Photographing for Realism
Part Two

Text & Photos by the Webmaster

Whenever possible, I prefer to photograph my models outdoors. Brighter outdoor lighting provides much greater depth-of-field and pretty much eliminates color balance issues. (See Part One for more details.) However there are several factors that can make photographing outdoors somewhat difficult.


This '59 Impala was shot outdoors, and it looks pretty good. However it took me a while to find a suitable spot to take the photo. The foreground had to appear as close to in scale as possible, while the background had to be far enough away to appear in scale. I frequently wander around my place for quite a while until I find a location that suits me.

Here's one that really doesn't work. The pebbles in the foreground look more like boulders, and the background is too close and looks out of scale. These background/foreground issues can be a real pain to overcome.
But there is a way to keep the advantages of outdoor photography, but make the process much easier: construct a fairly simple diorama style base to set the stage. Here are a couple of very basic approaches. Of course, you can make a lot of changes, add details, and generally tailor things to your personal taste.

The first one will replicate the look of a back yard setting.

A lot of the techniques and materials I used are borrowed from the model railroading hobby as well as inspiration from a number of outstanding dioramas that can be found in back issues of Scale Auto Enthusiast and Model Cars magazines.

It'll also be worth your while to browse around your local hobby shops, craft stores, etc. Sometimes you'll find items that can be used quite effectively in the most unexpected places if you keep an open mind and let your imagination run rampant.

While you're at the hobby shop, be sure to check out what's available in the model railroading scenery section.

Let's get started!


As a starting point, I picked up a pack of 16" x 20" artists' canvas boards at the local craft store. My local hobby shop provided 1/32" x 1/4" strips of balsa and 7/32" diameter plastic tubing.

I cut the balsa strips into 3" long pieces, which would give me fence boards 6 scale feet long (in 1/24th scale). Most of my models are 1/25th, but for this project it was much easier to use 1/24th and the slight difference won't be noticeable.

Next I trimmed off small diagonal pieces from one end of each balsa piece to give the look of typical miter cut fence boards.

Then I cut a pair of longer balsa strips to the same length as two sides of the canvas board, one pair 16" and one 20" long. We'll only be installing the "fence" along two sides of the board.

The smaller strips were then glued to the longer strips using balsa cement. I made the process much easier by drawing out a pattern to follow, as shown. Most backyard privacy fences like we're attempting to duplicate have the upright boards attached to the longer stringers at about a foot ( 1/2" in scale) from the top and bottom.

I continued to glue the pieces together, making sure to leave a very small gal in between each of the upright pieces.

After a few hours of gluing, here's the finished result.

Notice that the canvas board doesn't lay completely flat. We'll need to fix that.

I found some hardwood strips at the local lumber superstore and cut them to fit the canvas board to keep the board flat and strengthen everything.

While I was browsing around the paint section, I came across some "stone" finish spray paint in a sand color. Perfect for what I had in mind! It pays to keep your modeling eyes open.

Once the board was painted, the effect was a good approximation of a sand/gravel surface.

Then it was time to mount the fence to the board. I used the plastic tubing to simulate steel posts. However, wooden posts could also be used.

First I marked the position of each post on the board, a scale eight feet (4") apart.

Then I drilled holes, using a drill bit size that would hold the plastic posts snugly, but still allow them to be removed for storage.

Here's a test fit of the posts.

Most of the steel fence posts I've seen have a rounded cap at the top. I found some plastic map pins that were a perfect fit and glued them in place on the top end of each post.

Meanwhile I mixed up a batch very thin wash using acrylic paint and applied this to the completed fence sections to give a weathered look.

After the posts were painted with flat steel, I installed them on the board and then glued the fence sections in place with white glue, holding them secure with masking tape until the glue cured.

Here's a test run of what we've go so far. Having the scale fence in the background saves a lot of headaches when it comes time to merge the scale world with the real thing outdoors.

There's still a lot more we can do to add extra realism. We'll tackle adding details to our photo board in Part Three coming soon...


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Read Photographing for Realism - Part One