Final

It's a Small Medieval World
















The final project for AD 267 was upon me, I needed to create a miniature set 15x15 inches that I would then photograph. During my brainstorms I decided that I wanted to do something more realistic, or at least in a natural setting. Something that could look life-sized if shot at certain angles. This led me to the idea of having an outdoor set. I thought it would add depth to incorporate natural elements such as leaves, sticks, rocks and dirt.

It was time to go shopping for materials, my plan was to build an outdoor race track and buy some Hot Wheels sports cars but gather the rest of the materials from outdoors (for free).  I traveled to Michael's craft store with a fellow classmate. Once there, because there was so much to choose from, my topic changed numerous times. I finally settled on the idea of creating a scene with knights in shining armor fighting a dragon, but not any dragon, a five-headed purple hydra.

With this new idea and a ridiculous amount of excitement over the dragon, I began creating my diorama scene. Immediately I ran into unexpected difficulties due to the uneven terrain of my attempt at making realistic hills. From there, I also had too much detail and objects within my scene that caused too much clutter. Another difficulty I faced was the impossible balance of the little knights. They would fall over so easily but I did not dare to glue them because I thought I would need to change their positions to tell a story with my photos.

Finally, I began shooting photos. I had never used special lighting techniques before so I was wary and didn't have much of an initial plan. After working with my professor, I started to understand some of the creative techniques one can use to make a dramatic scene such as placing colored sheets in front of the light to change its color, using multiple lights from different angles, and placing patterns in front of the lights to create unexplained shadows. I tried shooting with different camera angles and experimented with focusing versus blurring different sections.

I believe my photos are successful because of the dramatic lighting and dark contrasts in the shadows and highlights. The different colors also help convey moods of battle. In addition to being dramatic, the dark backgrounds helped to unify my series. These are practically my original photos, only with minor cropping and brightness adjustments using Photoshop.