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Ok, here's the behind-the-scenes (BTS) installment for the 'Fathers Day' photo.

First we'll look at just the setup, then later we'll look more closely at some of the newest lights I used for this one, 'cause my girlfriend and I have discovered a whole new source of lights suitable for toy/miniature photography some of you might be interested in. More on that later.

For now, here's a couple of shots of the setup pulled back and at different angles and with ordinary room light and some descriptions:

Since the perspective of the photo is supposed to be looking generally upwards, I'm not including the floor in the pic, just as with the 'Unquiet Dead' photo earlier. So again that means the elements of the photo are simply elevated to the right height by whatever is at hand--DVD and CD cases, books, drinks coasters, whatever I have that's black so it doesn't reflect unwanted light upwards. So you can see the Ninth Doctor figure and the pipe organ just sitting on stacks of such things to position them appropriately in front of the printed backdrop. The Buffy library playset is on a small table next to the set, so that the portion of it I wanted for the photo comes into frame from the left.

Here's another angle of the set:

As you can see, the backdrop of the wall of the church is printed across 4 sheets of letter-sized photo paper, glued together to make a background that's around 21 inches tall and 16 inches wide and taped up on the wall. The photo I used is just a license-free photo snapped by a tourist in some church that has windows similar to the church where they filmed the episode. I actually reversed the image, because I wanted the lighter area of the wall on the left and it was on the right. It's a good thing stained-glass windows tend to be symmetrical!

Here's another angle of the set showing the Reaper up close, but of course you're seeing lots of the Buffy library playset that doesn't appear in the photo. So, no, it's not a Buffy/Doctor Who crossover pic!:

The Reaper is hanging by wires from a tube which is clamped over the set firmly by using an adjustable stool to serve as a vice to lock it down. As usual doing these photos involves improvising with things found around the house! Then a smaller rod taken from a coat-hanger is attached to the tube running perpendicular to it, so a sort of "T" shape is created similar to a marionnette and for the same reason--so the wires can be arranged in a triangular way that keeps the Reaper stable rather than spinning around freely. One for each wing, and one for the tail. This also nicely served as a kind of miniature overhead lighting rig, on which some of the lights I used are attached. You can see all of this in the first pic if you scroll up a bit, but soon I'll show those in more detail when we look at the lighting.

Ok, now just two closeups of props used.

This pipe organ is something I bought at a dollhouse shop for only around $30 U.S. if you can believe it. It seems people make dollhouse churches--you can get pulpits, pews, you name it. Had to restrain myself and just go with the pipe organ.

I usually only spend money like that on something I think will tend to be useful over time. Classic Dr. Who had pipe organs in more than a few settings, they're a staple of "gothic", of course. I wish there was a Harrison Chase ('Seeds of Doom') figure. Or maybe that ill-fated servant of Sutekh in 'Pyramids of Mars'. In any case, I'll bet I end up using it again whenever I get around to 'Lazarus Experiment'.

Isn't it fabulous? Nicely detailed and realistic. I love this thing:

And for those who don't have or haven't seen the Buffy Library Playset, here's a close up of the element of it I used 'cause it's perfect for the kinds of fixtures you might find on a church altar. The potted plants and the candles are both Buffy accessories as well. I removed the back wall from the right part of the playset, and voila!:

Ok, now to the lighting of the Fathers Day photo.

First let me just get out of the way two lights used for this photo which I've been using for some time and have mentioned before. These are the little incandescent miniature "footlight" props. They're actually supposed to be used as working "practical" prop lights in architectural models or dollhouses, and I got them at a dollhouse shop. They run on batteries stored in a box with a switch. I actually used them in a photo long ago as practical props as well as to light the scene--the various versions of the Star Wars Cantina Band pic. In those photos, they both light the Cantina Band figures as well as being visible as their little "stage" lights.

What's unusual and wonderful about them as such things go is that they're actually incandescent, not LED. So they give "warm", yellow light rather than the "cold" blue of LED. In the photo, they're used to light both the pipe organ and the churchy steps/railing on the left. But unlike in the Cantina Band photo, they're out-of-sight and not part of the picture.

The one lighting the pipe organ is out of frame on the book it's resting on, thusly:

There's a piece of ordinary transparent household adhesive tape over that one, which you can see if you look close. Using anywhere from one to three strips of transparent tape over these is our way of controlling the brightness of them. Wouldn't be good if they were in-frame, but ok if they're not.

In the really wide shots in the first BTS pictures, if you look you can see the white switch box, and the two white wires leading to the one for the pipe organ, and the other is positioned facing the steps/railing part of the Buffy library playset.

