autofantasia's photos with the keyword: toy

Another 'nearly ran' for this week's Sunday Challenge , for which we were asked to create a Tilt-Shift image. Not sure if I'm getting any better at this, but I like it regardless of whether it works as a miniature. There's another 4 attempts to be found in the Notes, all taken on the same day.

A 'nearly ran' for this week's Sunday Challenge , for which we were asked to create a Tilt-Shift image. Perhaps best viewed large - no pun intended!

For this week's Sunday Challenge , for which we were asked to create a Tilt-Shift image, something I'd only tried a couple of times before. Essentially, it involves taking a photograph of a real-world scene and then editing it to make it look like a miniature scene, such as you might find in a model railway. As I found out there are several ways to achieve the effect and there's even a website that allows you to tilt-shift your own image. In the end though having looked at several online tutorials I opted to do mine in Photoshop which has a built in tilt-shift effect within the Blur Gallery, albeit I gave the original images a few tweaks before hand to increase the colour saturation and smooth things out. Once I'd decided which route to take and made a few notes to keep me right I quite enjoyed the process and actually ended up with several possible entries for this week's challenge, but I kept returning to this one. Oh, and in case you are wondering this was taken from Level 5 of a multi-storey car park in Darlington. Thankfully, it was completely deserted, but I did get a few strange looks from the office workers in an adjacent building as I leaned over to get my shots! tiltshiftmaker.com

A somewhat later than intended entry for this week's Sunday Challenge . For this we were actually given several subjects to choose from, but in the end I opted to shoot anything to do with pets . This was given as an option because apparently April is National Pet month, or at least it is here in the UK. So, why the tennis ball? Well, our youngest dog Sandy is barking mad when it comes to balls and loves nothing more than going over the nearby fields with me, the plastic launcher and a ball. The trouble is that until recently his eagerness to play ball was costing us a small fortune as none of the ones that you get in the pet shops, which are supposedly intended for such purposes last for any length of time before falling apart. Not sure if it's just him that's too hard on them or if they're simply not fit for purpose, but I've actually seen him destroy one of those balls on a single walk. Anyway, I got to wondering if 'proper' tennis balls would be any good and so a few weeks back we went online and ordered up a set of 6 for £4.99, as opposed to the £2.99 for 3 usually charged for the others. And it has turned out to be a very wise move indeed as nearly a month later and he is still using the first ball. So, if your dog goes through those pet shop balls as quickly as our Sandy then my advice is to try ordering some 'proper' tennis balls like the one pictured. Please view on black for best effect.

For this week's Sunday Challenge , for which the theme was twist . This little chap somehow got himself entangled in a maze of candy sticks. He didn't have a name before this, but now I'm thinking maybe Twistram might be appropriate!

Spotted this dinky little pedal car 'parked' up alongside a slightly bigger Zephyr decked out in matching colours. Thought it would make for an amusing shot although I could have done without the sign strapped to its steering wheel.

I'd had this uploaded to act simply as a Christmas card for my many friends and contacts on ipernity. The intention was to 'post' it in each person's guestbook. However, some of them wouldn't let me post images, so I'm now making it public so I can share it with everyone. If you're one of my contacts and you've not had this appear in your guestbook then consider this your very own! It's actually an old shot I took a few years ago, which I've reworked slightly. We'd had some great early snow so I dug this little Christmas ornament out from the loft and let him go play in the back garden. Two links this time for the same track, that being "Let It Snow" by Michael Bublé, so hopefully at least one of them works for you youtu.be/-10fWHdpmks youtu.be/QDQoWT7W5xg

The little bear, which is about 3 inches tall, is one of our Christmas ornaments and made from some sort of resin. The festive bokeh comes courtesy of our tree at the far end of the living room. For this week's Sunday Challenge , which has the theme of Christmas . Also, for Sight and Sound . Sorry, but I couldn't resist the chance to share some Shakin' Stevens with you guys: Merry Christmas Everyone The Best Christmas Of Them All Blue Christmas I'll Be Home This Christmas In terms of uploads to ipernity, this is actually my 2,000th item. So it seems apt that I take this opportunity not only to wish everyone a Merry Christmas, but thank you guys once again for all your visits, comments and faves since I came across from the dark side.

