used 2 light sources. One was a Nikon flash in a softbox. It is giving overall illumination but is set to underexpose by 2 stops. The other source is a Nikon flash equipped with a modified Byro-snoot. It is modified by putting 2 layers of wide masking tape across the top and 2 layers of tape across the bottom leaving a small gap across the opening of the snoot. That gave me the "slash" of light across the photo that happens to highlight the camera.
50mm lens f8, 100th sec.