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Taking Photographs

So the Blog starts in a fairly logical way, if you want pictures you need figures to paint! I have looked at my figures from the last couple of years and they are good for gaming, but to take better photos I need to do some work on my painting skills. Close up photos such as the Orks in this diorama look great, look closer at the figures and you see what needs to be addressed such as overlapping lines and for the purpose of photos shiny surfaces.  

 I am using a camera, on a tripod with lighting for this picture. Most readers will have a phone rather than a camera and we will cover how to get the best results as we go on the Blog’s journey. The lens is an important part, what type you use will depend on what result you want, and while we will not go into a complete how to for using a camera we will use, we can go through some of the basics and see how they affect how a photo looks. 

So the lens works like our eye in some ways but the way a lens works will depend on the type, telephoto, wide angle or macro are the main we would normally use.

A Telephoto lens is often used to shoot distant objects as you would if you are taking shots of birds from a distance and because of the nature of lens the angle of vision from the camera is limited so you can concentrate on the subject and not the rest of the image. This works well for images but you have to stand so far back it would be impractical. Of course, a smaller lens works, and these in general are used for product photography, and typically you find them around the 24-105 or 24-70mm  size with a few variations. However if you really want to get into the types, pros and cons you would be better looking into the many books or reference sites that cover all of the subject.

This photo was taken in a 24-105mm and is pretty flexible for most photos you will need.

A Wide angle lens cover around 120° of vision from the front of the camera. In general, they are not so practical and you will get a lot of the photo around the subject but no focus on it, but there are cases where that will work, and we will use it later in the Blogs to show how that can work.

Macro lens are a good alternative as they reduce the angle from the lens and allow you to concentrate on the image itself. Some can be extremely close up, covering tiny subjects, but the downside is they are very accurate and will show up the smallest details, including the ones you don’t want to see!

There are many different lens that can be used, and we will run through some of them in more detail and how I use them to get the images.

So this first image is used with a 24-105mm lens, which is a very flexible size to use and will cover most of the practical lessons we will use in the first blogs. So first lesson, when we use a lens we take into consideration f numbers. This  measures the amount of light coming into the sensor, and will affect how the image looks. Usually, an f number runs from about f2.8 through to f22, and the higher the number the more in focus an image will likely be. This is great for Landscape photos, but if you want to show dramatic scenes, mostly you’ll be around f5.6 as was this shot. Speed of the photo isn’t really an issue as the subject isn’t going anywhere either! ISO tells you how sensitive the sensor is when the light hits it, and again a subject such as these are not relevant, what you need is to have an image with no grain and in focus and sharp. This will work best on a tripod, and a remote trigger will be a good addition to keep any vibrations blurring the image.

So the shot was taken at 1/20 of a second, at f5.6 which will give a nice blur behind the subject, and the lowest ISO which is often 100. Also, the tripod was set so the subject is at their eye level and at what I’ll later describe in the “thirds”, a way of setting a photo in a way that is comfortable to the eye.

Once a shot has been taken it’s always good to be super critical, a nice narrowish angle concentrates the eye from the subject to an impression of a crowd behind with a vehicle closing close behind.

What this does, and is the purpose of taking a photo this way, is that it tells a story, a narrative. How do I mean? Put yourself in your game, your soldiers are defending, you hear a loud noise of an engine screaming down the road along the ruined township that Orks have demolished with artillery fire, then a crash, and hordes of Orks come screaming at you!

The leader is a huge monster, carrying a gun and flamethrower that bring will bring fear to the soldiers defending:  What is their fate? Will they survive, end victorious, or into oblivion?    

When planning the shot a narrative is important, and helps set the scene, in a small practical piece of scenery like this one can give great results  . We will look at scenery later on, but I have found a piece of board 6x6 ins is perfect. It’s not so big that you get fed up with doing it, a few hours will give a good scene. Also with a bit of planning you can link 6 modules together and fill a table! Most RPG games tend to run around that size for a good game.

The last thing to consider are the figures themselves. Looking back there are lots of mistakes to work on, eyes are important to consider, and less is definitely more as with those red blotches that will need restoring!, and also shiny figures are not good for shooting, so we will address them in a later blog 

Next , we will set up a studio for shooting………