Action Man Vs. Rex

Yes, I'm obsessed with photographing Action Man now. Some people don't like the idea. Others have said I've done it to death, and its become boring. I very nearly agree with the second group. But- whilst sat on the sofa the other morning looking at the toys scattered across the floor (not the remnants of a peculiar drunken night, but the possessions of my landlady's two year old)- I noticed he had the official replica of Rex of Toy Story fame. Now, what sort of man would I be if I was to overlook the irony of a life-size doll from a film about toys, especially when I've already cut my teeth photographing toys (Action Man) last summer?

The idea was to shoot action man dangling into the mouth of Rex, the back-story being that he had been captured by the Taliban (so last decade!), taken back in time (suspend disbelief here), and subsequently fed to a toy from a film that was made in 1995 (suspend it more!). I booked the studio for this, and- since the very attractive model I had arranged for the day failed to show- I was stuck with my toys. Not the first time, and it won't be the last.

Cutting to the chase then, the point of this post is to talk you through the whole shoot, starting with the finished product (my favourite image from the shoot) and how I shot it, then going on to discuss how I got there in terms of lighting, composition and camera settings, these being the three major things that I changed throughout the day.

The finished product:

Camera Settings:  f13, 1/160th, ISO100, 51mm, WB: Shady.
Lighting:  Snoot positioned to left of camera directly aimed at subject (set to 2.5); soft box to the left (set to 1); soft box to the right (set to 1.5).

Set-up:  Rex toy on table with branches and wood for realism; Action Man suspended on the boom arm of a tripod to give the impression he is headed for Rex's mouth; pieces of wood added as background for the final image (not pictured), which I realised was the missing element (along with changing the WB from Flash to Shady for more warmth).

In Adobe Camera RAW....

... I opened the RAW image in ACR (Adobe Camera Raw), warmed the white balance, increased exposure and contrast, along with boosting the lights and highlights. I also increased the shadows just to bring out the shadow of the dangling Action Man.

In the Photoshop...

... I duplicated the background layer, applied a Gaussian Blur filter with a black mask (by pressing alt and clicking on mask), then chose the white brush to reveal the blur on the wood in the background, giving the impression of a shallower depth of field. I did did this, for I shooting at f13 was not going to offer me much in this respect.

  The only real idea I had was that Action Man's head would somehow be in Rex's mouth. I did think of dangling, but early-on it was just about experimenting with lighting (after all this was the whole point of booking the studio). Below are some early examples of the concept in action:

f11, 1/100th, ISO100, 50mm (Sigma 50-200mm, f4-f5.6);
Soft box either side (with left one stop higher than right for texture); background lit with red head.

I realised early-on that the background was too bright here, and that the red head had to go because I wanted the shadow of Rex's teeth biting into AM's head. However, due to my lack of knowledge of studio lighting (and physics), it took me a while to realise why I wasn't getting the shadow I so desired. Then I remembered that soft boxes are designed to diffuse light and spread it across a larger area, meaning these weren't helping either. So I opted instead for a snoot positioned directly at the subject (to the left of camera), and this provided me with said shadow (below):

f11, 1/100th, ISO100, 50mm.
Snoot directly at subject (to left of camera).

It provided the kind of shadow I wanted (almost like a puppet show to reflect the toy/cartoon theme), but that's pretty much all there was at this stage (nothing really to look at), so providing a soft [box] light to one side (in this case the left) would counterbalance the harshness of the shadow and/or add more texture to the whole scene (below):

f20, 1/125, ISO100, 50mm.

At this point I decided it was time I changed from my Sigma 50-200mm to my kit lens (18-55mm) to allow me to fit more of the scene into the frame, which was the same time that I added the log and bits of other wood from what was available in the studio:

f20, 1/160th, ISO100, 46mm.

Obviously, it makes a difference where you place the wood to build-up parts of the scene, as you can see the example above just doesn't look right (hope this conveys the level of experimentation undertaken on the day). 

f18, 1/160th, ISO100, 46mm.
Snoot direct; soft box lighting the left corner.

The scene is coming together here, but I am still experimenting with the lights. The shadow works at this point, but I was looking for something to take the harshness from the background, so I took the left soft box from its stand and leant it again the table, pointing upwards towards the corner I wanted to light. Note how this give a contrast to the image without looking too harsh (above).

f18, 1/160th, ISO100, 34mm.

The above image shows him dangling [almost] into Rex's mouth, and we do have the shadow (reminding me of Da Vinci's Vitruvian Man), despite the difficulty to snap him with him constantly turning. It is evident here how, as soon as I introduce something new to the scene, I take my eye off the ball in terms of lighting and composition. But then not every element was going to come together at the same time.

f22, 1/160th, ISO100, 26mm.
Snoot direct (set to 4), soft box to lower left (set to 4).

Case in point: in the above image, the final composition (camera in portrait; action man dangling) is present now, but the image is dull and I was scratching my head as to what I could use to remedy this: "if only I had leaves and privets to arrange around the backdrop" was the recurring thought here. Then Richard- who'd popped in to collect some stuff for a class of his- suggested I use the planks of wood someone had stored under a table in the studio. I wasn't convinced with the idea at first, but I suppose the idea was to allow the wood to fully cover the white background (below).

 

f22, 1/160, ISO100, 26mm.

You may note how narrow my apertures are in the practice, but not in the final image. This is to do with how high I had the lights. It was a fellow student that came in for a chat at this stage, who told me she never turns the lights up to above 3. Initially, I thought "then why do they go up so high then?". It's true, I did keep turning them up to gain a better shadow of Action Man dangling, but in doing so I was also forcing myself to narrow the camera's aperture at the same time. Why didn't I turn the lights down and work with a wider aperture, thus creating more depth between subject and background? 

Basically, this session reintroduced to me the whole concept of light and aperture: in the studio there is scope for a lot of light, therefore scope for a range of different apertures. IT REALLY IS THAT SIMPLE!