Challenge: Children's Toy V (Advanced Editing VII)
Camera: Nikon D7100
Lens: Sigma 50mm f/1.4 EX DG HSM Autofocus Lens
Location: Chateau Snaffles
Date: Dec 30, 2013
Aperture: f.6.3
ISO: 200
Shutter: 30 seconds
Date Uploaded: Dec 31, 2013
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I don't like Barbie. But I love absurdity. So wasn't overly surprised when, having decided to put my Dem Boner skeletons and a small cast-iron melting pot to work, that I quickly realized that nothing else would work quite as well as a half-Barbie in the pot :-)
And I decided to make it incredibly absurd by having her (the ultimate consumer) being cooked by skeletons, for a giant skeleton, who would be waiting with napkin around neck and cutlery to consume her, yet without the means to digest her. Also felt it would be inflammatory to use any dolls, so Dem Boners were a safe bet. Skeletons wear no hide.
Basic set is a dark cloth on a table with a box underneath to make a riser for a bad guy to sit on. The two little skeletons are Dem Boners with their feet blu-tak'd to small flats of black cardboard, to make positioning them a little easier. Painted the underside and sides of the pot with white craft paint so red LEDS light would catch it and add a convincing glow. The firewood piled around the cauldron is actually old lead fishing weights and some bits of foil, positioned to help reflect up light onto the pot. The froth, which was added at the last minute, is some dry shampoo. If flesh and water doesn't at least equal froth, it isn't much good! And steam is difficult enough to do, let alone with a 30-second exposure.
Originally I had a skull painted with some luminescent paint as the looming bad guy, but he didn't loom very well and looked bored; after all it was only a head. So I dug out the skeleton (about 16 in tall) that I bought at Halloween this year and put him to work as a convincingly looming baddie. Had to take a glue gun to a few areas like shoulders and butt so he wouldn't pitch forward, but everything held.
Setup: Camera on tripod, bounced flash. And apart from a flash at the start of the exposure, all lighting was done with small finger LEDs, easily available in the party section of most dollar stores (they come in white, blue, red and green).
At first I drove myself nuts trying to do all the lighting with handheld LEDs. At one point I was juggling three different LEDs for lighting different parts of the set; light trails were everywhere! Soon I delegated much of the lighting to stationary LEDs.
Once I decided to go with a black velvet painting for a background, with sections of the frame blacked out with fabric, I lit it with two green LEDs. Two blue LEDs were lashed together, bubblewrapped, snooded (any kind of cheap, black matte fabric and rubber bands make great snoods) positioned behind the big skeleton so he'd have some backlighting.
Set up one snooded white LED on the right so I'd have some light playing on the fork and skeleton's face. Used a second white handheld LED to paint the knife and that side of the body. A single unsnooded red LED was kept palmed til I needed it, then I simply painted the skeletons, pot, and Barbie with it.
**Most important thing to remember when using handheld lights of any kind - get within camera range and you get light trails. So remembering to keep the LEDs a good 2 feet away from the set and painting from a distance is imperative. Also if you decide to remove a LED from set, clamp the end of your finger over the light THEN move it from the set. Otherwise you get light trails everywhere!!
pp: shot jpg, straighten, crop, brightness/contrast, vibrance/saturation, dodge and burn, minor cloning, resize, sharpen, save for web |
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