Action figures provide photo artist small-scale outlet for creativity

EAST LANSING — Michigan State University's students and staff were the prime subjects of the photos and videos Kevin Epling helped create for 30 years as a member of the school's University Communications department.

Epling, who retired in January, oversaw content creation for the public, first managing photos and videos and then as assistant director of the department. His goal was to tell good stories, he said.

Today, Epling is still a storyteller, but he's doing it on a much smaller scale.

His work at Smallscalepics combines his photography and lighting skills with unique dioramas and his favorite heroes and villains in action-figure form. Epling creates works of art that showcase Batman, Popeye, Joker and Spider-Man, as well as Star Wars characters and others.

Epling discovered toy photography in the 1990s. He started working with it again about 15 years ago. He's been showcasing and selling prints of his work at festivals for four years, and his work was on display at the East Lansing Public Art Gallery in February.

"I had shot product photos for collector magazines, back in the late '90s, early 2000s, but what it has evolved into, its own art form, really blew up during the pandemic," he said.

Now he's displaying his work locally and hosting workshops to teach others how they can become toy photographers, too.

"I'm taking everything that I've learned over 30 years of creativity and in media and film, and shrinking it all down to 1:12 scale, which is 6 to 7 inches," he said. "Smaller lights, smaller sets, smaller actors, and the benefit is my actors don't talk back to me. They fall down, but they don't talk back."

Focusing on the little details

You might never guess it when you're looking at "Gotham Steps," Epling's photograph of the Joker dancing down a set of steps littered with trash in Gotham City, but the set he created for the photo was the largest he's ever built to showcase an action figure.

At 2 1/2 feet long by 2 1/2 feet wide and 3 feet high, it captured the seedy feel of the comic book setting in detail. Epling made more than 150 pieces of "trash" to fill the frame.

"You have to think about when you're constructing a set, where light is coming from," Epling said. "What needs to be lit, what needs to be in shadow, are there other props that need to go into it? Then scale, you have to be thinking about scale. You don't want anything to look too small or too large."

Some of his photos take hours to create. Others take weeks. Epling shoots much of his art at his home in East Lansing. Some of his creations are photographed outside.

Shelly Corbett, 58, of Seattle, Washington, who has been shooting toy photography with LEGO characters for more than 11 years, and founded Toy Photographers, an online website and blog in 2017, said many people who love the art form start doing it independently without realizing how popular it is.

"Nine times out of 10 people say, 'Yeah, I had this toy, I took a photo of it, it was super cool. Then I posted it online and, oh my God, I discovered this huge community,'" she said. "It's just so funny because everyone thinks they're the only one and then they get online and they realize there's thousands of us out there already doing it."

Corbett has networked with toy photographers all over the world and said each has their own approach and style, but the goal is the same for everyone — immersive storytelling. Photographers can use flashlights for lighting and candles to create smoke all in pursuit of the perfect photo, she said.

"What's the story you're going to tell? Because if you're not telling a story, how are you connecting with your audience?" she said. "That's an infinite process. You could be doing that forever and that's where the fun is."

"It pushes the boundaries of trying to think of new things and, for me, I try to do everything as tangible as possible," Epling said.

Epling positions figures and props in a way that will keep them posed and still without the use of wires, he said.

"If I want something on a wall, I've got to figure out how to put it on a wall, but not use wires that I'm going to Photoshop out," Epling said. "I only use Photoshop for color and resizing. The posing of the figures gives them life, so I take a lot of time trying to figure out how I can do this without support."

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Spreading the word about a small-scale art form

Interest in toy photography among area residents bridged generations when Epling conducted a how-to workshop at the Grand Ledge Area District Library in March, Jean Fellows said.

Fellows, the library's programming coordinator, said about 30 people, including both children and adults, attended. Some brought their own toys and, with Epling's instruction and using some of his dioramas, created their own photos, she said.

"I think people like to explore these ideas in their imagination," Fellows said. "They either collect these characters or they've always imagined being part of these scenes and these characters and so it lets them kind of create that little world and put their own ideas on it."

Epling has hosted workshops throughout mid-Michigan aimed at introducing toy photography to others.

Eric Berling, East Lansing Library's STEAM educator, said he'd never seen toy photography before Epling's November workshop.

"I was a believer afterward," Berling said. "His work is phenomenal. He captured so much energy and emotion."

"It's fun. It can be relaxing," Epling said. "What I do in those classes is I actually bring dioramas, several, and we talk about the basics of photography, gauge where people are, explain how things are different on a smaller scale and then I hook my camera or my phone into whatever the projector is and I show them that point of view from the angles so they can actually see it."

Then Epling lets the people attending his workshops create their own work. Toy photography can even be captured with an iPhone's camera, he tells them.

"I think this is a really interesting way to get anyone, especially younger people, into photography," Epling said.

Contact Rachel Greco at rgreco@lsj.com. Follow her on Twitter @GrecoatLSJ .

This article originally appeared on Lansing State Journal: Retired MSU staffer creates art on the smallest of scales with toys