For the current Sunday Challenge , which had the theme of high key ... meet Gerald The Dinosaur, not so much T-Rex as Teeny-Rex. I only intended to use him for a bit of fun after the end of the main shoot, but in the end I wasn't really happy with any of the shots I'd taken of my intended subject. So I'm posting this one of Gerald, albeit somewhat later than intended, rather than miss the challenge altogether. I'd read that it was difficult to do high key shots inside, but as the weather has been pretty miserable on and off, I elected not to shoot outdoors. I thought that by using a white card background and some daylight lamps I'd be able to pull the effect off ... how wrong I was. No matter what I did the creamy white object I was trying to shoot was either over exposed and blown around its edges or, if I got it captured cleanly, then the background was off-white going on for grey. I'm guessing then that you either need some studio lights, even rather basic ones, or this technique is best tackled outside in bright sunshine. Sorry if I sound negative folks, but I've not enjoyed this challenge one little bit and unless I can get some decent lights I don't think I'll be trying it again in a hurry. In the end this was the best I could get and even then I had to do some processing to get the pure white background.

"Hang on Paddington", cried Teddy ... this could get nasty!

Sorry, but I couldn't help myself ... I promise this is the last shot of this car. To be honest I thought this little guy was rather cute!

Like I said earlier, spare a thought for the poor old pheasant!

Well, who'd have thought it, here's me running late (again) for The Sunday Challenge . The challenge this week was simply books so I decided to combine a shot of William, who is evidently our most intelligent bear, seemingly reading a book from my James Patterson collection. Only problem was that most of them, even the paperback copies, are a little on the large side for William to handle easily. So I set about creating a miniature version of the one I wanted to use, which is entitled "Cross Country". To help me do this I scanned separately both covers and then the spine. These three images were then combined in Microsoft Publisher and printed out on photo paper to create a mini dust jacket for Williams book. I then used this to cover an old pocket diary before going through the same process to create an internal page to make it look, even to the most eagle eyed onlooker, as if it was a genuine book he was reading. Finally, I got to the relatively easy bit .... taking the actual photograph!

Here's another shot I took of my little robotic friend for a recent Sunday Challenge , which had the theme of forced perspective . I struggled to reproduce the processing I ran over the earlier shot I submitted into the main TSC group pool. Guess that'll teach me to make proper notes! Despite that I still like this one. There's a copy of the earlier shot in the Notes above for anyone who perhaps didn't see it and who would care to check it out. Worth pointing out too that this little fellow is actually only about 8 inches tall yet that fence I've tried to make him tower above is actually about as tall as me, so nearly 6 feet in height.

This week, the Sunday Challenge was forced perspective a technique that attempts to manipulate our sense of perception to make us believe something is smaller and/or larger than it actually is. The old horror films used to use forced perspective and more recently Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy took the technique to new levels. Now, as I had no desire to appear in my photograph and no willing volunteers were forthcoming I had to go down the model route. This toy robot, purchased from Boyes in Northallerton specifically for the challenge, is only about 8 inches tall, but I've tried to create the illusion that he is much, much larger. I set up a small table in my back garden and positioned it about 10 feet away from one of our boundary fences. Then I covered it in fine gravel and added a few small stones before positioning my little intergalactic friend on a piece of wood hidden behind the larger of the stones. I secured my camera on a tripod and zoomed out to get the smallest focal length possible on my stock lens, as this apparently helps you achieve maximum depth of field. I also tried to ensure I squeezed every inch of DOF possible by using Apperture Priority and selecting f22. Then I moved the camera and tripod as close as I could get to the table whilst still being able to focus making sure that I was looking up at the model to make him look as big as I could. I opted to use this shot as I'd positioned everything so as to get the gable end of our neighbour's house into the frame, which I thought that would aid the illusion. This was the first time I've tried working with forced perspective so I'm fairly pleased with the results and am fairly confident I'll try experimenting with it more in the future.

And here's that 'little' truck once again, this time shaping up to his big brothers. Forget Thomas the Tank engine, there's a new kid on the block ... Morris the pick-up truck!

What's that? You love the POV on this shot and wonder how it was achieved? What can I say except I'm just very, very tall ... honest!

Hey Dad, how do does this thing start!