Scale Aviator International Magazine Issue 3 | Page 79

will match. Think for a moment. If your BG-photo
We will need these figures when we move on to had the sun shining down from the right, and you
the 2nd-phase of our project, which is photographing just put your model on the ground and took a photo
our scale-model aircraft.
of it with the sun coming from, say, the left, nothing
you could ever do from this point on would make
it look correct to a viewer’s eye. The end result
Phase-Two:
would stand out like the proverbial sore thumb and
nd
Welcome to the 2 - phase of our project. Here shout…FAKE!
is where we start to get tricky, and the fun begins.
At this point, it is probably becoming fairly clear
It really helps to shanghai a willing accomplice for
these following steps. To be honest, It helps even as to why we also take these photos at the same
if they aren’t that willing. At this point we need approximate time of day to the BG-photos. When
another day with very similar weather conditions we do, the sun is shining on our model the same,
to ‘Phase-One’ when we took our BG-photos. This and the shadows are also the same length.
is important so the photos we take on this day of
Here is where your accomplice comes in
our scale-model match the look of our BG-photos.
handy. Bring along some solid colored cardboard,
We also need to take these photos at the same
approximate time of day as the BG-photos, so the choosing a color that contrasts strongly to the
major color of your model. What we will attempt to
shadows and light-intensity match.
do here is separate the plane from the background
Scout out a location that has very similar looks in this photo. This will make it a lot easier later
to the one in your BG- photos. I used the empty to cut it out from the rest of these photos. In
control-line area of my local RC flying field. As Hollyweird, this is the point where the crew would
my original BG-photos were taken on the asphalt use green or blue-screen behind the model, which
in front of some hangars, I will try to take these can be made invisible later using a digital optical
photos in similar conditions. Our ultimate goal here process. Unless you have a bunch of this handy, or
is to photograph our scale-model in a situation as have the budget to buy the special Ultimatte-paint,
close to our BG-photos as possible, as this makes which last time I checked, was selling for around
blending all these elements together much easier $250.00/gallon, stick with solid colored board. In
my case, a biplane has lots of fine wire-rigging, so
later in ‘Phase-Three’.
I chose white board as it is neutral and would be
Going back to my scale-model, it is a Hangar- easy to trim away from the fine wires.
Nine Sopwith-Camel ARF 60, and it is 1/6th scale.
My very good and long-suffering friend,
So now, we will have to think everything in 1/6th
scale. Obviously, you will need to tailor this scale Anthony Ramirez, held up the boards behind my
to match the scale of your model. So once we have scale-model to help separate the plane from the
our location, we need to place our model in the unwanted background clutter. q
same position of the compass as in our BG-photos.
A quick look at our notes, and we see that the
first photos placed the plane facing 328-degrees
NNW. Find a good place to set your model down,
and align it to face the same compass-heading
numbers you have in your notes. This assures
us that the light-source is coming from the same
direction, and this means the shadows will be in
the same direction as well.
This step helps ‘sell’ our final ‘assisted-reality’
photo. Since the sun is in the same relative position
to our model as in our BG-photo, the two photos

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