San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
A look at the work of Jeff Knapp, who photographs stories using action figures.
The Artist’s Life is a recurring feature that spotlights the talent who help make up the rich tapestry of the Bay Area’s cultural life.
Cinematographer Jeff Knapp is always filming stuff that moves, so on his own time he wants to shoot stuff that stands perfectly still. An action figure clamped into a vise will do.
Knapp belongs to a surprisingly large fraternity of toy photographers who set up each shot as if they are shooting for the movies, while in reality their medium is Instagram and they are shooting stills. There are thousands of followers dedicated to toy photography, and though Knapp teeters around 100 followers, he is new to the game and building the audience for his account, @millennialtoybox.
“Every week I do a series, and I treat it just like a job,” says Knapp, 33. “There is a theme, and I script it as I play with the toys to create a narrative.”
He titles each series and image, and the story he tells is as important to him as his day job shooting featurelength independent films. Maybe more so, because with toy photography, Knapp is not working for anybody else. He is the writer, director, set designer, lighting crew and best boy. The labor is intensive; he can work five hours setting up one shot.
His studio is the garage of the Milpitas home he shares with his mother. There is a diorama set up on a folding table, his lights and Canon digital camera are on tripods, and the actors are the little plastic heroes and villains he played with growing up in this same house.
If the shot he is contemplating involves chaos and violence, he will crank the hard punk of the Dead Kennedys. If it is a scene of uplift, he will play John Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme.” The mood must be just right.
“It’s only as competitive as you let it be,” he says, as he starts tinkering with the clamps to suspend his actors above a foam stage painted black. “I’m not looking to top anyone else. I’m looking to top my last photo.”
Every image must be perfectly executed in order to earn the approval of an esteemed Instagrammer like Otto Riesenberg, 53, a former San Franciscan who now lives in Portland. Riesenberg, who works in construction, has been doing toy photography for eight years under his personal account @wooden_family_photos. In February, he created the aggregator @toypic_community. It has
already topped 6,000 followers and is adding 1,000 a month, says Riesenberg, who acts as curator.
“We’re looking for creativity, composition and a story,” he says. “Plus the usual stuff, angle, lighting and color.”
Riesenberg posts 10 pictures a day, and the site features images from 1,500 toy photographers worldwide. The competition is intense to be included on his “Top Five Friday.”
“People think toy photography is for kids,” says Riesenberg, 53. “The vast majority are between 18 and 34.” Some photographers are also toy collectors who buy two of each — one to put to work, and the other to stay sealed in its box with the plastic display.
Knapp, who comes from a line of autoworkers at the Ford plant in Milpitas, has never indulged in this kind of collecting. His action toys are the kind that came free with burgers at McDonald’s. When he’d outgrown his toys, his mother put them in a cardboard box and took them to the shed out back. Knapp was rummaging around in there when he came upon the box.
“I just had the idea I wanted to make a set and use the toys to tell a story,” he says. He’d never heard of toy photography and was acting on impulse when he set up a shoot involving four Ninja Turtles in heroic stances. He posted the shot on his personal Instagram account, and it got aggregated onto a #NinjaTurtle hashtag with 10,000 followers.
Knapp, who describes himself as an introvert, had found his social element. He started posting to the hashtag #toyphotography and on June 12, a picture of his, titled “Even the Dream Police Have a Quota to Fill,” was selected for Riesenberg’s feed.
He’d arrived. In July, he started a movie shoot that was to last 18 consecutive days, so on his last free day he goes into the garage, clicks on the electric fan and goes to work on a scene called “Time After Time” after the Cyndi Lauper song.
It’s a crowded shot, requiring three strobe lights on tripods and two small LED flashlights on the set. After two hours of setup, he is ready to put towels over the garage door windows to block the daylight.
“What’s happening here is SpiderMan is falling and his enemy, the Vulture, is about to kill him,” he explains. “Meanwhile, the Wasp is about to attack the Vulture, so Ghost Rider and Michelangelo can come in on their motorcycles and rescue Spider Man.”
He goes round and round the table in the hot garage, constantly tinkering and seeing how it looks on the screen of his Canon. When he is just about ready to shoot, he goes to battle with what he calls the scourge of the toy photographer. “You think everything is set up, then a toy falls over.”
At last, he puts the camera on timer, then grabs his can of liquid atmosphere, to spray onto the set as the shutter clicks, creating a smoke sensation. After he gets his main shot, he takes a closeup of each of the main characters, which he will later combine in Photoshop. All of this is for one image, which he posted July 11. You can see it by visiting @millennialtoybox.
“The reward is being accepted by the community of toy photographers,” he says. “I’m not a very social guy, so to me that is important.”