Wee Men

Wee Nun Tries Dating (single shot)

I have neglected my blog for way too long and as a way back into it again, I thought I'd try to put together a post about how (and maybe why) I shoot "wee men." In Irish and Scots slang, "wee" simply means little or small. I got into the Wee Men through the fantastic work of Slinkachu; if you haven't checked out his work, you should really do so.

Gear
I shoot with my Nikon D800. I like the resolution on this beast and it seems to do pretty well with macro photography. That said, any DSLR that you can stick a macro lens on will do the job for you.
I use a Nikkor 60mm f2.8 lens, mainly because it is the only macro lens I own - macro means it will have a much closer minimum focusing distance that most lenses which lets you get in close to small subjects.
A tripod
A remote or cable release ( nothing fancy needed - my third party cable release cost £10 from amazon)
Some wee men - you can buy these from Amazon (search for model railway figures) or from sites like Priesar or Gaugemaster in the UK. I find HO gauge works best but there are other sizes/gauges available.
Agave syrup. This is invaluable for getting little figures to stand upright and washes right off afterwards. I tend to dip my wee men's feet in it when needed.

Setting Up
I do some table-top shots and some outside in various locations such as streets, parks, the garden etc.
The key to really good wee men shots is to have a narrative in the shot - a story; something that says something or means something. Not having a narrative will still produce decent shots but they will lack either the impact or interest of shots that tell a story.

How To Shoot Flag Protests (single shot)

My advice would be to have an idea for the narrative before you start to shoot.

Forensic Investigation (single shot)

Shooting
Set up your scene, focus on the central figure(s) and away you go. With macro lenses you get very shallow depth of field so take account of this, or shoot for focus stacking later in post processing.

Focus stacking is what I prefer. This means using one single focus point and taking a number of shots with the focus point set on different parts of the scene.

Choppers (6 shots, focus stacked)

Post Processing

For single shots, there's very little that I do other than cropping and boosting the colour saturation and perhaps adding a slight vignette, all done in Lightroom 5

For focus stacked shots, the process looks like this:

1. Import RAW files into LR5 and crop, adjust etc one shot as needed then sync across all shots
2. Export files as either tiff or jpeg
3. Open Photoshop (CS5, CS6 or CC)
4. Go to File > Scripts > Load Files Into Stack
5. Use the browse window that pops up to select all of your stacked tiff/jpegs and open them
6. Once all the files have loaded, select them all by control/clicking each one in turn
7. Go to Edit > Auto Align Layers and select "auto"
8. Wait for photoshop to align the layers then Edit > Auto Blend Layers and choose "stack images"

Vatican Makes Surprise U-Turn (12 shots, focus stacked)

Once this has finished, flatten your image
I would make any final adjustments at this stage then sharpen the image by adding a new layer, selecting the high pass filter and setting it to a value of around 10-11 and then using "overlay" as the blend mode.
Flatten the image again, and Bob is (as they say) your uncle.

2013 365-23

Jesus, but summer seems to arrived in Belfast. Scorching hot weather all week and a trip to Donegal with the lads at the weekend? Yes please.

3/06/13

Taken and processed on my iphone 4. This scooter has been sitting in the street all week. Kinda spooky. Why? What happened to it's owner? Why has no-one stolen it (given that this is East Belfast)?

4/06/13

Bright sunshine isn't always the best weather for photos. Luckily I got my hands on a couple of sets of wee men from a tiny (and very weird) model shop near where I was working today. This is titled "Bob didn't know if it was the drink or the heat, but he knew he had to get Anges home."

5/06/13

"Jim's neighbours were a wee bit precious about their bins." I have on occasion taken the wrong bin, with far from hilarious results.

6/06/13

Travelling down the Ards peninsula this evening, armed with only my little Sony Nex-3 camera which I was getting re-acquainted with prior to heading off to Donegal. Had to stop and take this shot as the sun went down at Kircubbin pier and a few kids jumped into the water off the pier. The wee Sony coped well with the shot, although I did nearly cry when I realised that I didn't have my big camera with me. Thanks also to Maxie, another togger who'd stopped to take the same shot and ended up talking with me for so long, I was well late for dinner. It was great yakking about photography to someone whose eyes didn't glaze over when you mentioned white balance and ISO.

7/06/13

Colin, enjoying himself in Donegal. This was taken after he'd done his usual mugging for the camera and actually just relaxed. The sun was setting and the light was just as golden as I've ever seen.

8/06/13

Martin's mussels. I'm not sure I'd have taken this shot if I hadn't had a few pints and a wee whiskey, but I climbed up on a chair and zoomed my 18-55mm lens all the way out. This was the rather fetching  result.

9/06/13

When this is the sight that greets you when you walk out of the door, it doesn't half put a spring in your step and a bit of lead in your pencil. Taken before Alec went swimming and lost a tooth, but that's another story entirely. Donegal and the beach were not to blame.