What if you go to the place of departure every day waiting for them to come home?
Scene created with a hand painted 3D printed miniature in 28mm scale on a hand crafted pier using cardboard as water and sky.
The miniature scale intensifies the unease: a small world frozen at the exact moment before realization sets in. Paint and texture mimic decay, suggesting salt, rot, and long exposure to grief. Nothing moves, yet everything implies what once did. The scene captures the cruelty of hope when it outlives reason—a quiet, sinister stillness where the act of waiting becomes the final connection to those who will never walk back along the pier.
Forced Perspective
The issue with taking photographs of miniatures in miniature terrain is that the terrain won’t stretch to the horizon. It will always stop when the terrain ends which is usually below the eye level horizon when you take the photograph horizontally. A way to hide this is to hide the true horizon behind scenery of any sort. Which can ruin the illusion. In the 28mm scale a terrain piece of 120cm depth would translate to roughly 60m. When you are taking photographs of people outside (as in Long Shots, Wide Shots or Establishing Shots), try to find a spot where your view is blocked everywhere within 60m.
As I wanted to create a scene by the sea I needed a horizon on roughly the miniature’s eye level to create the illusion. It was beneficial that I didn’t plan to have much water texture/ movement in the photograph because I wanted to maximize the negative space around the object.
In the end I’ve worked with two paper sheets. A black one which lay flat on the table and which I slightly bent at the far side so that it simulated the horizon. And a grey paper sheet to simulate a cloudless sky.
With the help of three lights everything was set up for the photograph.
Miniature Design by Rescale Miniatures – painted by me.
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