Landships II

Just a few shots of 2 of the dioramas at the AWM. The dioramas are "Ypres, 1917" and "Somme Winter 1916 - 17".

The Somme diorama gives a very good impression of the bleak conditions. The Mk I model does have a few shortcomings (I'll let you guys pick those out). The Mk I wreck painted on the backdrop might look familiar. I've attached a copy of the shot it was based on.

The Ypres diorama: when I took the shot, I noticed straightaway that there was a luminous "ghost" building in the background. "What's this?" I thought. "Haunted dioramas??" I took another photo from a slightly different angle and got the same result. " Hmmmm.... persistent ghost!!" A few seconds thought and the answer came. The canvas backdrop curves around the entire scene and has a slight amount of reflectivity. Not enough to notice in normal light but use a flash and it pops right out.

The last shot is a panorama of the Ypres diorama. I started fooling around with some panorama software, not expecting to get any good results because I didn't use a tripod and couldn't guarantee identical height photos. Well, take enough photos and you're bound to get 2 at the same height. Luckily, these were also sequential phtotos of the same scene.