Christiana Aretta writes a journal about food, photography, & toys.

Actually the playset is much more extensive than just one giraffe – it comes with two Red Cross quonset huts, a round traditional village dwelling (complete with traditional village-dweller!), a little truck with cart, an singleprop plane, trees (with leaves of felt) and a zebra. The design is definitely 70s and some of the pieces have Creative Playthings embossed on them.

I initially planned to have both the zebra and the giraffe in the picture but I really like just the giraffe by himself, just enjoying another lovely sunset down on the reserve.

I expected this to be an easy shot and, for the most part, it was. Once I made some gels to fit inside the snoot (“Well, I might as well cut smaller gels for all the colors instead of just one magenta one…”) and figured out that the LumoPro is stymied by the ST-E2′s preflash signals (Solution: Connect the LumoPro to the camera with a cable and turn off the optical slave), that is.

I had a lot of fun building this set – I made the landscape from a green napkin laid over two sock rolls. The trees are a couple sprigs of curly parsley held up by photo clips. The pic below shows the final setup. Wayne says I need to tell you all that I didn’t turn off the overhead kitchen lights during shooting because apparently, that is the kewlz.

ISO 200, 1/180th @ f/8. Background light: 580EX II at 1/32th power, snooted and double-gelled (purple and Full CTO). Key light: LumoPro 120 at 1/16 power, fitted with a grid spot, tinfoil gobo, and Full CTO gel. Tiny foil baking pan reflector.

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