Barnatoys

Pierre-Antoine’s a French toy photographer, living in Barcelona for more than ten years. He's working as a Project Manager at a company that makes collectibles.

What led you into toy photography?

I remember playing a lot with my toys as kid, and thankfully I still have them nowadays at my parent’s house. I kept collecting some Star Wars action figures, and then with my first pay checks I mainly bought bust or statues of DC characters.

Then years ago I listened to a podcast about comics, and one of the host, Joe Hume aka French Toy Love talked about his passion for toy photography. I was curious so I checked his Instagram account and immediately fell in love with this world.

I started to shoot my toys in 2017. I found an offer on a Golden Freezer Figuarts and bought it, it was the first time I bought a figure with so many faces you could swap. He has a funny one smiling, that was my first shot. I did it with my phone, no technic at all, but I liked it and it became my profile picture, I didn’t changed it since then.

What’s your motivation?

I like to extend the original stories where the toys come from. As a kid, our imaginations run wild all the time, and we asked ourselves billions of questions about everything we see on television.

Where that guy come from? What’s his story? Etc.

This is the type of question I try to answer with my photographies. I try to keep my childish spirit 🎈

What’s your gear?

I used to shoot with a Canon 450D, that I just upgraded for an Canon 850D, and man, what a game changer. It eases my shooting sessions a lot!

What does a typical photo shooting look like?

I used to shoot a lot inside my apartment. I don’t have a lot of free time and I can’t spend hours on a shooting session, so I try to be efficient.

As I don’t have a lot of stuff to do dioramas, I used to shoot portrait style pictures. I used to use a garland to create bokeh effects, that’s a simple trick to have cool effects and result easily. Finally, I edit my pictures with the Photoshop phone app.

Since july with my new camera and with the fact that I am at family house, I can shoot a lot more outside, so I try to change a bit my habits. I can play with nature and practice new light effects. I try to have "natural" lights so I use one source of light only. I’m kind of in a "warm" zone lately, with sunset/sunrise simulations.

Any advice for a beginner?

There are lot of websites, like toyphotographers.com, to get useful tips to begin and try to learn about lightning, practical effects, posing and editing.

Try to take part on some contest because they will stimulate your creativity. I shot what I found is my favorite picture participating in a contest where the word was : Reflection.

Learn to know your style, you will see a lot of awesome pictures, some that require hours of editing with Photoshop, some that just with the posing and the light will be very poetic.

Everybody has a different set of skills, try to do something you like. Oh, and be curious about other styles of photography or art in general, it is always helpful to learn new tips and tricks that you can apply later on toy photography. Take your toys outside, that’s something I should do more myself! Most important: Enjoy!

Who is your favorite toy photographer at the moment, or the one who inspires you the most?

They are so many talented photographers, and every one of them with different styles. Of course French Toy love, that is the guy that bring me here. And all the #ToyPhotoFrenchForce community that has great guys and are very kind and helpful.

One that I like a lot lately is Plasticaction. He makes pictures of toys playing basket ball, he recreate some iconic NBA moments with great talent so as a NBA fan it’s always wonderful to discover his new pictures.

Finally, If you had to keep only one toy, which one would you choose?

This is so hard to answer... If I only had to keep one, maybe a Xenomorph form Alien. It’s one of the most iconic creature from the movie industry. I think its design is perfect, and I like to shoot it doing other stuff than frightening humans.

Cheers 🤘