Yes it’s a rather random correlation but that’s how most of my photography happens. On Friday night my wife and I went on a date and as part of it we went shopping. When you’ve got five kiddos, any time alone together is a great time – even just shopping.
We went to the toy aisles at Walmart because I always like to peruse the aisles and see if they have anything that’ll look good in a toy photo.
They had some Lego Harry Potter minifigures (finally), but they had been picked through quite a bit. I spent some time looking for a niffler with no such luck. I did get Harry Potter with his Owl because those Lego owls are epic; and it’s white so perfect for coming wintertime shots.
I found the Star Wars Force Link 2.0 Wampa and Luke Skywalker (Hoth) Figure and bought it for the Wampa. There are some iconic characters that just work so well in photography and the Wampa is one such icon. I have the Lego Wampa, but I wanted to have something a bit more articulated for this winter season. I also wanted to tie in this new Wampa figure to my Hoth Heat Wave series.
Saturday morning Wampa joined us for breakfast and had a strange fascination with the butter. He followed it all the way to a more comfortable spot… out fridge!
After an excellent breakfast we ran some errands and went to what we call the spin park; it’s a city park that has a bunch of different spinning contraptions that the kids have a blast on. They also have a section of the park that is a drainage area that has turned into a small marsh with cattails and everything.
I went tromping through the cattails and found such a cool ecosystem. There were ladybugs galore and many spiders and wasps and such. I took quite a few shots of insects and then decided the spot would be perfect for a muddy Hoth. So out came Wampa! It was a bit tricky getting around as the ground was rather unstable and mucky. There were some stepping stones so it was a balancing act to get down low enough to shoot the Wampa.
After some tricky footwork and a few shots I whipped out my pocket knife and cut some cattails for my kiddos to play with. My youngest son Clark got the first one and he whacked it on the ground and to our amazement it exploded into a huge puff of seeds! I had no idea cattails did that…
So the rest of the morning was spent collecting and exploding cattails. I also took a few shots of the Wampa in the exploded seed clouds. It sort of looked like snow and matched my Hoth Heat Wave theme.
This is usually how my toy photography workflow happens. I just get with some toys and explore. The randomness leads to some pretty creative and epic shots. I don’t always plan for shoots but when I do the shots seem a bit more forced; I like this go with the flow way of things.
