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 Spain to meet jcmimoso!

Hello fellow LEGO photographers, my name is Juan Carlos Mimoso. I’m from Spain and I grew up in the 75-80s. When I was a child I never had access to LEGO, due to economic reasons and poor distribution in my area. On the other hand, I did play with Playmobil and also with Exin Castillos bricks, with which I built spectacular castles.

I am currently a Doctor in Primary Care in a health center, and when in 2020 we suffered the COVID-19 pandemic and forced confinement, I continued working. I changed my work in the clinic for work at home and in the clinic, with no limit on hours and with the uncertainty and feeling of not being able to offer everything my patients needed. That caused me a lot of added stress. I had always liked photography, landscapes, macro, etc… and I relaxed by walking to see the world with photographic eyes. Instead, now I found that I was confined and unable to create new content.

My son had a couple of LEGO minifigures and a small set, and I thought it was cool to take a photo with an interesting background and post it on Instagram. And since then, I have been hooked on toy photography. I have seen that there are many colleagues spread around the world, and communities like Brickcentral, where tricks and ways to take the final photo are freely shared.

I took almost all of the photos with an old second-hand Fujifilm X-E2 mirrorless and the little Fujinon 27/2.8 pancake lens with a +2 or +4 close-up filter attached. I like that combination because it is very small and portable. A couple of years ago I added the Fujifilm X-H1 because, although it is a little bigger, it has a flip-up screen, which makes it much easier for me to make low compositions without having to move the whole equipment to check the focus. This year I bought a 1:2 macro (Fujinon 60/2.4) and so far I like the results, although due to work and family issues I haven’t been able to take many photos. I hope that changes in a couple of weeks.

My workspace is typically my desk. I use the PC monitor as a background, or if it’s a building without any background at all, and I place everything on heavy, thick medicine books so I can use my tabletop tripod at the right height. For lighting I use LED spotlights (Ulanzi VL49 and Lumecube Air), although I have also sometimes taken photos with matchstick lighting.

My compositions are not very large because as soon as I finish the session I have to put away everything that is on the desk so that I can use it to process the result. I usually take several shots with different lighting, aperture and sometimes even stacking photos to give more depth, although I never usually use the whole stack, but only just enough so that the background does not look too sharp. Later I choose the shot I like the most in Lightroom and complete it with Photoshop for basic retouching such as cloning, filters, etc.

I mainly use LEGO minifigures from various series (Marvel, DC, Ninjago…), although you can also see some Playmobil and Star Wars figures. The main type of photography I do is usually related to medieval, fantasy, sword and sorcery environments, among others.

In my posts you can see that I use extensively the Barbarian (series 11) and Viking (series 20) minifigures. I think it’s because they don’t usually require much post-processing, but also because they remind me of the ‘Conan the Barbarian’ comics I used to read when I was a kid. It’s my humble way of paying a little homage to great artists who have drawn the Cimmerian since the 70s and who bring back so many memories. I recently acquired the Red-Haired Barbarian minifigure (series 25), which I’m sure will co-star in future photos. In fact, the photo I’m showing you today is the first one I’ve used it for.

Fortunately, over the years, I saved some Exin pieces, and along with others I’ve gotten lately, I use them extensively in my creations to mix LEGO with Exin Castles and get a more realistic environment. To this I usually mix all kinds of rocks, sand, grasses and other accessories so that it integrates well with the sword and sorcery atmosphere that I usually pursue in my publications. For inspiration I use old comics, game or movie sequences, and anything I see that fits well with my possibilities and knowledge. I have notebooks full of ideas written down for a better occasion, which doesn’t always come. I learn a lot from other fellow toy photographers and I’m always looking for new ways to tell the little stories in my photos.

The exclusive

As I said, I’m used to using Exin for these kinds of medieval photos, because I think the dirty tone they have makes them more in line with my artistic vision. But for today’s exclusive photo I’ve forced myself to use only LEGO pieces, specifically pieces from the LEGO Creator castle set 31120. The idea of ​​the photo is a castle tower that Conan and his partner (Red Sonya) break into to rob, and when they are surprised by the guard, who comes out to chase them, the brave thieves jump into the void of the night without thinking about their safety or the height. This is a reference to the famous scene from the movie Conan the Barbarian (1982) where Valeria jumps from the top of a tower while asking her astonished companions “Do you want to live forever?”

In the first photo you can see the entire construction only with LEGO pieces. In the part that is not going to be seen in the photo there are bricks of different colors to reserve the grays ones on the visible side. The second photo already shows the entire setup. The castle is placed on a book to give it enough height to use the tabletop tripod, and the PC monitor, rotated 90º and at a sufficient distance so that the pixels are not visible in the final photo.

For the background image I have used one from Olivier Guillard on Unsplash, somewhat out of focus in Photoshop. The upper room of the tower, where the guard runs out, is closed with transparent bricks at the back. There I have placed an orange cloth and a Lumecube Air spotlight with its diffuser. It is something that I have seen here on Brickcentral and I really liked the idea, although I have done it my way. I wanted the tiny light to come out from the inside of the room and contrast with the semi-darkness of the outside. You can see the setup details in the following images, and finally the photo as it appears on the camera screen. I always like to include it in my posts so you can see the reality vs the final photo