Tatsuya Tanaka is a master of turning everyday objects into miniature worlds that seem larger than life. He's been doing it daily for almost a decade, and in the midst of the COVID pandemic, he's started to integrate some all-too-familiar objects into his work.
A couple of months ago, photographer and YouTuber Chris Hau stumbled across the miniature world photography of Erin Sullivan and was absolutely blown away. So he decided to try out this style for himself and show you exactly what you need to do to start capturing these miniature worlds at home.
Hong Kong-based photographer Ric Tse is getting creative in quarantine. For his recent series My Home’s Rhapsody, he's taking regular household items and using them to create miniature worlds and landscapes for LEGO and other toys, before zooming out to reveal the truth behind the photo.
Artist duo Aleia Murawski and Sam Copeland have created an incredibly charming and impressive series of images and videos that feature snails living a very active, very human life in an intricate miniature world of their very own.
Sorry, Mom, but playing with your food rocks. Especially if you do it with the imagination and exacting detail that French photographers Akiko Ida and Pierre Javelle have poured into their series MINIMIAM.
We first featured photographer Matthew Albanese's Strange Worlds project back in 2010, not too long after the project's inception. His amazing images appear to show beautiful outdoor scenes, but were actually shot on a tabletop in his studio. He creates extremely detailed dioramas that take months to complete, and then uses various photographic techniques to make the scene look like the real world. It's like the opposite of using tilt-shift lenses to turn the world into a miniature model.
Last year we shared the work of artist Frank Kunert, a man who builds and photographs extremely …
Upon first glance, photographer Frank Kunert's photographs may look like they show pretty ordinary places. Look a little closer, however, and you'll start to notice that each one has something wrong about it, and that none of the scenes would actually exist in the real world. They're actually miniature scenes that are meticulously built by hand!
While stuck at home with his family, conservation and adventure photographer Benjamin Von Wong decided to create a series of "impossible" maternity photos for his adventurous sister, without leaving the comfort of their own home. How did he do it? Fruits and vegetables, of course...
The Drawing Room created this 8-minute mini-documentary about the work of photographer Lori Nix and Kathleen Gerber, a duo now known as Nix+Gerber. They're widely known for creating and capturing ultra-realistic miniature worlds.
How small can you go when it comes to wet plate collodion photography? Photographer Anton Orlov of The Photo Palace recently experimented with this question by shooting thumbnail-sized 8x11mm tintypes using an old Minox subminiature camera -- a model A III from the 1950s.
Lori Nix is a photographer that works with miniatures and models for surreal scenes and landscapes. Her work reminds us of the photographs by Matthew Albanese that we featured a while back. Her project "The City" depicts eerie abandoned buildings in an apocalyptic world:
Our jaws dropped when we came across Matthew Albanese’s work. He uses everyday materials to create astonishingly detailed small-scale miniatures …
After announcing its 50mm f/1.4 Tilt Lens for Canon RF, Fujifilm X, Leica L, Nikon Z, and Sony E mounts last year, TTArtisan has released its compact tilt lens for Micro Four Thirds cameras.
Miniatur Wunderland, the world's largest model railway, has published an hour-long, 360-degree video that takes viewers on a soothing ride through multiple miniaturized recreations of iconic global locations.
Unable to travel due to the lockdown restrictions, Hong Kong-based photographer Ric Tse recreated famous landmarks on his dining table instead, using different household items and a large dose of creativity.
Capturing creative photos of miniature worlds is definitely not a new idea, but you don't need to be a small-world master like Tatsuya Tanaka to give this kind of photography a shot. As this COOPH tutorial shows you, all you need is some creativity, a few mini figures, and a smartphone.
The latest installment of SmugMug Films brings up behind the scenes with fine art fashion photographer Bella Kotak, whose stunning imagery toes the line between fashion and fantasy, creating a look that's immediately recognizable and nearly always awe-inspiring.
If you want to capture photographs or videos of otherworldly environments without using any computer generated imagery, one way is to create miniature worlds in your garage using a fish tank and salt water (a technique that has been used in numerous Hollywood movies). The video above is a tutorial on this trick by filmmaker and visual effects guru Joey Shanks.
A traveler attached a tiny camera to a suitcase to find out what happened to his luggage after he checked it in at airport security.
