See The USA In Your Chevrolet

It's 11.20 p.m. on Sunday night. I got it in just under the wire!

Ooh, pretty car! This was quite a difficult challenge, wasn't it?

Yes, it was! I tried a couple different ideas and none of them were really working. Then I thought of this on Sunday afternoon and had my neighbor assist me. The car was in my yard and Raven was in the field across the street, just to get the sizes right! She was a trooper, though, and kept moving back a foot, forward just an inch or closer to me about 3 inches. Whatever I asked her to do, she did it.

Wow, that is impressive! I didn't know she was actually so far away from the car!

Well done indeed. Cool car too!

she was across the street? lol great job Kenny.. funny how it's all...move just a bit left, now up, more your hand forward, wait too much! this is fabulous!

Excellent!

Totally beyond my capabilities!!

It wasn't that hard - I started with a 1:18 scale car and had Raven stand behind it. She ended up moving about 40 feet farther back, but I just had her to keep moving back and forth until she looked right with the size of the car. Trial and error. I had the camera on a tripod and the aperture set to f/36 for maximum depth of field.

Kenny, how do you get an aperture of 36? My camera only goes to f22 tops!

It's probably because it's a Minolta A-mount on my Sony Alpha SLT-a77V. Minolta was well-known for it's great lenses and apertures. Let me tell you, I'm pretty pleased with the f/36 aperture that's on my Konica Minolta Maxxum 5D DSLR and both my Sony DSLR's. The lenses are all interchangeable and I can even use old Minolta film camera lenses on all the bodies.

That sounds really great Kenny. My last 35mm camera was a Minolta Maxxum 3xi. That's what I'm excited about with my Micro four thirds system with my latest camera. I really like the idea of being able to switch lenses like that. Thanks for the info. Sorry for such a late reply.

Very well done with this. I know the problem of getting things in the right place. Problem for me was I couldn't both look in the viewfinder and move the object at the same time.

great, the illusion works really well . .

Ha! =D Super cool, and well done! =)

Cool idea and photo Kenny! :-)

Outstanding composition.

nicely done

Great work, but how did you not get her feet showing ... was she on a table or something?

I was so pressed for time that I didn't have time to even take the car off the plastic display stand it was connected to. I had a dinner party to attend. There was some black plastic under the car that bolted right up to the bottom of the frame of the car and this covered her feet so that they didn't show. I didn't like the way the display stand showed, so I cloned some background over it.

Certainly works a treat Kenny ... nice car too! ;)

Thanks for asking Paul. :)

Congrats on Explore! :)

This is so cute Kenny. Great job by both of you. What a sweet neighbor you have and what a cute little car that is. It really looks quite real. Good job on getting it in on time. This was a tough one this time!

I'll say it was! I had done this kind of thing before, but not thought of it since. It's pretty hard to visualize a good idea for forced perspective. And then getting everything to work like it's supposed to, sheesh!

lol I think everyone is glad it's over now, but remembering it still induces cold sweats. :D Oh I think it was good for us. Now we are that much smarter.

But, will we ever actually use forced perspective again?

Ha ha... we will see who is so brave. ;)

Nice job with a frustrating challenge, you have a very patient neighbor Kenny. Used to watch a lot of the Dinah Shore show ... it had a very catchy theme song!