Stickybones Pose-A-Palooza Tips & BTS

June 2023 saw quite the output uptick with our participation in Stickybones Pose-A-Palooza. Check out the original post to see all the images (and surprise accolades!).

Stickybones asked “top Pose-A-Palooza participants” (which shockingly somehow includes us!) to share some tips and tricks, so, true to form, it’s a cue to overdeliver on a simple request!

It also must be mentioned that a tremendous source of inspiration for this endeavor was the incredible Stickybones product itself. They’re so well made and expressive, we really can’t endorse them more enthusiastically. BUY SOME HERE!

How to Photograph Your Silly Toys the Curmudgeon’s Way

1. Clear your social calendar & disregard professional responsibilities. What’s worth doing is worth over doing!
   Be honest with yourself: If you’re willingly reading anything on this site, this shouldn’t be much of a stretch for you.
2. Determine, in any order, a) The Idea, b) The Pose, c) The Composition.
   Each of these elements can inspire and inform the others, so there’s no preferred place to start. For the 20 images of Pose-A-Palooza, there was an even mix of kick-off points. For some, it was “how do I block a scene with the characters posed in such a way that captures my original idea?” For others, it may have started with absentmindedly futzing around with Stickybones in front of the TV: “This is a hilarious pose! What situation can I put him in?” Then there were some where I had a particular setting, framing, and camera angle in mind, and then devised a narrative to fit. Of course, with Pose-A-Palooza, the anchor was always the 20 assignments.
3. Determine the photography and editing techniques required.
   How complicated are you going to make this for yourself? Can you get this grand vision in one shot, or are you going to have to focus stack 38 images edited to within an inch of their lives and your sanity? A quick rundown on the basics:
   • Aperture. Depth of field is typically the starting point of the exposure triangle for us, and with small subjects like action figures, it gets finicky. Often I’ll begin with setting the aperture to get the desired level of focus on the background. If that also results in the right depth of field on the subjects, HUZZAH! If not, it’s off to focus stack hell…
   • Shutter Speed. All 20 entries utilized flash as the primary light source. It’s just what I like and what I’m currently excited about. Thus, shutter speed was leveraged to control ambient light, specifically the brightness of the background when shooting in front of an LCD monitor. (More on that below.) This is the advantage of flash photography that I love: With the right settings, the ambient light can be incorporated with control or be made totally irrelevant.
   • ISO. Sensor sensitivity was kept as low as possible to limit the introduction of noise and was only increased if flash power was getting pushed to max.
   • Flash Power. When all else is balanced to taste, the power of the flashes dials in the subject exposure and lighting effects. The disadvantage of flash is that it can sometimes be more difficult to wrangle, especially with small subjects, like throwing a bucket of paint over the scene without the right modifiers and gobos…

   The images for Pose-A-Palooza fell into three basic technique categories:

   1. “Pure” Photography, Minimal Editing
      Just composition and lighting, very little digital tweaking. For example, poses “Monster” and “Dramatic” were shot in front of a paper roll with a couple of flashes. “Unique Perspective” was some old fashioned forced perspective: A pain to set up correctly, but very simple to piece together.
      

      

      

      

      

      

      

      

      
      
   2. I Lack the Patience and/or Skills for Diorama Building but I Have a Sweet Monitor and a Midjourney Subscription
      Shooting in front of an LCD background is not new for me, but generating the image with AI certainly is. All the backgrounds here were made with Midjourney. I’ll leave the sticky complexities of AI-generated content to artists with actual talent and livelihoods on the line—and, of course, scum-sucking leeches [Sorry, the Master Redactor autocorrects when we write the word for “professionals in the legal field.”] Kidding aside, there’s a lot to be legitimately concerned about regarding this new frontier, but for me it’s been an enjoyable source of inspiration—and it’s a gleeful flipping of the bird to tyrannical stock image firms.

      BUT ANYWAY… The added trick here is trying to recreate the lighting of the background on the subjects. Read: Taking 347 shots of hand-holding a flash in different positions and cussing with vehemence and profusion. (Hot Tip! Shoot tethered to properly preview in real time!) Another new-to-me element in “Summertime” and “Finish Line” below are the alternately mind-blowing and utterly perplexing Generative Fill feature of Photoshop 2023 Beta.

      

      

      

      

      
      
   3. I Hate Myself, So Let’s Make an Overly Ambitious Composite
      When your reach truly exceeds your grasp and ambition runs unchecked, spend an unfathomable amount of time blending a slew of different elements together! “Surreal” began with The Idea and a couple dozen iterations of Midjourney prompts. The contrast in the scale of each character made it near impossible to shoot with the previous method, so it then came to shooting the two characters separately and painstakingly blending them into the scene. Trying to match the lighting in the photos to the lighting in the scene made this easier and more effective. “Epic Battle” was a classic case of a basic idea run amok. Please, please someone talk us into just investing in a dozen more Stickyboneseses rather than doing this again!
      

      

      

      

      

      
      

   And finally, of course, for the gearheads:

   • Camera: Canon EOS R6
   • Lenses: Canon RF24-105mm F4, RF70-200mm F4, and RF100mm F2.8 Macro
   • Flashes: Flashpoint Zoom Li-On X R2, eVOLV 200 Pro, XPLOR 600PRO; R2 Mark II Wireless Flash Trigger
   • Glow EZ soft boxes, modifiers, and reflectors
   • Editing in Adobe Lightroom Classic, Photoshop 2023, and Photoshop 2023 Beta; backgrounds by Midjourney Bot.
4. Chuck The Idea, The Composition, and The Pose in The Trash after you take the first photo and see that none of it works.
   Congrats, after all that prep and setup, your photo is utter crap! The only thing that makes this more disappointing is finding out that all is lost after the set has been struck and you put all your toys away. Maybe there’s an element out of focus or some uneditable piece of fuzz crap blemishing your subject that you could have easily blown off before you started or, worst of all, you were far too confident in what you could just “fix in post” with Photoshop magic. Again, shoot tethered whenever you can to register your crushing inadequacy as early in the process as possible! As frustrating as this can be, sometimes being forced to ditch the original vision leads to something even better, or at least to something that requires an editing process less likely to challenge your mental health.
5. Post your work and bask in the glory of 14 likes!
   If we were doing this for the attention, we’d have perished from neglect years ago. We’re confidently in the self-entertainment biz.