Dinosaurs
by David Carey
While being in lock down for many months during the pandemic I had to learn how to keep motivated day-to-day, stay safe and also how to handle my worries about becoming sick with covid. I wanted to do a photographic project about living with a threat but wanted to make it a more visible threat. So I thought about what life would be like if dinosaurs still roamed the earth. How we would interact with dinosaurs on a day-to-day basis in an urban environment?
A simple premise but very difficult to implement. I started with miniature educational dinosaur models which I planned to photograph, enlarge digitally and integrate into other photographs of urban backgrounds. I realized right away that I would need to be able to reposition the dinosaurs on the computer at any angle so I integrate them properly into the scene they were being embedded in. This meant working with 3 dimensional digital models.
Thus began a long, slow, challenging process learning to create and work with 3D digital images. I discovered a computer program called Metashape which would allow me to take many 2 dimensional photos of an object from different sides and heights and the program would process all the 2 dimensional photos into one 3D object. This turned out to be a very arduous process with many reshoots needed before the 3D image was usable. The 3D object gave me the flexibility to reposition the dinosaur at any angle that was compatible with the background photograph.
I used Photoshop to position the dinosaurs into the urban background photographs that I felt produced a natural overall feel to the image. An additional advantage of working with 3D models was that when I blended the dinosaur object into the background I could light it anyway I wanted and add color to the light to match the color of the existing light. I could also render the dinosaur with natural looking shadows.
As I learned through the project some dinosaurs were friendly and harmless and could be fed by hand and other formed various levels of risk and had to be avoided.
To go through the photos at your own pace, click on an image, then click on Pause in the upper left of the image and then use the arrows on the image to move at your own rate.
A simple premise but very difficult to implement. I started with miniature educational dinosaur models which I planned to photograph, enlarge digitally and integrate into other photographs of urban backgrounds. I realized right away that I would need to be able to reposition the dinosaurs on the computer at any angle so I integrate them properly into the scene they were being embedded in. This meant working with 3 dimensional digital models.
Thus began a long, slow, challenging process learning to create and work with 3D digital images. I discovered a computer program called Metashape which would allow me to take many 2 dimensional photos of an object from different sides and heights and the program would process all the 2 dimensional photos into one 3D object. This turned out to be a very arduous process with many reshoots needed before the 3D image was usable. The 3D object gave me the flexibility to reposition the dinosaur at any angle that was compatible with the background photograph.
I used Photoshop to position the dinosaurs into the urban background photographs that I felt produced a natural overall feel to the image. An additional advantage of working with 3D models was that when I blended the dinosaur object into the background I could light it anyway I wanted and add color to the light to match the color of the existing light. I could also render the dinosaur with natural looking shadows.
As I learned through the project some dinosaurs were friendly and harmless and could be fed by hand and other formed various levels of risk and had to be avoided.
To go through the photos at your own pace, click on an image, then click on Pause in the upper left of the image and then use the arrows on the image to move at your own rate.