Photographer Felix Hernandez creates fantastic worlds by building small scale models

Mexican photographer Felix Hernandez is known for his amazing photos of toys and miniatures that he builds himself. He relies mainly on practical effects and mixes them with some Photoshop, and we’ve shared lots of his photos here on DIYP. Felix combines his knowledge in photography, design and image manipulation with craftsmanship to create some mind-blowing work. Today, he has decided to tell us more about it: how he does it, where he finds inspiration, and what his work means to him. And of course, he kindly shared plenty of his beautiful images and BTS shots.

It’s interesting that Felix is officially a graphic designer. But he combined this knowledge with his photographic and other skills to produce his work, both personal and commercial. He’s been running a creative firm Proyecto Matatema for 15 years, and his photography studio Hernandez Dreamphography has been around for six years now. Both companies allow him to express his creativity and bring his ideas to reality. But we’ll focus on photography.

For Felix, photography is a way to express all those creative ideas that come to his head. Other than delivering the finished product, he also always tries to show the process of creating those images. Considering that he builds his scenes from scratch and uses a lot of practical effects, taking a peek behind the scenes is as interesting as seeing the finished photo.

As a photographer, Felix has collaborated with different brands around the world. He created work for Audi, Volkswagen, BBC TopGear, Mattel, Cadbury, The Red Cross, Adobe, to name just a few. He has also licensed a lot of the images from his personal projects to different brands. Some of them are also sold in fine art galleries.

I found it particularly interesting to hear where Felix finds inspiration. Like many of us, he is inspired by music, movies, books, and the works of other artists, usually illustrators. However, what inspires Felix the most are his dreams. And when you see his photos, it’s kinda obvious. Most of them have a mood like they came straight from a dream. Personally, that’s one of the things I like about them most.

If you were wondering about the gear Felix uses to capture his miniature scenes, here it is:

• Cameras: Canon 5D Mark III and Mark IV
• Lenses: 24-105 mm f.4, 24 mm Tilt-Shift f/3.5, 50 mm f1.4, 70 – 200 mm f.4
• Light: Studio flashes Bowens and Einstein.
• Tripod: Manfrotto with ball head

“I think we are living in exciting times for photography. There are a lot of amazing developments in the photography field,” Felix tells us. He’ll personally love to see a camera that would have the same dynamic range as human eyes. And who knows, perhaps we’ll even live to see it. Since we live in an era where everything advances so fast, Felix believes that some of these advancements help us to do our job easier. But on the other hand, they can make us lazy. “Now more than ever, photographers have to be really well prepared and develop their unique style,” Felix warns. And if I may say, he has managed to develop his recognizable style that we know and love.

Take a look at more of Felix’s fantastic work below, and make sure to see even more on his website, Instagram, Behance, Facebook page and YouTube channel.