When it is nasty out....

I turn to Toy Photography which is a great way to explore and challenge yourself with a camera. 

It also works great if you need a distraction or something to do when the weather is really quite horrible. 

Or the news is horrible, or the winds are blowing dust like it is the dust bowl era.

Hubby grounded me anyway, so I'm stuck indoors for a couple of days.

I purchased these cake toppers at a Dollar Store over a year ago and like my other Lego minifigs, they get stored away and then for whatever reason, I bring them out. One of the things I really love about them, is that they aren't moveable. Which may not make sense except that their expressions are so fun!

The MiniBot in the center here has become my favorite character of the Minis. He looks like he is yelling. So indeed, he must be the Leader of the MiniBots. 

Below it seems he is dressing down the Droids in front of the other MiniBots. The Droids do look a bit sheepish.

He even has a name.
Steve.

I created the 'scenes' with junk. I've explained before that I enjoy taking trash and turning it into a diorama. I use pieces and parts so I can reassemble them at will into different scenes. 

Most of what went into the above scene was an old humidifier that went kaput. I took it apart and used my craft paints to make the parts look rusty and old. There is even a soup can in the picture.

Moss that is spread about is part of a cardboard box I painted black.

I've also taken some plastic soda tops and straws and glued them together, along with those pesky medicine tops that you have to push down and rotate. They make great little bits for background. Toilet paper rolls always have endless possibilities. Old rusty bolts provide a great scene for ... 

when the Minibots find a Worm Hole to travel through.

I started my interest in toys because I simply wasn't very good with regular items in Still Life. I tried to make beautiful arrangements of cups, sauces, flowers, and other items but I generally ended up inserting something odd.

I once put a Lego minifig into a cup of tea I was shooting. I was trying to do serious Still LIfe, but ended up doing silly stuff instead. 

Once I went there, I was hooked. Silly Still Life is much more amusing.

My favorite toys to photograph are those that aren't Licensed. You know, ..not... Disney, Marvel, and others. I feel obligated to make licensed toys do the things that they were made for. But isn't it more amusing to put them in other situations? 

For whatever the reason is, I've had some fun with these little cheap cake toppers. I mean, what kid would want these ugly little robots on their cake?

I have to admit, they used to look cleaner before I got after them with a paint brush to 'distress' their looks.

One of the easiest things to do is shoot them with a background I made in Deep Dream Generator using my laptop.

I simply typed in something like *wet dark alley, gloomy, with trash laying all around*. Viola. I had a digital set for my MiniBots.

I almost felt guilty for having such an easy set up for these guys. Usually it takes quite a bit of work to set up a diorama and then position things over and over and try to get things lit up just right.

I did a couple more grungy scenes with them then cleaned everything up and put it away. I have another project that caught my attention. I'm like that.

I can be on my way from one room to another and take a detour in the middle of what I am doing to ... do something else. I can have 3 things half finished by the time I get back to what I should have been doing in the first place.

Seriously though, I am much more single minded while doing the chores. 

We have ferocious winds here today. I cannot imagine how awful they will be on the ridge. I'm happy we live in a hollow.

And here we go...on towards the middle of the week.

What next???

A good day for attempts and failures...

First off, we are pretty cold right now. I mean the weather is always a great subject right? I can't recall any conversation lately that didn't start without the comment, "How 'bout this weather?"

Last Friday it was 42 F  and by Monday...the air temperature is -8 here and the wind chill is -25 F. Why not? It is weather after all. Tonight, we will get to -12 or so. Well, there we go. I've seen -20 F a few times, so I know what to expect. 

I am SO grateful that when we remodeled, we were able to reinsulate and upgrade the windows and heat.

There was a time in our little cottage when our doors were covered with frost on the inside and the windows all had plastic over them. Our hydrant outside that we had for watering our stock froze up. Running a hose from the bathroom wasn't an option. But I did carry lots of water that time.

The weather service has put out an 'Upcoming Extreme Cold Warning'. 

Today is Martin Luther King's Birthday and it is a Federal Holiday. I'm going to celebrate it and not the other thing. I may even watch the Puppy and Kittens! Being featured during that thing.

Or I may just shut everything down and work on something creative to keep my mind occupied since I can't go for a hike.

