Toying around
Mark Phillips raided his kids’ toy box in search of suitable subjects during lockdown to shoot and edit a series of cinematic scenes
The beauty of toy photography is kit choice doesn’t really matter – it can be achieved on any device
Istarted photography two years ago. My main objective was to take better pictures of the kids, but when I held my Nikon D3500 for the first time, I knew it was the start of a beautiful relationship. I soon realized that I would be using it for much more than capturing a few family snaps. However, just as I started to get to grips with my passion, lockdown hit…
I wanted to continue learning photography skills, so I looked around the home for subjects to photograph. That’s when I first dived into the kids’ toy box, and I haven’t looked back since!
Toy stories
The beauty of toy photography is kit choice doesn’t really matter – it can be achieved on any device that can take a photograph. That said, I do think DSLR and mirrorless cameras are the best choices, because they give you the flexibility of using different lenses and shooting in Raw (which captures more data for editing later on).
The first image [1] was photographed in a wood and used as part of a tutorial I made with my daughter to show how simple it is to capture cinematic photos of toys. I wanted to convey plenty of action and brought along my trusty wire and snips to help out.
We found a suitable gravel path and added wire to Sackboy’s leg to prop him up as if he was running away. I wanted to capture bits of dust and gravel flying through the air to add depth and convey the weight of the dinosaur as it pounded the ground. To do this I used a drain unblocker gun, which stores compressed air that’s fired through the nozzle when you pull the trigger. I aimed the nozzle at the T-rex’s feet and released the air as the camera fired the shutter. I set a five-second self-timer and rested the camera on the ground so
my hands were free to operate the gun
– it’s a tricky technique to time but looks great when you get it right.
I shot this image in a bird bath in my garden [2]. I added some wire to Flounder’s tail and made a loop at the bottom to create a stand. This was placed in the water, with a small rock sitting on top of the loop as a counterweight. I fixed my camera on a tripod and, because it was a cloudy day, I had to use a high ISO to achieve a fast enough shutter speed to freeze the water. Once again I set up a self-timer and used my drain unblocker to blast air into the scene, which splashed the water. The wire was removed in Photoshop, but I also ended up cutting Flounder out to adjust his position.
Movie stills
This photo [3] was taken in the same wood as the first image. We took the kids for a walk during lockdown and I packed a toy and my camera. I had no idea what image I was going to capture, but sometimes being spontaneous can work out. The shot is actually a composite, as the seedling was added in post-production.
I remembered I photographed a seedling in my garden the previous week, which I cut out in Photoshop and pasted directly onto my photo of WALL-E. I then added some light rays to highlight the seedling and convey the robot had finally found a sign of life. I took great care to have no other greenery in the shot, as that would have ruined the barren aesthetic.
This photo is a composite [4]. I drilled a tiny hole in Mario’s back and used garden wire from a pound shop to suspend him from a clothes rail, so he appeared to be jumping over the Piranha Plant. The coin was suspended in front of him as if he was about to collect it (as happens in his video games). I then imported the picture into Photoshop, cut out Mario, the plant and the coin, and layered them onto another photo of a winding path. Finally, I added some shadows and removed the wire.
The background of my final image [5] was actually my PC monitor. I displayed a woodland photo on the screen and placed a piece of soil-covered wood in front of it to add extra realism. The only issue, when using a monitor as a backdrop, is the light emitted from the screen can cause exposure issues. Either the backdrop is correctly exposed and the figure is silhouetted or the figure is correctly exposed and the background is blown out. To compensate I exposed for the backdrop and used an LED torch to light the figure. It’s one of my favourite shots to date.