i decided to shoot outdoors to make use of the natural light and shadows which i was looking to use to add natural depth to my photographs. i used some newly executed ground as my backdrop for two very different style shoots (see my other collection titled "lego star wars realism"). In this shoot I was experimenting with depth of field and trying to add motion to my photographs so using a fast shutter speed to capture the action. The sunlight was quite bright so I was able to use a low ISO during the shoot which kept the pictures sharp and not grainy.
In my second shoot using the excavated earth as a set I used Lego models to set up a building site. The earth made the perfect backdrop for this shoot and the first image I took was from above as if the building site was being surveyed from the air. This shot was a little flat and lacked depth so using my experience from the previous shoot I moved the camera lower to try and capture the essence of a building site. The slightly above eye level shots still lacked the dynamic look I was going for so I moved the camera again to shoot the models at eye level or slightly below. This really started to make the scene come alive and produced some interesting effects especially when both the foreground and background were blurred. This allowed the eye to really focus on the middle of the shot and allowed the image to start telling the story of the busy building site.
The picture of the site manager shouting instructions over the radio whilst in the company of the site owner was another image that I really liked. Again it has been taken slightly below eye level with the blurred foreground and background which put the figure in sharp focus and in the central spot. The natural light in this photograph worked well casting a realistic shadow and the fact that the figure is back lit by the sun softens the models features a little. I edited this photograph in Adobe Lightroom as I wanted to enhance some of the characteristics of the original image. In the Light setting I increased the contrast slightly (+19) and decreased the highlights, whites and shadows (-30). As the scene was well lit by natural light I slightly increased the temperature of the image to make it a little warmer. Once again to ensure I captured all of the details of the models I increased the texture to +100 along with the sharpening (+76). The colours on this image really stand out especially against the background of the earth with the blues and greens very vibrant. I especially like the humourous twist to this photograph with the background of the port-a-loo.
One of my favourite images from this shoot was the workman digging and in sharp focus surrounded by machines that are slightly out of focus. This really feels that time has stood still for this workman whilst the machines are all busy and moving around him. The eye is drawn straight to him and I feel the audience might be wondering what he is thinking about whilst frozen in time. The addition of a small piece of dirt to his spade adds to the realism on this picture.
In the shots where the digger is unloading earth into the truck I wanted to add motion to these shots. I tried to create this effect initially by sprinkling earth from above whilst taking the shot using a fast shutter speed to capture the motion. Although this was partially successful I found that because I was zoomed in on the models the earth looked obviously in front of the truck and did not give the effect I was looking for. So to combat this I took a still picture of the truck and the digger then looked for a royalty free jpeg image of falling dirt. I opened both of the images in Adobe Photoshop and combined them. I used Procreate on this combined image and airbrushed the dirt area of the image to create the illusion of dust on the falling dirt. Overall I am pleased with this image as I feel the combination of the two photographs worked well and added some realistic motion to the photograph for interest. The only negative was the fact the back ground was slightly altered by the processing which may be noticed by the viewer.
behind the scenes
