Ardennes Encounter

The following photo story took me quite a bit of time to set up. I did the photo shoot in the Haliburton area during the winter of 2003. I remember it being very cold, and though it was not snowing while I was doing the shoot , there was lots of snow around. One of the biggest jobs for this shoot was getting all the figures and vehicles to the site. I think I must have made at least 10 trips back and forth from my sister inlaws house carrying all the stuff across the road, then into the forest. I really lucked out on finding the location as I feel it looks pretty good to scale. Another problem aside from the cold was the snow itself. I had a lot of small pieces that I had to keep track of otherwise loose it in the deep snow. The cold temperatures made posing the figures a tad harder than normal as they seemed a bit stiff..perhaps a bit of frostbite! Nevertheless I was happy with the result. Looking back I found that doing winter photoshoots was actually fun. Oh and the pak 35 gun was built from scratch. It was my first attempt to scratch build something and I was really pleased with the end result. The tires was my first experience with mold making.

Somewhere in the Ardennes forest a German sentry post is on guard.

Enemy patrol approaching!

A recon patrol is unaware they are about to get ambushed.

"Have you ever seen so much snow?"

"It's quiet , too quiet!" said one of the men.

"shaddup Malarkey! quiet is just the way I like it!"

The Germans loaded their shell.

"Make this shot count we have to hit the tank!"

"FIRE!!" BOOM!

the 35pak broke the silence.

The ground exploded on the U.S. soldiers.

"Reload! Reload!" quickly!

"look alive! we got one shot at this!"

The tank fires back!

It's a direct hit!

Any resemblance to persons in real life now or in the past are purely coincidental. The characters in this story are fictional, and only really 12" tall.