Discovering Legography
Since lockdown begun around the world we’ve seen plenty of different Lego photoshoots. We’ve also learn a new term; Legography.
When deciding how to do our Lego photoshoots we decided to do some research on Instagram. There’s so many great accounts but we’ve picked out a couple that are worth checking out.
World in Bricks
We discovered Milon Keynes based Legography enthusiast David Flanagan website World in Bricks via Instagram.
He’s created some really amusing Lego photoshoots with his son’s minifigs.
One Brick Show
Is another great Legography instagram account to follow.
His Lego photoshoots are complex and beautifully lit. There’s some great storytelling and good use of backgrounds.
Check out how scenes from films have been recreated in Lego.
Sir Harry Plopper
Is another local Legography Instagram account.
Based in Wimbledon village the images on this account are funny and brilliantly built.
Life in lockdown has been perfectly rebuilt in Lego.
Create your own Lego Photoshoots
When dipping your feet into the world of Legography the best advice to to start off simple.
Use existing Lego structures and try and keep to a theme.
Lego photoshoots look great photographed with macro lenses and specialised LED lighting but you can also get great results with just an iPhone.
We photographed our scenes just using an iPhone and a cheap LED video light. You could make things easier using a tripod for your iPhone if you’d prefer.
When using natural light always consider the direction of the lighting.
Building your scene
We created a few different scenes using predesigned Lego sets and ones of our own creation. The key is to add depth to a scene. The background we’ll talk about in a minute but the foreground is all about design.
Choosing backgrounds
The technique we used was to create backgrounds using our TV.
First we needed to find the right images. Pixabay is a fantastic resource for finding high quality images you can use in your pictures.
We searched for and downloaded images that matched each of our themes.
There’s many ways to get images onto your TV.
We have an Apple TV connected to a laptop. Images are opened on the laptop and shared on the TV via the Apple TV.
if you’d don’t have an Apple TV then don’t worry, check out five easy ways to share images on your TV.
Dramatic Sunset and City at night scenes
For our first two scenes we used a custom Lego build. We a city scene so the backgrounds we chose to match were a dramatic sunset and a city at night image.
For the sunset images we added in some warm light into the scene with a coloured LED video light.
In editing we added a bit more warmth to the photos. For some images we converted them to black and white. This created a more cinematic street photography feel.
Aladdin and the flying carpet
Our next setup was an Aladdin build so we chose a desert image for the background. The shots we got were a mixture of wide shots and close up flying carpet images.
We used natural window light for these images as it suited the background.
Frozen ice landscape
We seem to have more Frozen minifigs than everything else so we were always going to use them.
The first Frozen theme used a snowy mountain background with the addition of a blue LED light.
To begin with we kept things very simple and used of the the clear Frozen themed Lego pieces with the Elsa minifigure.
Frozen 2 forest scene
We do have a Lego set from Frozen 2 which is a woodland setting. The background image we chose for this was a forest scene with light shining through the trees.
To add some extra ambience we added some orange LED light into the image.
A Lego Friends character photobombed one of the images but then we concentrated on getting some images of a character climbing a ladder.
