Miniature Railroad

[motoyen]

I absolutely love miniature dioramas. I used to spend hours as a kid building these and could spend hours looking at the Tamiya catalogue. Whenever I come across a really good diorama I'm always at a loss on how to shoot it, specifically what angle to shoot at to capture the scale. Do you hold the camera high and shoot down on it or crouch down till your the same level?

For these shots I was behind a barrier that was about 6 feet away from the diorama and I had my 17-88mm lens.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2450/3767438441_1dba0b0afd_o.jpg
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2662/3768238788_7f9a73e14a_o.jpg
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3556/3768238822_98a7b51daa_o.jpg

[chopper5654]

interesting shooting opportunity. you could have some fun with a telephoto and dof, too.

the composition of 1 makes me want a super wide angle for some reason.
for 2, i would have moved to the right more to get that pointy foreground wall out of the way, and i would have dropped lower and tried to shoot up as much as possible to make the wall look more dominating.
3 would be better with a longer reach to get the foreground out of the way. dead space, imo. and, it looks like it could be a tad overexposed since there is some detail missing from the road and whites.

not bad, though, and i could personally shoot these minis for hours and hours trying to tell a story of past days. that would be a lot of fun. keep posting them.

[terumi]

these are awesome! and I agree with chopper5654 in that I'd probably try making a story with all of the shots. Cool opportunity. I was like wait, is that a tilt-shift?? I love the diagonals in the first and the DOF in the 3rd one. And that point thing in the 2nd does something to the picture, kind of messes with the perspective and makes the image look crooked IMO.

[GorgeShooter]

I love the 2nd one...looks like the real thing. Nicely done!

[motoyen]

Thanks everyone and I agree with everything posted. The one challenge I always find with these types of shots is that it's hard to get a clear shot. In these miniatures there is always so much stuff going on that I find it hard to isolate certain areas. That is what I tried to do in the 3rd one.