Another weekend bites the dust...

But it was such a lovely day to sit out in the garden and build cliffs out of modroc and wire mesh lol

My task for the next couple of weeks will be working out what sets I need to build and building them. I think the idea of getting everything ready to go so quickly was a bit over optimistic :o( I have now got a fleet of Airfix planes and lorries and jeeps all glued together, but, except for the Lancaster, they all need to be painted still. I have no buildings done, and I've not even looked at starting on the trees yet *sigh*

Rain Stopped Play...

I got out into the garden today and discovered a number of things before the rain came:

1. My original plan to shoot this with the figures on the grass etc is not going to work - I can't get the camera in a low and stable enough position to allow me to do this. In order to get round this, I will have to build sets for everything and place them on a small table outside.
2. It may be that the extension tubes are not going to be the main feature of my equipment, as for most of the photos I'm trying to replicate, the depth of field is bigger than the extension tubes allow me.
3. I need to learn the closest focussing distance for all my lenses.
4. It will take me a while to realise exactly what effect I'm going to get at different focal lengths and distances from the subject as regards depth of field. I have a fair idea, I just need to get it cemented in my mind exactly what the relationships are!
5. The last thing is that my gran needs to get the edge of her grass strimmed ;o)

Onwards to next weekend for the next shoot then, and more model and set building in the meantime!

Foiled :o(

I decided not to start on Saturday and go to a re-enactment of 1503 at the Palace in Linlithgow instead and to start take the photos today. Unfortuntately there's a howling gale now, and I'd be chasing models all over the garden if I tried :o(

Still, it's a bank holiday, so maybe tomorrow...

Building The Sets...

Okay, so originally the plan was to just do photos of soldiers in the field of battle, maybe a D-Day landing or two, requiring some sand or water, but it seems to have mushroomed slightly. I now have photos of all sorts of places from beaches to trenches via ruined towns and country roads, passing a few mountains, forests and jungles on the way! Of course all this means that I need props as well as my soldiers...

My project for the tail end of this week therefore is set building. I am now armed with foam core board for the buildings, but I really need to thank scalescenes.com which allowed me to download a selection of different brick finishes for the buildings - a quick stop at the colour laser printer, and I'm set with buildings from Northern Germany to North Africa! They do do whole building kits too, but unfortunately their scales are far too small for the size of my toy soldiers :o(

Next part is going to be tree building. Again I've found that model trees are too small for my soldiers, so I've armed myself with some plant sticks from B&Q, some mod-roc to add the bark, some wire to make an armature for the branches, and some foam to make the foliage. It seemed that a lot of the model trees were made with chips of foam sprayed green and glued to an armature, so I figured if it worked for them, then it would for me too! The man that runs the The Foam Centre, on Howard Street in Glasgow, was generous enough to give me a pile of offcuts to try this experiment with, so between that and a cheap £9 blender from Argos to turn it into little bits, I should be churning out foliage in no time. With 2 colours of green spray too, I can even branch out and have 2-tone trees too...

Finally I have beaches, cliffs, aerodromes and more. For the beaches I grabbed a bag of sand at B&Q (okay, grabbed is exaggerating, it was very heavy, I pretty much heaved it off the shelf and then at the other end into the car!), for the cliffs I have some chicken wire, mod-roc and stone plaster, and for the aerodromes I have an Airfix diorama. The rest will be au naturel in gran's back garden with grass, mud and paths (although I might not mention my intention to dig some trenches just yet...)

Houston, We Have Lift-Off!

Okay, I'm now armed with the extension tubes, I've done some experiments with them, and I've investigated some other techniques. I've also got another flash, and borrowed an off-camera cord, and put in a claim for some real estate in the corner of gran's garden!

Over the past couple of weeks I have been looking up a number of different sites with WW II photos and gathering material for what I would like to recreate. As I recreate and post each shot I will link back to the original photo, and will try and give a little history to accompany it if it is available.

For the final push to get into this, I've signed up for SoFoBoMo (Solo Photo Book Month). Although the idea of this is to create a photo book in a month, I think this project will be rather larger, as I keep having new ideas! I will probably end up only doing the first chapter within the month, I just have to decide what that will be about - I'll keep you posted when I've narrowed it down lol

The actual photography will start on Saturday, all being equal...