During James’ podcast break we (Kristina and I) will do a short podcast-series about “What toy photography is”. In this first episode, of a three part mini season, we talk about toy photography and its relationship to FanFiction.

The conversation

Our conversation started several years ago when we started a project with the goal of collaborating on a book about toy photography. While we never finished the book, we decided to use our draft as the basis for this three part off-season podcast series. Our conversation is a continuing exploration of the topics we previously investigated through our writing.

FanFiction

Fanfiction is when someone takes either the story or characters (or both) of a certain piece of work, whether it be a novel, tv show, movie, etc, and create their own story based on it. Sometimes people will take characters from one movie and put them in another, which is called a cross-over. – Urban Dictionary

With this definition as the basis for understanding FanFiction, we look at our own work through this lens. In this conversation we ask questions like: Is FanFiction a short cut to understanding a photo? Is FanFiction a form of pandering to the audience? If you don’t know the original stories of the charectors, is that an impediment to understanding the photograph?

Of course we like to dig deep so we also explore questions like: Do other toy photographers use FanFiction to tell their own stories? Is a photo more authentic and original if you can feel the photographer behind the photo?

The podcast and images

If you’re interested in exploring toy photography in a different way then we invite you to listen to our talk where we examine the following photographs through the specific lens of FanFiction.

Heading Home by Shelly Corbett

Ice Queen by Shelly Corbett*

Pizza Delivery by Shelly Corbett

A fathers love by Kristina Alexanderson

Comfort by Kristina Alexanderson

Left behind by Kristina Alexanderson

Conclusion

When you’ve listened the episode and our esoteric ramblings, we love to hear from you! How do you do use FanFiction in your toy photography? Is it because you really love the story line and want to stay connected? Do you want to build your own universe around your favorite characters? Or do you want to use these beloved charectors to tell your own stories? Or maybe you use some combination of the above? Whatever the reason, please leave your comments below.

Thanks for listening and we look forward to continuing our conversation in the next episode.

See you then!

Shelly and Kristina

*In the podcast Kristina refer to a the blogpost “#bc-reboot” and the three images of the Ice queen.