Above: A black towel on the roof of the rental car was the stage for the image that Craig McCauley captured at Churchill’s Head in the outback of Australia, re-enacting the 1987 Truckin’ Life magazine rig of the year poster shot of Neville Dobbs’ Blue Thunder.

In the first image, the Ken Kirk Mercedes-Benz we built looks like it is lost in the Land of the Giants, oversized concrete aggregate and plant foliage all detrimental to the impact of the image. In the second image, you can see the roof of a parked car in the driveway, along with a simple grey towel. First lay the towel across the roof, then place the model truck onto this surface. Finally, fine-tune the lens height of the camera to acquire the most realistic perspective. Remember to look for out of proportion items in the background that might detract from the sense of realism. 

Again in the first image, I have purposely positioned Torquing Bulldog on the ground, replicating a novice angle of approach to taking a photo of a model truck. All the no-nos are in this shot, from an oversized sedge grass to the bottom of the Kiwi picket fence – not to mention the crack in the exposed aggregate concrete path complete with moss, not a good look. To correct this, I ventured out into the local countryside and tracked down a natural habitat for the truck. Once again, it’s using the roof of the family car and a grey towel to gain perspective, and hey presto, suddenly we have gone from novice model truck photographer straight to expert. We now have an image that resembles the real truck at work on a gravel road, complete with power poles running out to the vanishing point in the distance. 

 A tribute photo to dear friends passed – Pukekohe brothers Bruce Haines, model builder, and Brian Haines, artist. Your works truly endure.

As they say, there is more than one way to skin a cat. Here we are applying the exact same perspective rules as before. However, this time we are using an artificial backdrop. The painting is a lifelike representation of typical farming countryside from the 1960s, making the perfect backdrop to photograph the Ford V8 logger against. Using household items, I have raised the model into the lower third of the painting, then added the trusty towel to simulate the surface of raw earth. Another trick you can use when trying to replicate an older image is to use the editing features within your computer’s photo management software. Most computers these days have simple controls to adjust the likes of colour saturation. By lowering some of these levels within the software, you will achieve a more realistic finish, as seen here when you look at the second and third images.