Cera Hensley Creates Fantasy Worlds On A 3 By 3 Feet Table

Cera Hensley, recreates fantasy worlds from everyday objects, and she does it all on a 3×3 feet table.

Cera photographs custom crafted landscapes, and completes them with miniature photos of models separately taken in front of a white backdrop. Playing with perspective and angles, the worlds are mischievous, annoying or surreal yet completely believable.

The process involves pre-visualizing the scene, building the landscape and posing the models to fit. Here are some more samples of her work along with some behind the scenes of their creations taken from two f her projects: Here Nor There and Mime Adventures.

Here is how Cera describes her workflow

“It is all hands-on, building from my imagination with various materials like paper mâché, tree branches, baby powder, clay, cotton, etc. After constructing the landscape, I photograph it as a still-life, paying attention to lighting, composition, story and mood. To evoke thoughts, give scale and life to my creations, I photograph real people with the same lighting then montage them into the landscape image.“#

A base of Papier-mâche. Then covered it with plaster casting. After it dried, sprinkled a green powder that resembles grass

For the lake, I found slate then chipped away the edges to make a lake bed. I used a tungsten light to create the overall warm tone.

For the snowy woods scene… During a slow shutter release to create atmosphere, I sprinkled baby powder while at the same time waving cotton around the back.

The pictures below are from a yet to be published project – Community Tree, they demonstrate how the models are posed against a seamless white. There are over 100 people photographed for this project.