Winter is coming! I actually really love the changing seasons – we once lived down in Mesa, Arizona and I missed the fall and winter that we experience here in Cedar City, Utah each year. Each season brings new colors and challenges to my photography.
This past week we have experienced our first cold snap of the fall/winter season. It got far below freezing. I like this transitional time as many folks tend to leave sprinklers on overnight and the ice sculptures that are made are perfect winter scenes for my toy photography. It can get rather cold and uncomfortable while shooting toys outside durning these times; but the strange things is I don’t even realize that my knees are going numb. I just get so engrossed in the creative process that everything else is forgotten.
I work at an engineering firm which is located in the outskirts of Cedar. The office is surrounded by expansive fields of alfalfa (hay). Yesterday on my way to work I was passing through the fields and the farmers had left their sprinkler pivots on. It was a beautiful sight – the barbed wire fences and grass of the fields were iced over.
Naturally I had to stop and take some toy photos. Woody matched the scene perfectly and I attempted to recreate a shot I did a couple years ago of Woody tightroping on barbed-wire. Unfortunately, the sun had been up for some time and had already warmed the wire and ground enough that the ice was starting to fall off in chunks. It was a race against time! The ground was also thawing which meant messiness – plus I was in a hurry and late for work; so the shot ended up being woody just sitting on the wire. Maybe next time, if there is a next time – icy barbed-wire doesn’t happen too often.
I also had Miguel from Pixar’s Coco and a certain stormtrooper with me.
I used to stop and just take macro shots of a scene like this but now it looks rather boring without a toy in the shot. I still do non toy shots in circumstances like this but having a toy to experience it at their level just adds something to the shot.
I was late to work after these shots but luckily we are all pretty laid back there. The beauty of toy photography is the ability to transform the mundane into another world!
If you’ve made it this far reading my ramblings I’d love to hear some feedback here on my blog.
~ Joseph