Look closely at these miniature scenes and you may be surprised by what you discover. 15-year-old Zev Hoover has a wildly vivid imagination that he translates into unbelievably magical moments. The young Massachusetts-based artist began taking pictures when he was just 8-years-old and, over the years, he has developed his skills to an impressively high level.
Hoover creates a wonderfully imaginative world by photographing regular-sized backgrounds and scenes and then shrinking his subjects down to appear miniature. He tries to shoot everything in the same location but, if that’s not possible, he makes sure to match the lighting as evenly as he can, sometimes drawing in shadows. He then digitally blends elements from multiple photographs together into a single, whimsical moment that doesn’t quite match up to reality.
“What’s really cool about shooting my pictures is that it’s a totally different world: Kids sitting on acorns; rafts made of popsicle sticks; floating down a stream on a playing card,” describes Hoover. “I like putting my eye near the ground because you see a totally different world when you are thinking from the point of view of something smaller than you.”
