© 2015 Vikram K. Mulligan. "Star Trek" is a trademark of Paramount Pictures. This image is created solely for personal amusement, and is not intended for use for any commercial purpose.



When I was a kid, I used to build plastic model kits, mostly of spacecraft real and imaginary. I got out of the hobby when I was a teenager and discovered computer graphics. Recently, I was in a hobby store, and on a whim, I decided to try my hand at it again. As it turns out, hobbies requiring manual dexterity, skill, and patience are far more enjoyable as an adult.So having built this model of the U.S.S. Reliant from, I decided to take it one step further and light it and photograph it as though it were a studio model. Now, this model is only about 20 cm long (perhaps a tenth the size of the models used in VFX shots for science fiction movies), but I figured that I might be able to mask some of the scale issues and imperfections of the model in Photoshop.I set up the model on its stand, and my camera on a tripod, and I took several long time exposures (about 30 seconds apiece) in a darkened room, all at f/16.0 and ISO 100. (The tiny aperture was needed to mask the small scale of the model, since anything larger would result in depth of field too shallow to sell the illusion of large scale). I used a 50 mm Sigma prime lens, since I didn't want to have to worry about a zoom lens changing its focal length from exposure to exposure. In each exposure, I lit the model with a hand-held flashlight, sometimes holding it still and lighting it from one side or another, sometimes moving around the model and "painting" it with light to get very even illumination. I didn't have a bluescreen, but I had a white piece of plastic, so I also shot a pass with the model dark and a white background behind it to use for a matte. I then combined the layers additively in Photoshop, did a little retouching to hide some imperfections in the model, and dropped in a starfield and a computer-generated planet. All of this is analogous to the way in which studio models are filmed: many motion-control passes are used to capture beauty lighting, ambient lighting, internal lights, and the matte (usually in front of a blue or green screen), and the passes are combined in an optical printer or, later, digitally. Obviously, I lack a motion-control setup, so I had to content myself with a still, but I think it still turned out okay!If you're curious about the process, check out my " Reliant Process " image.Image copyright