Toys are pre-tty, pre-tty cool, right. I'd say so. Robots, ninjas, villains, monsters… What I like to do is find humor in them and derive some off-beat narrative, playing off my love of old cartoons and the retro culture from my childhood in the eighties.
I'd like to think that I have something funny to say, but my sense of humor is not everybody's. That said, hopefully you will enjoy the colors and design elements I weave into my toy photography. I really enjoy finding unique paper stock from various paper stores to create the wild eye candy backdrops.
In the beginning I was taking close-up portraits of the vintage toys I had from my youth with a macro lens, but realized after shooting so many of them that what these menacing, stoic-faced figures needed was to be drinking a cup of coffee, or planting a garden, or something ironic or funny to give them more depth.
After a year of injecting my vintage toy photos with comic relief, I bought my first "blind box" collectible toy figure and was hooked. It was from Kozik's Mongers Menthols series that featured a smoking pile of poop. Nice. Then it was Domo's Acid Sweeties, and Pete Fowler's Monsterism. These figures went way beyond my childhood toys with so much color and attitude; they were already tiny works of art by giant artists from other genres such as painting, illustration, silk screening, and street art.
Most of the toys featured in my work are modern collectible figures from the urban vinyl toy culture stemming from Japan and China in the late nineties. Now they're made from all over the world and can go for thousands of dollars. With that in mind I find pleasure in collecting various rare figures and giving them their own new little world to exist in.
I'd like to think that I have something funny to say, but my sense of humor is not everybody's. That said, hopefully you will enjoy the colors and design elements I weave into my toy photography. I really enjoy finding unique paper stock from various paper stores to create the wild eye candy backdrops.
In the beginning I was taking close-up portraits of the vintage toys I had from my youth with a macro lens, but realized after shooting so many of them that what these menacing, stoic-faced figures needed was to be drinking a cup of coffee, or planting a garden, or something ironic or funny to give them more depth.
After a year of injecting my vintage toy photos with comic relief, I bought my first "blind box" collectible toy figure and was hooked. It was from Kozik's Mongers Menthols series that featured a smoking pile of poop. Nice. Then it was Domo's Acid Sweeties, and Pete Fowler's Monsterism. These figures went way beyond my childhood toys with so much color and attitude; they were already tiny works of art by giant artists from other genres such as painting, illustration, silk screening, and street art.
Most of the toys featured in my work are modern collectible figures from the urban vinyl toy culture stemming from Japan and China in the late nineties. Now they're made from all over the world and can go for thousands of dollars. With that in mind I find pleasure in collecting various rare figures and giving them their own new little world to exist in.
I got my start shooting and displaying my toy photography in Chicago from around 2007 to 2010. Then I moved to Nashville. I miss the awesome toy store Rotofugi that I used to score from time to time. Now that I live in Nashville I find myself hunting everything down online.
If you're a collector or one of the toy designers who created these figures, you'll probably notice and appreciate the direction i have chosen to display these figures as I have you in mind when composing my toy photos. And hopefully you'll see some of these toys in a new light.
I still continue to use my old vintage figures from my childhood and sometimes weave them together with new figures to create new throwback situations for each of the two worlds I'm bringing together. You'll see more of this as I continue to release new photos.
Lately I've been shooting HD videos of the toys after I am finished shooting them as photos. You can also see my photos in in 3D. Just grab some old red and blue 3D glasses and click on the 3D photos link on my portfolio page.
Drop me a line if you have any questions or would like to talk toys. I'm open to suggestions and if you have any toys you would like to loan me to shoot, I'd be down with that as well.
If you're a collector or one of the toy designers who created these figures, you'll probably notice and appreciate the direction i have chosen to display these figures as I have you in mind when composing my toy photos. And hopefully you'll see some of these toys in a new light.
I still continue to use my old vintage figures from my childhood and sometimes weave them together with new figures to create new throwback situations for each of the two worlds I'm bringing together. You'll see more of this as I continue to release new photos.
Lately I've been shooting HD videos of the toys after I am finished shooting them as photos. You can also see my photos in in 3D. Just grab some old red and blue 3D glasses and click on the 3D photos link on my portfolio page.
Drop me a line if you have any questions or would like to talk toys. I'm open to suggestions and if you have any toys you would like to loan me to shoot, I'd be down with that as well.