So my friend Brian had an idea for a fun photo he wanted me to create for him. He wanted to be Gulliver of Gulliver's Travels, tied down on a beach by the Lilliputians… all of whom would be played by his wife Lynnea.
I originally wanted to shoot this on a beach (as per the original idea) but the lake in Chelmsford, MA that we were relaxing at didn't afford a beach with a suitable layout for the shot. So we instead did it on a nearby grassy knoll.
First we “bound” Bri by encircling him over and over with a thin twine. Then I helped him lie on a slightly raised knoll and lay flat before him so that the camera would be angled up to make him appear bigger. I said “imagine there is a six inch high person standing on your chest lecturing you” so that he would look in that direction. That was the first shot.
The subsequent shots all featured Lynnea using the thickest rope I could find on short notice as a prop. Bri would stand out of shot (typically on a footstool) and hold the rope while Lynnea would pull on it this way and that.
After recording about a dozen different poses, we did the lecturing pose, and then I shot the “sitting on the toes pose” when Lynnea was just relaxing on the stool. I thought the pose would come in useful and as you can see it did.
Shots were all done by daylight, no flash. EOS 5D with the EF 24-70mm 2.8L lens, which is the widest I own.
Then, after some cleanup in lightroom, came the hours of photoshop work to carefully clip Lynnea out of her surroundings in various pictures and edit her into this one at reduced scale. I thought the grass, which to a Lilliputian should be knee high at least, would be a problem, but it turned out that just using a gradient transparency on the ends of her legs (or whatever was closest to the ground) worked fine unless you look really close.
Things I would do differently if I shot this again:
- I really need to get a chromakey backdrop for shoots like this. I shot Lynnea against a grassy green background, but that was not uniform enough to make clipping her out simple… it was fun, but it was a LOT of work.
- Lynnea had been swimming prior to the shoot, and threw on a pair of pants for her poses. But in each subsequent pose water slowly seeped through the material and created spots in various places. I was mostly able to edit those out, but it was additional work.
- Get thicker rope, or simply edit the rope out altogether and use the twine. The size difference between the reduced rope and the twine bugs me a little.
- A beach location with a nice uniform ocean background would have made for easier editing.
- I would have backed off a little more when shooting Bri. At 4×6, 6×9, or 8×12 the photo is fine, but at 8×10 the ends get clipped. That was just dumb on my part… to produce an unclipped 8×10 print some edits would be required.
All that said, I am really pleased with how the resulting image came out. And more importantly, my beloved friends Brian and Lynnea are happy with it, which is really what this was all about. Doing something nice for people I hold very dear in my heart.
Love you guys, glad you liked the photo!
Well I spent this afternoon making some more updates to my business website. I incorporated a few more images and rearranged the order of the images on the thumb bar at the bottom of the page.