As I Lay Dying Behind the Scenes

I’ve shared the following images here a couple times now, whether posting them individually, or the story behind how they’re recreations of my first ever toy photos from 9 years ago. However, I’d like to take the moment to go into how I created each one.

I am so happy with how this one turned out. And it was actually a very simple set up. I took a pack of plastic wedding doves (about 1 inch wide each), painted them with varying shades of brown to create a more vulture-esque look, glued them to a blue gradient sheet of scapbook paper, then lit the paper from behind to create the sun effect.

This one I sadly don’t have any in-progress shots of, however it’s fairly straight forward – a horse drawn wagon from the flea market surrounded by green poly-fill esque scenery and fake mini trees. I then photographed the scene from a low angle and added the dirt like fog in post processing.

I designed this barn in tinkercad then printed it with my m3d. Once printed I painted the outside with brown acrylic paint and lined the inside with orange and yellow cellophane. I then placed a lit incense cone inside to create the swirling smoke effect and lit the barn from behind with a small studio light. The sky in the final image is cut together from multiple shots to get more fog. I then added the ash bits in post processing.

The background of this post is the barn you see above before it was painted. The tree is a dollar store Christmas village accessory with the white snow painted yellow. I then held the tree to the war gaming grass mat with clay and positioned the figures. The boy originally was holding a bag above his head. I cut this off and his hand went with it, so I drew his hand back in in photoshop.

And finally, my favorite of the bunch. I purchased a fishing pole and attached fish from hobby lobby, detached the fish and dirtied it up with brown acrylic paint. I then created a coffin in tinker cad and printed it, glued the coffin down to a piece of glass from a picture frame using e600 glue, then placed died preserved moss in and around the coffin. The base of this picture is a piece of scrap book paper and the water is clear glue. Fun fact, the glue never did dry and was a huge mess through this whole process, it achieve the solid edge, reflection and bubble effect I wanted however.