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…

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…

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…

Behind the Scenes: Yuri Badiner

There are some LEGO photographers out there who, no matter what you’re doing with your own photography, just make you seem lazy by comparison. Yuri Badiner is one of those guys for me. His complicated staging with wires and adhesive putty brings minifigs to life as they stumble, tumble, float and fall in his wonderfully…

Behind the Scenes: Brick Sailboat

When I started LEGO photography a few years ago, I thought I was pretty cool sacrificing my knees to get eye-level photos of my minifigs. I was so rugged putting my camera unprotected on the ground. I am working it! I am legit! Then Brick Sailboat showed up on my feed one day and quickly…

Behind the Scenes: Konstantin

One of the most playful and creative photography techniques I have ever experimented with is light painting. The idea is pretty simple: hold a light source in your hand and guide it through the frame while the camera’s shutter is left open for a long time to capture the trails of light. I taught this…

Behind the Scenes: Foolish Bricks

Any photographer who has seriously contemplated their work knows that a photograph isn’t finished when you release the shutter and take the exposure. That’s just half the job. The other half is editing or post-processing to create a polished look that makes the photo stand out. Foolish Bricks is one such photographer who knows how…

Behind the Scenes: Dudu Simas

I love seeing photos of minifigs in natural environments. When they’re well matched to their scale and the narrative, the results are captivating. More often than not, photos like these are taken outdoors by unflinching toy photographers ready to soil their knees, lie on rocky beaches and risk losing their minifigs to wind and water…

Behind the Scenes: Amber

Yellow is the color of happiness, and the color of realism, or at least that’s how Amber likes to think about the light she uses in her LEGO photography. Warm light — amber light — plays a big role in her work: “I’ve always loved the feeling of realness that warm light can add to…