January 12 of 12: Life in Miniature

My first 12 of 12 of the new year! My hope for these this year is to be a bit more artistic with them, and try to do a little better photography. We'll see how that goes.

12 of 12 was created by Chad Darnell, the rules are simple, 12 photos to document the 12th day of each month. You can see the rest of the participants for this month here.

As usual for me I chose a theme for myself, this month it was: Life in Miniature. I ended up following the theme in ways that I didn't even realize until I started compiling the photos. The idea was to alternate between macros and tilt-shift photography during the day because I knew that part of my day would be devoted to the model I've been working on.



The first tilt-shift shot, the subway station where I get off for work every morning. It's amazing what a little processing will do to a photo, huh?

I brought several components of my model to work with me to use the spray booth there. This chair was pink when I purchased it, but that doesn't really fit with my model of a Chinatown Grocery, so I wanted it to be a bit more metallic looking.

The view from the fire escape, which I've photographed a few other times for this project I think. My office has an open floor plan, so I tend to come out here to talk on the phone so as not to disturb everyone else in the place.

Lunch. The first of my coincidental nods to my theme. This is a yuzu flavored soft drink that I picked up from a Japanese grocery yesterday. Yuzu is a miniaturized ornamental Japanese lemon.

The view from the conference room, where I often eat lunch. 180ยบ from the fire escape view.

Another unintended intersection with my theme. These little guys are all over the 14th street subway platform, small denizens of the subway system working and living all through the station. This little guy is being busted by a transit cop for trying to evade fares.

On the way home I stopped by Columbus Circle to visit Borders. I needed a copy of "If You Give a Pig A Party" which I am designing a theatrical version of soon. When I design things based on popular children's books I try to emulate the style of the illustrator as much as possible since kids are usually super familiar with the illustrations.

It's also just about time for a new sketchbook so I grabbed one while I was in the store.

The A seemed to be having some difficulties so I took the 1 home, which afforded me the opportunity to grab this last tilt-shift shot.

More miniatures! Mini-cabbages! I'm doing really well on my New Year's Resolution to pack my lunch. I've done it 5 out of 6 working days since I got back from SC. I only missed the first day, and then only because I had been traveling the day before and didn't have time to prepare properly.

And the shot that inspired the whole day today, the miniature I've been working on. Over the weekend I added the brick, the cooling unit over the door, and built the roll down door that I painted at work today, along with the chair that you see in place there, and installed when I got home.

And that's my day! See you next month.

3 Response to "January 12 of 12: Life in Miniature"

  • Dogeared Says:

    I love tilt shift photography - I found out about it through a photographer whose Blog I follow. I'm guessing from your comment on the first one, that you post-processed the effect? Or have you hired/bought a tilt-shift lens? Just wondering, as those puppies aren't cheap! (I know, I've looked ;-) ).

    Really liked your tilt-shift photos, I like seeing NYC that way!


  • Lipp Says:

    What exactly is tilt shift? It looks cool, great pics all around.


  • Cully Says:

    @Dogeared - Yes, faked tilt-shift post-processed. Photoshop is a wonderful tool!

    @Lipp - Tilt shift is a way of processing photos that mimics a certain lens configuration, which is supposed to mimic the way a model photographs. In other words make life sized things look miniaturized.