Into the Fray - Toy Photography Behind the Scenes

Into the Fray, toy photography.

Hello and welcome back to another behind the scene toy photography video.

This week I'm going to show you how to make a scene with only a background and a few chunks of concrete.

I call this shot: Into the Fray.

I'll also show you my editing process.

I've been wanting to shoot a big Clone Wars scene with all my 501st figures for a while now, and with the recent release of the Clone Wars Anakin figure, I could finally make my dreams come true.

I wanted all the focus to be on the characters, so I kept my setup extremely simple. My only real piece of set dressing was a chunk of concrete paving stone that I placed directly in the middle of the shot for Anakin to stand on.

The Jedi were fearless generals in the Clone Wars, often leading their troops on the front lines, so with this photo I wanted to show Anakin in the prime of his light side years, going into battle side by side with his Clones.

I don't have every 501st Clone, with Hawk and Echo being the most glaring omissions, but I have enough to get buy. I placed Captain Rex directly next to Anakin since Rex was basically his second in command, and had Fives bringing up the rear.

Appo and Jesse were next, and then I filled in the rest of the scene with some unnamed 501st clones and even some shinies.

This 501st Jet Trooper was one of my toughest figures to find, so I made sure his cool jetpack was visible when I posed him.

I even mixed up the scales by including some Clone figures from The Vintage Collection in the background. I used a very shallow dpeth of field for this shot to ensure the smaller clones in the background looked a bit blurry, adding to the forced perspective by making them appear farther away than they really were.

With my clones in place, it was time to finalize my lighting. I used a small blue spotlight with barn doors to simulate the lightsaber glow on Anakin and the surrounding clones. I also used two large soft box lights to create the ambient glow of the explosion in the background.

Here's my starting image!

Editing this shot wasn't too complicated, I basically just wanted to draw in the lightsaber and tweak the lighting a bit.

I began by using a layer mask to blend two exposures together, making sure the blue glow didn't show up behind Anakin's back. I also touched up the blank spot at the top of the screen.

After that, I used the healing brush tool and content aware fill to remove all the articulation joints on my figures. The older figures with pinned knees and elbows were a little more tricky to edit than the more modern figures, but it wasn't a big deal.

Next, i used the pen tool to outline the lightsaber blade, before turning my path into a selection and using the brush tool to fill it in with white. I used the inner and outer glow layer styles to make the blade blue.

Using a levels adjustment, I gave a bit more contrast to the shot, making the darks darker and the brights brighter.

I also used the dodge and burn tools to further fine tune the lighting on my subjects.

Lastly, I added a custom vignette to darken up the left side of the image just a bit.

So once again, here's my starting image. And here's where I ended up!

Thank you so much for watching.

Music:
String Theory by Punch Deck |   / punch-deck  
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