I’m happy to announce that my photograph You never came back is a winning entry in the Muse Photography Awards 2026 and was awarded Silver in the Fine Art Photography – Forced Perspective category.
Check out my post how I made this photograph on You Never Came Back. Here’s the link to the winner info.
Congratulations to all winning participants.
Due to the scale it’s hard to make photographs with miniatures in 28mm standing “in the open”. This approach is pretty easy and imitates a hill or mountain range far away from the miniature.
For a cloudless sky I’ve placed a red paperboard in the back. Between the miniature and the paperboard I’ve placed a green cloth carefully shaped as a mountain or hill range. It’s important that there’s no wrinkles revealing that it’s only a cloth. Have a look at real mountain or hill ranges. Try to make the shapes as smooth as possible. Play with the shadows on the cloth.
The 15mm lens helps with the illusion as does the aperture of f/5.6, blurring the background only slightly.
You can check out my Truffles & Dermaphytes post where I’ve applied the same technique.
I’m back on working on TD. It has a new name now. Truffles & Dermaphytes. You can find the current lore and rules on the TD Wiki for now. As of today everything is still WIP. But as the rules evolve it motivates me to make more photographs for inspiration.
Here’s a selection of photographs I made. And I’ve tried something new. Including a horizontal border in the photograph without Photoshop editing.
It’s rather simple: the green cloth I normally use as green screen. Shaped in a mountain or hill range fashion. And a white backdrop.
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.
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.
Before Bestiarum launched their Kickstarter for the modular Penitent Crusade miniature range, they reached out to me and asked me to create something. They even encouraged me to combine their range with other bits for kitbashing.
For transparency: I didn’t receive any money for my work but got the pre-launch stl files, which I’ve used in this piece, and the full range of stl files of the final Kickstarter for free.
I won’t describe my full process how I’ve created the piece here because you can watch it in the video below.
What I can already say is that it contains crafting a large piece of miniature landscape, 3D printing multiple bits for the miniatures, painting the miniatures, a failed resin pour and a hike.
Here’s photos of the painted miniatures.
And here’s the video.
I’m happy to announce that my series Solitude achieved GOLD in the New York Photography Awards 2025.
The series contains a selection of my miniature photographs and won GOLD in the Fine Art Photography – Forced Perspective category. Check out the winner info.
Congratulations to all winning participants.