Creating A World

It’s been said that every writer creates the world in their fiction, even if it’s not science-fiction, for their characters to explore.
Photographers can do the same thing.

I’ve always been a fan of science-fiction and fantasy in all its forms.  I remember as a kid seeing Star Wars in the movie theater and being completely captivated.  And, of course, like most geeks of my generation, I played Dungeons and Dragons and other table-top role-playing games.  Games that were born from the world of miniatures and war games.  Entire books have been written about all that, but today, I’m only interested in one aspect.  The building of miniature worlds.
In the old days, before we had all the fancy digital effects, movies were made with models.  So, yeah, basically, they were made my favorite way, in camera.  And, as regular readers know, I’m all about making the photo in the camera, not in software.  So, here are two totally different ways to approach this.

First, there’s photographer Cera Hensley who makes fantasy worlds on a three-foot-by-three-foot table.
Now she makes her miniature tableaus and then photoshops people into them later.  I’d prefer to do something more like Slinkachu does, and use tiny, model-railroad figures instead.  It’s sort of like making a tilt-shift photograph by hand, but there’s a certain appeal to it for me.  In fact, I’ve always thought I’d like to get some fantasy miniatures and scenery, or even some science-fiction version of that, and build little scenes to photograph as realistically as possible.
Secondly, for something decidedly more other-worldly, I saw a tutorial recently for turning a fish tank, salt water and dyes into an alien environment for photography.  It looks amazing and, honestly, amazingly easy to do!  Though I have to admit, it’s probably harder to pull off well than it looks in the tutorial.  Combine that with model of a spaceship and, well, I might be able to photograph covers for science-fiction novels that I’m always planning to write!

So, there are two things to experiment with this weekend.  Go and have fun!
Next month, more writing related links!