Benedek Lampert, a Hungary-based photographer who specializes in photographing toys and miniatures (especially Lego), has shared a behind-the-scenes look at one of his largest projects yet: the 801-piece Harry Potter Hogwarts Express train set.
It's a strange twist of fate that the company that rivaled Kodak in film manufacturing but currently makes very little of its money from the camera business should now be the largest camera manufacturer in the world.
This personal project was born of a lifelong pursuit of charting new paths upon the broad field of the artistic landscape, combined with an unexplained passion for vintage ground glass focusing loupes.
This article is dedicated to a very helpful yet often-overlooked photographic accessory. After scouring the Web, I have only been able to find few brief entries dedicated to those devices, so I hope my writing will be found helpful by inquisitive minds interested in the history of photo equipment.
Photographer and content creator Manny recently tried out the Laowa 15mm f/4.5 Shift Lens which, while clearly very niche, he argues can be used very effectively for architecture photography in this 12-minute video.
In early spring 1839, Paris was abuzz with excitement in connection with a recently published letter, in which the invention of photography was confirmed by reliable sources. The world was now waiting for the French government to work out a deal with its inventor Louis J.M. Daguerre for details of the daguerreotype process to become public.
Having now finalized work on this series, I will attempt to put into words its impetus, as well as how it came to fruition. This will be a lengthy entry, proportional in size to the monumentally significant nature of this work for me, and therefore I shall start from the beginning, as all things have their origins.
This trip has been waiting in the wings ever since I made my first successful daguerreotype in the redwoods two years ago. I actually planned on going as early as August this year, but one project after another kept getting in the way, and for months I kept pushing it back by a couple of weeks.
Toward the end of November, I went back to one of my favorite places in the desert. A spot out in the middle of nowhere, with the nearest significant human population well over an hour drive away.
When I look back on 2020 in 5 or 10 years, I don't think I'll remember it as the year when a pandemic brought the photo industry to an economic standstill. I don't think I'll remember the CIPA numbers, or the R5 overheating debacle, or any of the virtual product launches. I'll remember 2020 as a year that helped us rediscovered the importance of photography.
Every Sunday, we bring together a collection of easy reading articles from analytical to how-to to photo-features in no particular order that did not make our regular daily coverage. Enjoy!
The winners of the second annual Close-Up Photographer of the Year contest were announced recently, showcasing some of the best "close-up, macro & micro photography" from around the globe and inspiring all of us to take a closer look at the tiny worlds that surround us.
Chimacabres come out at night. They are around during the day too of course, but the night is when they really thrive. In the dark, it’s harder to tell if you’re face to face with a fellow person or if it’s a chimacabre in front of you, and they don’t even have faces.
I always resisted writing artist statements and bios. In school, that part of every assignment or exhibition was the most agonizing. It felt overly simplistic to just describe what the viewer was about to encounter, or why objects or abstract shapes, making my specific image or groups of images, were presented in this way or another.
I’ve been experimenting non-stop with a few new daguerreotype techniques lately, and however promising the results are looking so far, those experiments are slow going. But here’s something I thought up and was able to execute in a relatively speedy manner -- something I believe warrants a look. I don’t believe this method of making a panoramic image has ever been utilized before, so I’m dubbing it the "Antorama."
A few days ago, for the first time ever in my experience with wet plate photography, I mixed up collodion from scratch. I thought I'd share about the experience.
Those who have known me long enough are aware of my passion for Rolleiflex cameras. Back before I got deeper and deeper into alternative photography I used to shoot my TLRs all the time.
A while back we shared the world's smallest tintypes, created with a tiny modified camera. Now here's a look at the opposite end of the spectrum: the world's largest tintypes, shot using a colossal room-sized cameras.
I know this topic is covered here and there and everywhere: in school and online, in workshops and lectures, on street corner posters and graffiti under freeway overpasses… However, one way or another this topic seems to either elude a lot of photographers entirely or perhaps they ignore it knowingly. Either way, after continually seeing tight headshots done with lenses possessing an obviously incorrect focal length, my personal OCD has reached a boiling point and I decided to finally do this little post complete with a demonstration.
Check out this pint-sized Sony a7R II mirrorless camera. No, Sony didn't decide to release a new miniature version of the highly-acclaimed camera. What you see is actually an extremely detailed USB drive.