A Child Of Atom

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. 180º 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.

I haven't done an enormous amount of work on it that looks like much, but here is an updated photo of my Chinatown Project. The tile has gone in, a shelf, some of the stock. Out front you can see the pieces of the railing that will go up on the sidewalk after they are painted. I've spent an inordinate amount of time in the past few weeks trying to figure out how things like the roll doors and awnings in front of these places actually work so that I can go about replicating them.

Base walls are up, the floors are in and treated, and the sidewalk is laid! I had a big spurt of activity last week, then not much during the holiday. I decided in an inch and a half scale. Re-ment claims that their product is 2" scale, but some of them measure a bit small at that scale for me. 1" is not correct either, so I've split the difference.

I've been collecting these Re-Ment figures, right? I've used lots of them as caching swag, but I still have a big pile of scale vegetables and things that really serve no purpose. (Other than making me happy.) So I've decided to combine this with my love of making miniatures and models, and make a model to use some of the items. The "Farmer's Market" set is one that I actually like quite a bit, so I decided to focus on that one.

I went down to Chinatown and scouted some of the fantastic vegetable and fish markets that set up on the sidewalks along Mulberry and Mott Streets, snapped a ton of research and reference photos. I am attracted to the age and grime on everything, the layer of dirty and history that covers Chinatown, and gives it its edge. My goal in the next few weeks is to recreate one of the vegetable stalls, modelling a lot of it myself, but also mixing in the Re-Ment elements, a few dollhouse elements, and a few other things.

My new hobby I guess... look for process photos soon.

My love of models and miniatures is well established by now I believe. For months I've been shopping at Toy Tokyo and picking up random assortments of goodies from a Japanese company called Re-Ment who makes 1:6 scale miniatures that are blind packed (you don't know what's in the box before you buy it.) Their most recent assortment though tweaks all sorts of cuteness genes that really make me want to give them my money until I have a complete set. These are the cutest little kitten toys I've ever seen.


Look at the white and yellow cat in #8. He has clearly been caught licking his balls. And the kitty in #7 hasn't fared much better in the privacy department. If you aren't enamored of these, then you clearly aren't a cat owner, or at least a cat lover.