Beach Breyers
Beaches are fun places to photograph model horses (and action figures and other toys). The sand is sculptable, flingable, and is to scale with even very small animals and characters. And you can set up your figures in the water for special effects. It's a place we consider fun. if you can't stage your own epic Beach Party, do one in miniature. And there's something about wild horses running down a beach.
So if you can't make it to Chincoteague's pony Penning this year, take your Breyers on a day trip.
So if you can't make it to Chincoteague's pony Penning this year, take your Breyers on a day trip.
Legolas (Lord of the Rings action figure) on Breyer's Black Beauty and Black Foundation Stallion at Bogle's Wharf's beach on Eastern Neck Island, MD. The actual beach is about as big as your kitchen. It's all about the camera angle.
Breyers at Rock Hall
Rock Hall MD faces west across the Chesapeake Bay. The town is tiny, the beach tinier; a couple of mooncurves of sand with rock jetties interrupting the waves rolling across the entire reach of the Bay. You pull the nose of the van up to the hundred feet or so of boardwalk and park. You can launch a kayak, a beach umbrella, swim, search for beach glass and rocks, or sit and watch the sunset. The beach makes for great photography around sunset.
checking each shot to see if the horse is actually in focus is necessary. the automatic camera often focuses on the background and not the horse. I use a card (sheet of paper, matboard, grey card or random Eastern Neck Island map) held against the horse for the camera to focus on (then remove card, press shutter). A fill flash would help with backlighting like this, but because you are working close to the horse, you need to muffle that flash (paper towel etc). I used the dodge tool on Photoshop later, as well as other manipulations (duplicate layer, lighten top layer, let darker sky show through from bottom layer). Some of these would have benefited from flinging sand to make it look like they are moving. I set the camera on a folded towel, but a very short tripod or beanbag would work well. Except for the rearing "Hidalgo" (the overo pinto) who is 1:9 scale, these are 1:12 scale Classic Breyers.
Some parts of this environment are tricky; the mustang on the rocks is perched on a windy jetty with big cracks to fall into. He fell over a few times, fortunately not into cracks. Keep a hand close. Working at the edge of surf is hairy too (let me tell you about the time Toothless washed out on an ocean wave and fortunately back in on the next one). Bay surf is lower and shorter in its run up and down the beach. Most of the time, it will merely knock down a horse rather than grab it and suck it into the depths. Stay close and pay attention to the rhythm of the surf. And beware wet models with big globby water drops hanging off of them: that's not in scale!
Some parts of this environment are tricky; the mustang on the rocks is perched on a windy jetty with big cracks to fall into. He fell over a few times, fortunately not into cracks. Keep a hand close. Working at the edge of surf is hairy too (let me tell you about the time Toothless washed out on an ocean wave and fortunately back in on the next one). Bay surf is lower and shorter in its run up and down the beach. Most of the time, it will merely knock down a horse rather than grab it and suck it into the depths. Stay close and pay attention to the rhythm of the surf. And beware wet models with big globby water drops hanging off of them: that's not in scale!
