Everything you need to know about LEGOGRAPHY

Lately, I have been addicted to a thing called Legography. For those of you who are wondering what that means, it’s basically taking pictures of Legos (Lego Photography = Legography). So how does Legography fit in your busy lifestyle? Well, think about the convenience of having a 24/7 model for your photo shoot and the opportunity of letting you practice photography anywhere at anytime you want. I’ve tried it myself and it’s amazing so I’m going to share with you what I did in this post!

Before I get into the details, a photographer called Andrew Whyte inspired me with this idea. He is a photographer based in the UK and he specialized in long exposure photography.

Anyway, here are the steps I took:

As easy as it sounds, you need to buy a Lego minifigure to start with. This is the only time you need to spend money for the whole process but you don’t have to buy it if you already owned a lego minifigure. For myself even though I’ve a few minifigures I still like to have a lego cameraman so I brought the Lego traveller 7567

2)   Upgrade Lego Traveller’s camera lens

This step is totally optional. After I received the Lego cameraman I felt his camera doesn’t look like it has any lens on it. So I grab my ironman’s blue thruster and stick it on the lego traveller’s camera. Now my cameraman has a blue lens! Haha Poor Tony Stark!

3)   Find a meaningful scenery

Now to the actual photography techniques, make sure you find a meaningful background/subject/object. One of the hardest things about Legography is that you can basically shoot anywhere. Due to its size you can find great backgrounds that you can even do at home. But does that reflect the story behind your photo? If not, don’t just snap the shot but find a better location.

4)   Get down low

The real tick to get the best shot is to get down and shoot low. If you shoot from eye level it’ll be the same as all other pictures. Have an interesting angle and try to work around the environment to achieve the shot.

5)   Focus well and great "bokeh" will come

If you are wondering what boken is, it is the out of focus area of your photograph. In another word, the creamy background that you see from portrait where the person is tack sharp and the background is a little unfocus, that is bokeh. With Legography, it is really easy to achieve great bokeh. In fact, you may want to reduce it a little bit sometimes so people can see what the background is. The closer your lego is to the background objects, the more focus you are going to get.

Well, that’s all I did to start Legography. One thing I forgot to mention is I use my iphone 6S Plus to take the photos. There are many camera apps out there and you can buy camera apps like 645 Pro MK II and Pureshot. But I found the normal camera app work just fine and you can edit the picture in snapseed afterward. Read my previous post here for a list of great smartphone apps for photography.

Here is my quick summary about Legography:

Advantages:

Easy to carry – There is no excuse not to bring it with you everywhere.

24/7 portrait model – Again no excuse to say you are too busy to take pictures each day.

Great scenery anywhere – You just need a fraction of a great background to take awesome pictures.

Disadvantages:

Hard to stand up the minifigure – With just a little bit of wind this little guy will get blown away. Consider bringing some tapes with you.

Hard to focus – You need to know your phone camera’s limitation. Your iphone’s camera isn’t you DSLR. It will lose focus easily so take extra care when focusing.

Don’t lose the lego camera – Yes don’t lose it, it’ll be a pain to find replacement! You can buy it in ebay for a few dollars but with shipping it can easily get up to the price of the minifigure!

I hope you enjoy this post and please check Andrew Whyte’s website here for his amazing pictures. If you like what I’m doing follow me on Facebook and like my page. Oh one more thing! I’m trying to give a name to my little cameraman. What name do you think I should call him? Please comment below!