Yesterday I had the bright idea of building trees out of pipe cleaners for a spooky scene with my minifigures or something else. Being quiet in a small cottage requires me to do quiet things. I built some cool 'trees' and utterly failed at doing a good job of photographing a 'scene'.

Below is just after I 'failed' at getting what I wanted...

Failed again! It looks like she is getting attacked by octopi??

Some toy photographers draw out a scene and plan and plan...on how they are going to execute it. I don't. 

I wing it. Seriously.
I never quite know what I am doing until I arrive at something that makes me happy.

I fail a lot with the light with the scene, and with the ideas.

Then I tried this version and it looked awesome in the camera...

The processing afterwards was horrible. Dark, awful, full of all sorts of artifacts. 

So last night I thought I'd just delete it all and start again.

However...

This morning I decided to try something different. I dropped the file into ON1 and hit the button that I never use. The program then 'reads' the photo and adjusts it. Most of the time the AI adjustment sucks.

Then I scratched my head and added something called LUTS.

And I liked it.

The final:

Now this was what I was going for and by golly I'm going to keep it. Even the goofy Tree Monster turned out okay. Maybe it still looks like the minifig is getting attacked by an Octopus, but if one uses their imagination and it looks a little scary, I did my job.

In other news. 

I'm not going to get into the politics of things. But I will be following the news with the sound off so I can read it. During today's events I will be mostly offline and creating things indoors.

The mules are doing fine since they can get out of the breezes. Yesterday they took naps in an area close to the house. They looked like sleeping dragons.

They have heated water and plenty of hay and very fluffy insulating winter coats.

Little Richard is doing well also. He napped next to the shed yesterday the sun reflects its heat off the wooden siding and he was protected from the wind. 

It looks like another quiet day spent mostly indoors thinking of creative things to do.

Stay warm.

Stirred Crazy.

...Or, how to warm up on a really cold day after feeling it was tooooo cold to go out.

The wind chill was below...cold. The temps were 'fresh'. Mr. Kind Neighbor stopped by to ask if he could cut up some of the trees we had chopped down and dropped in the pasture. 
Yep, he certainly could. He was also looking to make some posts for corners of a fence he wanted to make.

I took him around to point out some trees he could take down. Locusts are very good for making corner posts once they are de-barked. We have a few younger trees that would make excellent posts without much work.

He then offered to cut up the old ash trees that fell on the east fence. Nice, I can repair the fence this spring.

He also will be cutting up the other pile for his own wood stove. There is no hurry and he can do it at any time. 

He said he'd clean things up and burn the brush pile he makes. Huh. Go figure.

He is a Forester guy. He is the person that the state and county will send out to help you manage a better forest on your land. 

Plus he knows what he is doing and as a bonus...he is a neighbor that is nice. We also offered him hunting on our land next deer season. We've watched him for two years and he is quite skilled at that too. He doesn't just wound them and have to track them for hours.

I spent most of the very cold morning, practicing and engaging in photography skills for my 365 Toy Photography Challenge. It was a good morning to try new things for me.

This is the tavern and the shop buildings from the Medieval Town Square--> the project Rich and I worked on. I've never tried a 'full' scene before. Placing the figures in the windows and in front of the building took a lot of effort and time to get them just right.

Fun though.

Then I took some interior shots. One of my favorite ones is the sleeping female warrior, Tilla.

I enjoyed trying to use the kitchen of the tavern...I mean, it looks like the cook is going to make Lobster for breakfast???

Do you know that I can do laundry and this at the same time? Well, sort of.
With laundry done, I decided to go to work outside.

It doesn't look like a huge pile, but it is two years worth of sticks and branches. After getting that started, I added logs, long branches, and walked about picking up chunks of wood. I added the other pieces a little at a time. 

I never like a huge roaring fire.

To give you an idea of how much walking I did to pick things up and drop them on the fire.... my watch thingy said it was 5 miles. Whaaaat? I do know that I was bone tired by bedtime.

I got a great workout picking up log chunks and dragging long logs though.

By morning, the center had burned through and I was able to tip the unburnt sections back onto the hot coals and finish it off.

It is pretty nice to have such a nice neighbor. We don't see him or her and the kids often, especially in the winter. But they are kind people.

And, if you are wondering, while working in the nice fresh temps --> think 15 F -- I took off my coveralls and was toasty warm. Burning and piling brush piles is one of my favorite winter activities.

I know. I am odd.