Screaming Hauler
Hot Wheels Dinky
My apartment
Halifax, Nova Scotia
November 26 2006
For decorative reasons, I had a few dinkies and this was my first still life photography experiment. It’s not the greatest of photographic results, but I no longer have this dinky to redo the shots. I had this Screaming Hauler Hot Wheels dinky for quite a few years prior to 2006 so it was of the good old die cast steel kind. Hot Wheels dinkies haven’t been the same for a few years now since they moved their factories out of Viet Nam. Too bad, cause we (I’m Vietnamese) made spectacular quality dinkies! The heavier weights meant they zipped down toy tracks faster and hurt more if you got hit by them, etc. 
I picked dinkies as an object for still life because I thought they had some pretty decent detailing on them that I could make to look like a real car at a fast glance. They were also cheap, had lots of variety and not often seen in large detail. I could print these on 11″ x 17″, you know! How many of those have you seen around? It’s a bit of a trademark idea, if you will, although I’m sure someone’s done it before. I just came up with it on my own.
I hope to have more dinky still lifes in the future. I’m scouting kids in the Halifax area who have good quality dinkies. This isn’t as easy as it sounds since a lot of the current dinkies people have are junk and this type of photography just exposes all their flaws. I wish I knew a dinky collector somewhere around Halifax. Now that would be a dream come true and would yield some photo collection!
