One of the banes of mobile photography is the inability to create smooth backgrounds and bokeh. The problem is a matter of physics — small sensors like the ones we have in our phones can’t produce a shallow depth of field. Camera manufacturers came up with “portrait mode” to digitally fake it, but the AI…
Pseudo-macro LEGO Photography
If you’re shooting with a regular lens on your camera, filling the frame with LEGO minifigures often means composing with crop in mind, wasting pixels in edit, and ending up with a lower quality image. This is why many LEGO photographers shoot with dedicated macro lenses: you can get tack sharp, close-up shots without sacrificing…
Mobile Flash Photography: Godox A1 Review
Off-camera flash photography used to be the realm of DSLR and mirrorless shooters but now mobile shooters with supported phone models can get in on the game with the Godox A1. The Godox A1 is a compact device that is billed as a smartphone flash but also functions as a remote control and wireless transmitter…
Behind the Scenes: Tomek Skog
Photos of shiny, happy people doing shiny, happy things practically dominate my LEGO photography feed on Instagram. Granted, my preferences lean toward minifigs from the CREATOR theme and the Collectible Minifigure series so bright colors and moods are the expectation. One LEGO photographer who departs from the tendency towards all this glee and squee though…
DigitalPrint By Patrick Baroni: Custom Printed LEGO Parts
LEGO customization options have come a long way from the days of tedious hand painting and decal application. In just the past decade, several custom LEGO design shops have popped up in part due to digital UV printing technology that can produce very high quality prints in shorter time, with more colors, higher accuracy and…
Mobile Editing: How to Change LEGO Minifig Colors
Mixing yellow and licensed minifigs in one scene doesn’t make me cringe as much anymore since Batman and Wyldstyle starred side-by-side in The LEGO Movie a few years back, but seeing a hybrid yellow-flesh minifig on my Instagram feed makes me wince… and scroll, scroll far away from that aberration as fast as I can!…
Behind the Scenes: Luigi Priori
I am not a builder, or at least, I’m not very good at building MOCs (My Own Creations) so most of the time my LEGO photography is set in natural or found environments. Sure, I have a few brick-built elements and a couple of sets that I sometimes use as backgrounds in my photos, but…
Living Photos for Instagram with Vimage: App Review
Vimage is an app for Android and iOS that allows you to overlay pre-made looped animation effects on your still photos to create a “living photo” — a hybrid of photo and video. Living photos get some of the same benefit as short videos on social media such as higher engagement and longer viewing, but…
BrickWarriors: Custom accessories for LEGO minifigures
One of the reasons why I love shooting LEGO minifigs so much is that their modular design makes it very easy to create new characters and tell different stories with them. I don’t need to bust out the X-Acto knife and “kitbash” a minifig; I can simply swap out body parts as desired. But as…