Once in a while we ask to a member of our community to tell us a story based around a set among a small selection.

This time we asked to Photomark6 to share a photo essay featuring the City’s set 60347: Grocery Store and here’s what happened.

The story

The grocery store is an institution for all that live nearby. It’s known for its amazing selection of locally sourced fresh food and drink. It’s managed by Stephen and his wife Mary and their trusty cat Mango.

For Stephen, the grocery store runs in the family. The original grocery store was set up by Stephen’s father many years ago. Stephen remembers those long summers as a boy, helping his father to keep the store stocked.

The store has changed a little over the years, getting much bigger but in some ways it’s still the same. Like his father’s store before, the thing everyone loves about the grocers is that everything is so fresh! Stephen and Mary restock the shelves every morning with new fresh produce delivered from the local farms.

Before the store opens, Stephen and Mary spend the morning getting everything ready for customers to come in. All the fresh produce needs to be stacked in the right place.

Elle loves food. When she grows up, she dreams of being a chef! For her birthday, her Mum and Dad brought her a real chef’s hat to wear. Today her Dad has promised that she can help cook dinner for the evening. They need to go and get some supplies first. They decide to visit the grocery store.

It doesn’t take long to get to the grocery store. With their list written, they go inside to get all the supplies they need.

Pushing the trolly around the store, they get all the food they need to cook the evenings meal. Elle always enjoys crossing things off the list.

Having got everything they need, they go through the checkout. The owner of the store is such a nice man, he is very chatty as he scans all the items. Elle feels very grown up as her dad gives her the money to pay for all the shopping

Back home, Elle and her dad get to work in the kitchen. The food smells so good, their cats get hungry and try to get a nibble of what they are cooking.

After an hour in the oven, dinner is ready. Elle is very proud of her cooking and is looking forward to the next time she can cook dinner!

About the set

The LEGO Grocery Store 60347 retails for £54.99 / $69.99 / 59.99€ and is a great little set.

It uses some nice colours, has some fun details (the shelves were particularly good) and builds into a nice looking model when finished.

My absolute favourite part is the forklift truck. I will be using that model again.

Being more of a ‘play’ model, it wasn’t designed totally with photography in mind!

I had to do a bit of ‘tactical dismantling’ of some of the walls to be able to get the camera lens where I wanted it!

Behind the scenes

When planning, the first part of the project was to story board out the scenes that I want to capture. I am not a great drawer, but it helps to have a few sketches on what I want to take! With the sketches, I’ll start to build up the scenes for the story.

Once I had the story board, I started building the set and the MOCs tell the story. I always try to build with camera set up so I can check the angles and make sure the build is right for what I want camera to show.

Once everything is built, the next step is to play with the figure positions. It’s always quite fun and I use a mixture of different figures just to get the right set up.

Then I start to play with the lighting! I tend to have some idea from the story board already as to how I would need to light the scene. Getting the lighting is right is always the best part of any project!