I wish people Did Stuff more often in modern fantasy photography. It feels like 99.99% of the time the models are just standing there looking pretty with their arms slightly raised and maybe holding a sword, which is all well and good individually, but so bland and monotonous when there isn't anything else. I wanna see elves and fairies that have jobs and hobbies and are doing things. Like spinning yarn or weighing seeds to sell to a customer or playing chess or darning socks or baking or gossiping while knitting. I wanna pose as a fairy janitor with a leaf apron, and a mop bucket made of a walnut shell. Also the fairy shopkeeper who's weighing the aforementioned seeds should have sleeve garters.
Writing letters, hanging laundry, gardening, wood carving, arguing with a pedlar (people love a tall fantasy backpack covered in objects!), playing instruments & singing, doing each other's hair, drawing each other's portraits. Get dressed up and take baskets to a u-pick orchard and get some nice apple picking shots. Do a vignette of a dwarven dentist's office with a patient getting a tooth extracted and a concerned friend holding their hand.
A professional with a large stock of costumes (or several friend pooling their own collections) could stage a dress shop or secondhand clothes market scene.
I should make a lot of large fake leaves so I can be a fairy tailor with rolls of supplies in the background. That's much more easily doable for me than a walnut shell mop bucket.
Looking at bugs with a magnifying glass and taking notes. Washing dishes with a prop bottle brush made to look like a single dandelion seed. Sharpening your fancy daggers or polishing your armour. Tiny little Pride parade along a forest path, with painted leaf shaped flags and banners. Lawn bowling with giant berries or hazelnuts, throwing horseshoes, children skipping rope or playing hoop & stick or any number of other historical games. Fishing. Reading a map. Carrying wood, chopping wood, building & lighting a fire.
Property sale scene where you take pictures in front of a cool looking building and the models are pointing and looking, and then shaking hands, and then exchanging a bag of coins for a key & property deed. Wouldn't even need to get inside the building for that! And it'd work just as well if the building was abandoned and falling apart, and the creatures dressed shabbily.
Shoe shining is quite an old job with a very simple setup that's portable and can be done pretty much anywhere, and newspaper seller is another good one. Think of what fun it'd be coming up with headlines for the prop newspapers! Maybe a wrinkly old wizard could buy one and then go read it on a park bench and feed the birds.
Doing each other's hair includes beards too. How cute would it be to have dwarf and/or wizard friends braiding each other's beards?
