Charlie the Giant.

I was looking through my inspiration folder for fun ideas for photoshoots, and found this portrait of Harold Ramis and little model figures cleaning him up for a portrait, and I wanted to do something similar.

I spent an embarrassing amount of time on websites for model figures, looking through all the figures coming up with other ideas. I eventually found joggers, passengers running late, a news crew, and a man with a sandwich board. I decided to stage a scene like they were running from some giant monster, and that monster was a little kid. I created a mockup in Photoshop.

I wanted to do the entire effect in camera, which meant using forced perspective. I set up a camera, used a mannequin head for reference, and started hot gluing little people to a stone tile.

I asked my good friend and fellow photographer, Will Milne, if his son Charlie would be down for posing for the picture. We met up in a park in Denton so I could get a perfect sky blue background. I set up the stone tile on a stool, lined up my camera, and we started trying out a few faces. Here's a behind the scenes photo that Will took.

And here's the final photo. The only Photoshop is I cloned one eye onto the other so he wouldn't be cross-eyed from staring so close, I removed the glue from under the figures' feet, and I changed the sandwich board to say "The End is Near".

We also got a little video of the set up as well.