Swordwhale Walking: illustration, webcomic, stories, photojourneys, videos
  • launch here
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    • black horses
    • Sea Ponies of Chincoteague
    • Just Animals
    • playing with water
    • Tradigital illustration
    • environmental education >
      • Christmas Magic Mural 2020
      • animal alphabet and counting murals
      • Assateague ponies
      • the salamander room
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        • Merrows Cap credits
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        • the Lone Ranger >
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          • but wait, there's Moore, and Silverheels
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      • stupid gravity credits
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      • stupid gravity: the search for sea glass: credits
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      • Misty Stormy credits
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      • hot hot hot credits
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    • Fall Roundup Oct 2019
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    • wild ponies in camp
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    • Christmas by the Sea
    • island ponies
    • Ace and Unci revolt
    • beached
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    • the Haunted Lagoon
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    • photo your toys >
      • how to photograph Breyers in the wild
      • Lokigator and Throg's Epic Adventure
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      • Legolas and Hwin, snow
      • derps (or how not to photograph Breyers and others)
      • Wonder Horse repaint
      • wild Breyers >
        • printable prints and downloads
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        • beach Breyers
        • Lotus Legolas and Arod
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        • Black Horses
      • educational display
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      • advenatureData
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        • Hounded in Baskerville
      • how to photograph your dragon
    • Rich Toy hobby horse rehab
    • ModPodge rules
    • paint pours
    • flour salt clay
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    • rock it: paint rocks and use or lose them
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      • more faerie gardens
      • faerie festival at Spoutwood Farm
    • sea this tutu (and make)
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    • knit me a mermaid, or chicken, or Hei Hei
    • sea treasures
    • sea glass
    • sea horses
    • rehabbing horse epic fail >
      • do you wanna build a snow pony?
      • do you wanna build a sand pony?
      • Barbie horse gets a makeover
    • mermaid saddles
    • Yule Laugh, Yule Cry... >
      • a Brandywine Christmas
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      • Uncle Bob's Toys 2016
      • more: Uncle Bob's Crafts
      • the Adventures of Mortimer
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        • the Rock Garden >
          • return to the Rock Garden
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        • sassafras paddle 20160814
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        • Sassafras river 2018
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        • where are the manatees?
        • ...and the dolphins???
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        • Downrigging 2019
      • privateer weekend
    • horseshoe crabs and red knots >
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        • Watching Whales...again
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      • Draw: a horse
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  • wait wait! let me get the camera!
  • who perpetrated all this???
    • swordbroad

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.
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!
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