Here's a shot looking down at the lights that were out-of-frame and lighting the scene, including those two:

Also there you can see two flashlights--one incandescent and one LED just laying there which are the ones my girl and I held where they needed to be while taking the photo. One of them has some gold-colored "gel" taped across it, and it's the one that lights up the Ninth Doctor's back all gold-colored to make him stand apart from the business of the stained glass window. That's standard stuff--using such flashlights with various gels taped over them is the main thing we do to light all these photos and that's not likely to ever change.

Also there you can see something new--the strange array of little black somethings which I'll explain in a minute.

So, now to the newest lights!

If you've followed my BTS stories over time, you'll have picked up that I tend to use physically small lights more often than larger ones such as ordinary lamps, etc. It's more often flashlights, and little "novelty" lights that are part of toys, keychains, and so on. The reason is simply that we're all lighting small things in these photos, so often the small things look more convincingly large in a photograph if they're lit by light-sources that are to their small scale. The lights are miniature to go with the miniature subjects of the photo. Not to say a normal-sized light isn't sometimes ok, but usually I'm using those to give a little bit of light to the scene as a whole, and small lights are still used to highlight certain elements of the photo and make them stand out or have some visual effect.

Turns out in addition to small lights being something you can get from flashlights, keychains and novelty items, we've discovered a rich source of small lights used for something different. That is, lights sold for something I don't ever do--to "pimp your ride"!

Never thought of this before recently, but if you look in catalogs or online or car detailing shops, there are a huge number of every different brightness and color and type of small light you can imagine which people use to adorn their vehicles and light them up like Christmas trees (yes, we have used Christmas tree lights before, too!)

What we've done is basically buy a range of these, then got help (for modest payment/trade) from a friend of ours who knows electronics a bit more to adapt them to use for taking these photos. Now, most of that modification isn't really totally necessary but just for our convenience--even in the form they're sold, you can perfectly use these lights in toy photos. The only thing you'll need is a power adapter, which you can buy from Radio Shack or wherever. Because these car-pimping lights are made to run off of car batteries, or in some cases car cigarette lighters, you need to just have an adapter to be able to plug them into an ordinary household power socket. It's not expensive or tricky, so don't be scared off from trying because of that.

Ok, so now that you know where these new lights come from, here's a closeup photo of one type of these:

It's no more than a couple of centimeters in length, and it's a small LED light. The modification in this case is the silver tube thing on the end of it. What that serves as is a focusing device for the light. It's a cylinder with a hole on the end for the light to shine through, and by sliding it up or down the light you can make a kind of "aperture" effect and focus the light to be narrower, or wider, just as you can with many flashlights by turning the tip of them. It works the same way, essentially, but by sliding the tube and thus moving the hole the light shines through closer to the actual glowing LED, or further away.

I realize that bit is getting slightly "technical", but if the business about the "focusing" tube isn't clear, feel free to ask me to explain better/further.

Now, again, you don't need to get all fancy and modify these car-detailing lights to have focusers and all that in order to use them well for toy photos--so even if that's going too far for you, I'd still recommend finding these and using them how they come.

So the following photo just shows where we took a couple of those and mounted them on a plastic strip that people afix somewhere on or in their cars, presumably, to hold them in place and be able to point them in different directions.

So, the question is, what are they lighting in the photo? Well, one of them is pointing to the Ninth Doctor figure from his front, so since his back is turned to the camera it's a "backlight". It's the one that's creating the sort of bright glowey outlines, mostly on his arms, which hopefully appears to be from the sunlight coming in through the stained glass window. (Scroll up and take a look at Nine in the final pic.)

Another two (sorry, I took one off for the earlier closeup, so you only see two "mounted" in the above pic) are pointing upwards at different angles at the hanging Reaper. They're doing the same to the "bottom" of the Reaper as they're doing with the Ninth Doctor--adding definition and "highlights" similar to what might come from being in front of a stained glass window during the day. We also used little bits of gel on these when taking the photo, so that you get even more of the effect of light through mult-colored stained glass. It makes the Reaper more visually interesting, separates him more from the intricate backdrop of the stained glass, and hopefully makes it more like he's actually in front of a real, glowing stained glass window rather than hanging in front of a printed backdrop.

Ok, I know that was a lot of stuff there, and I'm typing quickly so sorry if any typos. I'll come back later with one last look at some new "car-pimping" lights different from these, used at the top of the set to point downwards to light the Reaper and the backdrop. Then that'll be it for the BTS stuff for "Fathers Day".