Big – The Making Of

If you liked my Big photo, perhaps you’d like to see how it was done. Not as hard as you might think! You will need:

• A mannequin (mine was £6 from Ikea)
• A toy car (47p from Tesco)
• Some boxes for buildings (I used boxes of slides)
• Coloured-in black Post-It notes for windows
• Matchsticks for antennae/flagpoles on buildings
• A black painted cardboard cutout of a city skyline
• A sheet to hang up
• An Airfix model of a Spitfire
• Blue-Tack to hold it all together, and a can of beans to weigh it down

I lit the scene using natural sunlight from the window to illuminate the sheet. This makes it look more like sky. I also used the modelling light on my flash – but not the flash itself – to light the scene from the sun. I positioned the flash where the sun might be above my little city.

The final image that I published was exactly as it came from the camera – no editing whatsoever, not even a crop.