At our first Toy Photographers Virtual Meet-Up of 2021, participants had a chance to collaborate in teams to create a six-image narrative based on a short prompt. Today’s narrative was based on the prompt “scene from a book.” The collaborators are Matthew Wyjad (@morriswhyadd), Tourmaline (@tourmalinenow) and Teddi Deppner (@teddi_toyworld).
About the collaboration
What an adventure this collaboration turned out to be! The theme “scene from a book” proved to be challenging, as we each had very different toy collections. Creating a single scene featuring the same character(s) did not immediately gel. We messaged over Instagram to brainstorm what book to choose. Ideas varied from 2001: A Space Odyssey to The Princess Bride.
Once we hit upon Le Petit Prince things started coming together. None of us had “the right figure,” but we each had pieces that worked for different parts of the prince’s story. Using a lighter, pastel color palette and elements like stars in the sky to tie the images together, we each took more photos than needed so we could choose which six would tell our story the best.
~ Matthew Wyjad (@morriswhyadd), Tourmaline (@tourmalinenow) and Teddi Deppner (@teddi_toyworld)
Be sure to check out the creators’ Instagram galleries for outtake images from the collaboration!
WOW ! great work! every image here is absolutely beautiful, and I can hardly tell whose image is whos!
That’s really awesome to hear. We really worked to seek a cohesive style, despite our differences.
I just love that you chose this book. All the images work really well together to tell that story. The three of you did amazing. The sets are brilliant. A toy photographers view of Le Petit Prince is something I didn’t think I needed but, I am glad you created this.
I hadn’t read the book before, so it was really neat to explore the story and found out why it’s such a beloved book around the world!
Wonderful pictures! I like Le Petit Prince. Different toys and visual interpretations look like one world here. Beautiful work !
Thank you so much, Ann!
This is subtle and beautiful story. Very coherent in style, I can’t attribute photos to authors, which is great effect!
And I don’t understand why somebody reported this story on IG.
So cool to hear that our efforts to create a consistent style was successful. I think it was the similarity or implication of suicide at the end that triggered someone. The prince returns to his world via a snake bite, and falls down as if dead. It’s a very ambiguous scene, and I can understand some people being a little disturbed by it… but it’s not blatantly negative, so I’m surprised that it would get that sort of flagging.
Wonderful story & collaboration!