Every month, we pick a LEGO photographer active in our community and share some of their work and a little about themselves. This month we flight to Finland to meet tumppilundstrom.

Hi, my name is Thomas aka tumppilundstrom I’m an afol from Finland.

I’ve been shooting LEGO since 2014 but I’ve been a LEGO fan since the 70’s.

My favourite themes are classic space, Star Wars and scifi in general.

I also like to take hiking and fishing related shots outdoors.
When I travel I always take some minifigs with me. I build mocs and then I mostly build mechs and robots in various forms.

One recurring theme is to build a mech suitable for a specific minifig, either an official one or someone I mixed ’n’ matched myself.

Outdoors I mostly shoot with my iPhone and indoors I use an old Canon 600D, mounted on a tripod and equipped with a Sigma macro lens.

I mostly shoot using natural light, with a help of a piece of tinfoil or plain white paper acting as light bouncers, reflecting the light so that it would from multiple directions.

I also use a piece of baking paper to make the natural light a bit softer.

The exclusive photo

For this feature I wanted to re-shoot my old (still in use) profile picture, that I shot with an old iPhone back in 2014, but using the gear and setup I shoot with nowadays.

That plan didn’t really work out since the shot got a bit boring and the shot from 2014 was actually good as it was. I changed plans: a simple portrait of Red, focusing on the bare minimum.
Natural light comes from the window to the left, I use a sheet of baking paper mounted on a LEGO frame as a “filter” to make the light softer. I always try to shoot in cloudy weather so the light is not too hard.
On the right side of Red I have a piece of tin foil, to get a bit light from the left too. I like to get really close so that you can even see the surface texture of the plastic.

This plan worked out better until the cats decided to participate