After reviewing over 160 entries to the Fantasy February LEGO photography contest hosted by BrickCentral and Stud Shooters on Threads and Reddit, we’ve arrived at our winner: SKABRAM-builds with their “Elfwood Postal Service” photo!
BrickCentral judge toy.story.yana and I immediately thought this was a standout, knowing how difficult it can be to make LEGO models “fly” outdoors. Timing, transporting, finding a location, setting up, and hoping you didn’t break the model after all of that factor into making a shot like this work.
To pull this off, SKABRAM-builds explained in a separate post that he used a pole with a ball joint to hold the model in the air. Here’s the setup he shared on Stud Shooters:
Challenges and setup aside, toy.story.yana and I judged the photo against the contest criteria:
- Relevance to the theme
- Originality (concept, characters, etc.)
- Photo excellence (composition, focus, context/background, etc.)
No doubt that elves are fantasy characters so check on the relevance to the theme! The concept of one delivering mail via stork in the forest to other magical folk plus that fantastic MOC earned high points for originality.
Finally, the posing, the environment, and the golden light all contributed to making this photo excellent.
Congrats SKABRAM-builds! You’ll be receiving your choice of either Castle Nocturnia 71486 or a bundle of three LEGO sets: Medieval Dragon 31161, Erlang’s Celestial Mech 80065, and Mythical Creature Qilin 80066!
Other standout entries
The judging was far from easy as many other LEGO photos caught our eye. We shortlisted 16 photos from the two entry threads.
Close behind the winning photo were these excellent submissions by Monsieur_Kek and minifigureoncamera:
Monsieur_Kek is a master at creating interesting characters and adding a touch of humor to his photos. The contrast between the darkness of the scene against the pink and lightness of the characters is fantastic.
Minifigureoncamera also got a “flying” LEGO model photo and threw in some atmospheric rain effects to come up with a wonderfully whimsy scene. The mix of Dungeons & Dragons with the DreamZzz theme is awesome! We need more!
Speaking of dragons, these mythical beasts and other brick-built creatures appeared in the two contest pools:
More dwarves, elves, tieflings, and lich showed up too:
And some fauns represented:
More Fantasy February LEGO photos
These are just 10% of the LEGO photos that were submitted so treat yourselves to more by checking out the publicly-viewable contest threads with all the entries on:
Congrats to everyone who joined in on the fun!
If you missed out on this contest, no worries because there will be more to come! And if you’re not sure if contests are for you, remember that contests are great opportunities for learning and belonging, not just a chance at a prize.
Learn by:
- analyzing the photos that resonate with others and place with the judges
- asking for feedback on your work (Stud Shooters has a monthly critique request thread and
BrickCentral has an “ask for feedback” channel on their Discord)
Belong to a community by:
- working on the same theme as other enthusiasts
- participating alongside others
- admiring others’ works and cheering them on
Thanks to BrickCentral for co-hosting this LEGO photography contest with Stud Shooters and to The LEGO Group for sponsoring the prizes via BrickCentral! Hope we can do this again!