Funny you guys should mention taking pics on the street. At the front entrance to our housing Complex is an area of exposed ground (dirt and Rock) the looks like the caves in Tora Bora Afghanistan. I've been wanting to do a Cobra attacks the Taliban photo shoot there.....just a matter of not getting hit while doing it! LOL!

When we talk about Dios, are we talking about the textbook definition? Dio's have been around for centuries. Look in ANY museum! Stuffed animals in glass with painted backgrounds. I Remember making Dioramas for dinosaurs and book reports in elementary school.

I like what someone said earlier in that the legends who created this site gave it it's new meaning. Yet, I show friends at work my stuff and give them the Website and they say "Joe Deeos?" (Think Ronnie James Dio when you say it!) I started "Re-collecting" in 2002, and while searching for places to get replacement parts, I ran into THIS site and thought "Well, I'm too old to get down in the floor and play with them, why not set em up and take digital pictures of them?"

To me, "Dios" means works of Art. It is more than just crude tisspue paper and pipe cleaner palm trees with plastic dinosaurs in a box set up as a static display. It's Combining Model making, photography, lighting, Set Design, Story telling and Special Effects And enjoying taking the time, effort and imagination to combine these crafts to make people suspend their disbelief, quit thinking they are looking at toys and enjoy a story...hopefully a well told one! It's taking the childish art of the Diorama and professionally bringing it to life.

It's not about being the best at any of these disciplines, yet learning and improving in each of them so they compliment one another and bring alive an art that started as making a model of a single moment in time!