I hope this is compliant with the "tilted" theme. It took about 2 hours to rig Buzz and Robo-Sapien with coat hanger, CD cases and a foam packing square. I was shooting for an action scene, with the angles of the subjects conveying frozen "movement". A slight camera tilt balances the "chase" seen. Unconventional for this challenge, I'm sure, but I was anxious to knock my first photo out, and be a participant.
Robos's eyes are a 5 LED Cats-Eye bicycle light, with ring washers and duct-tape omitting 3 of the LED's, and taped to it's head. I aimed them to appear to be looking at where the plush alien "was" when he made the grab.
The left subject (the claw) lit with: Cats eye LED bike-lite, and is purposely alittle overexposed to create the metallic glow. A Schwinn LED lite lights both subjects (Buzz, Robo-claw) from the left side. These lights were duct-taped to dining room chairs, and appropriately angled.
A Garrity LED flashlight (held in hand) focal on Buzz lights the main subject, and the intense red glow on the claw was an aimed laser-light.
Lack of a black backdrop prevented me from lighting the rear claw more, and would have exposed too much background in my dining room.
Humbly, if anyone would like to see the original high-res version, or have kids whom are Toy Story fans, I'd be glad to email it for critique, since this is my first camera, and my first compositional photo.
I'm upgrading to the Canon EOS 40D 10.1MP Digital SLR Camera soon, and looking forward to submitting, and viewing some truly great photography!!
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I'm glad you achieved your sketched (even if only mentally) objective but I think there are few things you can do better. For one, there's a wonderful tutorial in the "Learn" section about resizing pictures for submission - it's always best to use the largest size available to you - 640 pixels on the long side for basic challenges. Second, it's simply too dark to see the robothing. I can see the LEDs, and the hand/claw on the left and a golden glowing shape that mimics the claw on the right. Those things do not appear to be attached to anything, though, and I'm viewing this on my uber(too)bright monitor at work. Because of that, you kind of lose the triangle you wished to create. Third, as rinac points out, toys don't often do well on DPC - it's just one of those things. Finally, I would suspect some voters did not see a "tilt" here, at least in part due to the issues with lighting and the inability to see the full triangle you created. To meet a challenge topic, it's best not to be subtle, at all. I speak from years of experience on that one.
I thought this was very clever (both concept and delivery) and gave it an 8. For some strange reason, toy shots do not fair that well at DPC. Maybe it's perceived as the easy way out? I don't know.
Thanks for the helpful comments, all! I was simply trying to make this look like it could be an eskew chase scene from a Toy Story movie, and I think I pulled it off. I wanted to do something vibrant and fun, and not involving simple camera tilt snapshots. I'm a graphics artist, and use lines to compose my sketches and paintings, and figured I'd take a shot at seeing how well it could be applied to photography. So this looks exactly as it would if I'd have painted it - so to wit, if you look at the composition as a whole, there's a diminishing "triangle" with it's base starting with Buzz, and diminishing toward the eyes. Kind of like a skyscraper shot from below. I know it's a stretch for many DPC members, but this is actually a very carefully arranged, composed shot. And the overall lighting came out perfectly. The background needed to be dark to exhibit that "bad guy from the shadows" aspect.
My main issue here is I wanted a bit of light on Robo-Sapien's chest, but I was out of LED'S! To that end - it is a bit dark in that spot.
Well, I guess in space, any direction is up, down,... or tilted. I'll give you credit for a clever take on the theme. (Though a little bit of a shoehorn)
Pretty good, and nice lighthearted entry, but a bit on the dark side.
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