Commemorating the 80th anniversary tomorrow of the largest tank battle in history.
And an excuse to dredge up some 7 year old photos. My scenes depicted the simultaneous clashes on the northern (Orel) salient, but still an impression of Prokhorovka…
More!!
Great shots!!!
Beautiful work Tim , hasn’t lost anything over time !!!
Nice flashback !!!
Amazing images Tim, the last but one photo is very atmospheric, outstanding work, 
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G, 
I did a doubletake. Is it real, or is it Memorex? Stunning work and photorealistic images that are art in and of themselves.
Oh my - thanks so much guys for you comments. You’re full of surprises, I truly wasn’t expecting that reaction but thought it important to mark this anniversary seeing as, y’know, we’re into tanks & WW2 etc.
Prokhorovka was the most titanic – if initially inconclusive – battle. While the Soviets lost 5, 10, 15 times as many AFVs as the Germans depending on which sources you believe, sheer weight of numbers gradually drove the Germans back and they never stopped retreating until the last stand in Berlin.
Whatever we think of Communists & Fascists, the inescapable truth is that if the former hadn’t destroyed the latter at colossal cost to both sides, WW2 would have ended very differently. They were all ordinary young men caught up in that awful time.
Anyhow as y’all liked those old samples, and seeing is this day is exactly 80 years on, here are a few more samples of what was my first grand folly, and the first batches of images I showed on Armorama when I joined 7 years ago. Again they’re all northern salient, not southern salient. Old hands will recognise a few but I tried to pick lesser known and pyro-centric samples…
(Author’s note - no photoshoppery, they’re all thru the lens)
Always enjoy seeing your work. 
Good on ya, mate!
—mike 
Man I love these photos! Then, as now, the Russian Front was a meat grinder. Your miniatures, models, scenes, pyro, and photography capture the ferocity of the Kursk battles in a very lifelike manner.
Ut-oh Tim , Stickpusher said miniatures …
Yep noted, but there’s Stik(pusher) and then there’s Stick(frame) - what a difference a “c” makes. Heard that before somewhere…anyhoo Carlos was too kind, the m-word doesn’t bother me, it only turns Nick from a marvellous mild-mannered model-maker into a mouth-foaming, veins-in-the-teeth psycho 
Is the word another of those that a knight of ni cannot hear?
Wow! This is impressive photography.
Superb photos there!!! Great job!!!
Thanks Reynier & Gil, glad you like ‘em.
For those interested in the photography, the poorer-quality images were frames from Jurassic-era Handycam video footage (to capture the various pyro effects), the better-quality ones from the cheapest Olympus digital camera (in 2008), already 8 years old when I took them. And it’s still taking great photos today (typically on full Auto, no operator intervention required), 15 years young so around 15,000 images on the clock. Did I mention I love Olympus cameras? My son’s still taking great pics using my OM10 from 1988.
My point being I’m no photographic expert, point’n’shoot is my motto so anyone could do the same or better. These days my Iphone is the weapon of choice like most people, but only because it’s fairly dummy-proof.
I’m afraid so Carlos, the m-word’s 24 carat kryptonite for the poor guy. I do get it though, he once confided that it was intended as an innocent compliment to him a few years ago, but in the context of where they were and who said it…well, let’s just say they’ll never find the body 
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So I guess that he avoids the whole Tamiya 1/35 Military Miniatures series… 
Again, I am super impressed. I’ve honestly never seen anything quite like this. It gives a whole new meaning to the word “photorealistic.”
Your comments on the combatants are well-taken, too. It is sad to realize that this part of Russia, just North of Ukraine, is not too far from a modern war raging in what is basically the same kind of territory.
One of the northern flank drives south towards Kyiv (formerly Kiev) or Kharkiv (formerly Kharkov) in 2022 originated from the Kursk area. There is certainly fighting going on now over the same old 1943 battlefields of the southern sector. New names, same ground.
Thanks Brian, photo-realism has always been my aim with varying degrees of success. When I came back to the hobby it seemed there was a niche for crazy experimental effects as shown, despite the moderate risk of self-immolation. I recently re-posted in another thread the closest I came to injury, a Hummel brass tube which could have turned into a pipe bomb but luckily became a rocket launched into an adjoining suburb (not many dead), it could just as easily launched directly back at me.
I’m just surprised nobody else (to my knowledge) has been dumb enough to try anything similar. These days maybe it’s easier to CGI/Photoshop the same kind of effects, I just prefer the randomness of actual pyrotechnics.
