Welcome back to the Toy Photographers Podcast and our special series exploring toy photography from a beginner’s perspective! In this episode, your hosts Terri Greene Henning (@greenehenphotography) and Ariel Figueroa (@those_wonderful_toys) pick up where they left off in Episode 4 and their discussion of photo backgrounds, and move into chatting about lighting.
Listen as Terri and Ariel discuss:
- Foam and printed dioramas
- Digital backgrounds
- How to find/use digital backgrounds
- Lighting options and what we use
- The frustration of keeping lights charged!
- Paying attention to light
- Importance of creating routines
- Where we look for inspiration, tips, tricks
- How this simple trick by photographer Reggie Ballesteros helped Terri understand light/direction of light!
Sample images
Terri’s photos (@greenehenphotography)
Here are two examples of Terri’s images using her own photos as backgrounds for the toy photographs. In the first, she used a photo taken in Rome, Italy, putting up that image on her computer as the background and positioning the characters from Pixar’s Luca in front of it for the shot. In the second example, she used a 5 x 5-inch printed photograph and positioned a LEGO minifigure in front of the print.
In these examples, Terri took advantage of an afternoon ray of light and experimented with a few minifigures!
Ariel’s photos (@those_wonderful_toys)
Links & Resources
Below are links to products/lights Terri and Ariel referenced in the episode.
one of the things that was rather distressing in this podcast was the photographers not talking about copyright and using images they found on the web. please read up on copyright violations, what is fair use and when it is allowed. i know, as a professional photographer, if i found one of my photos had been used without my permission i would be a wee bit miffed. read the law.