YCSOLO

A random LEGO addict, Star Wars fan and toy photographer. Member and former moderator at @brickcentral, LEGO Ideas Sailboat fan designer, new fan of LEGO minidolls (thanks to my daughter).

[ycsolo]

"There is nothing permanent except change." (Heraclitus) Like the butterfly, I'm slowly emerging from my slumber. It has been a rough series of months, a period of changes and harsh adaptations in my life. A long overdue series of renovations at my house, some accidental health issue, and a 3-decades-long career path that closes suddenly as I struggled amongst collapsing walls, literally and mentally. Now, peeking through the settling dust, I finally see some clarity and prospects as colorful as a flower field laying in front of me! 😮‍💨😅 Throughout this mess I never stopped having LEGO bricks in my hands. There's something calming in the sound of pieces clenching to each other. That's perhaps how I started building this scene. I guess I had this somehow planned some time ago in my head. 🤗 I made that LEGO butterfly using the most useful parts I found in one of those Avatar sets (and the main reason I bought the set, frankly, but it's quite a nice one anyways). I borrowed my wife's botanical LEGO sets, I also made that large flower using a mere fraction of the buckets of brick separators I gathered over the years. Then I set up the scene in my newly renovated (and for once, walkable) LEGO room and made some quick shots using LED panels and flashes, waving a green gel in front of the lens to blur out some parts of the flower field. It was never as fun and confortable for me to shoot something than this one. Never underestimate the usefulness of a large, clean room. 😂 I am now back and I hope to meet again with my old and dear toy photographer friends! 😊 ________________ #yc_solo #lego #brickcentral #toyartistry_lego #toyphotography #legophotography #instalego #legostagram #legominifigures #legophotography #toyphotography #afol #minifigures #butterfly #flowers #legoflowers https://www.instagram.com/p/CoHuy8hrZ-2/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[ycsolo]

"Make no mistake about why these babies are here—they are here to replace us." (Jerry Seinfeld)

I am back, at least for this post. Couldn't resist building a mini Galaxy Explorer for those little Classic Space Babies, and of course I had to customize a full scene, and mix it with a night sky shot I made last Fall with my father-in-law...

It's been a long time since I last posted anything; due to circumstances in my life these past months, I had to adapt and refocus, prioritize and clean up some mess and toxicity I cumulated over some years. That hiatus also helped me understand the place of my hobby, and how to fit it among the rest. So yes, I still buy LEGO sets, I even designed and organized a brand-new LEGO room in my house; I also built tons of new sets with my daughter; and yes, I still take pictures of LEGO, outdoors or inside. I just didn't publish those on social networks as I used to.

Anyways, I will slowly get back to it one step at a time. There were incredibly nice hobby-related things that happened in these past months that I never had the time to share and thank people for; so hopefully I will be able to do this in the near future.

Wishing everyone a nice 2023 ahead!

[brickcentral]

Earlier this month I showed you how color can be used to affect the mood of my LEGO photography. This week I give you a few examples on how I use simple color elements within a scene to create impact.

One such way is to use LEGO elements that heavily contrast in color with the surrounding environment. This can be small parts or the whole subject. In the Classic Space shot above, I placed my orange spaceman on top of a rusted copper tile from the wall surrounding my local graveyard (yes, I do have strange shooting spots). The contrasting colors combined with the strong light shining through the leaves made the character easily stand out without special effects.

Another way is to use saturated parts over a generally bland scenery. For example, a white creamy sky and a strong sunlight shining over the totally dried field helped me bring out the bright colors of the medieval duo.

Such an environment can be brick-built too, as shown in that picture starring a not-so-famous silver droid pair. Here I used simple light blue grey bricks and tiles to set the scene and placed the almost monochrome droids near a few red tiles on the floor.

Of course one can also achieve an unsaturated environment by digitally altering the scene, but I find it much more fun doing so with practical effects.

I hope these few shots can inspire you to take advantage of colored elements you have at hand.

Be there again next week for the last part of my tips on my use of colors in LEGO photography.

- @ycsolo , your tip moderator this month at Brickcentral.

[brickcentral]

@yc-solo with another tip to color up your day!

One way to add a colorful touch to my photography is using simple photography gels.

I showed the smaller round ones last week, that can be used to cover flashes.

I also use larger ones that come in letter size.

The standard way to use those is by covering up lighting sources, flashes and spots (and even plain LED panels) pointing at the subject or at a background, depending on the desired effect.

For example, in my wizard vs dragon scene shown at the end, I did this by overlapping transparent gels over my standard white LED panel and other light sources.

But a fun alternative use of color gels is to place them between your camera lens and specific elements of your scene.

Take the the good vs evil wizards fight above. I used three such gels: a yellow one at the bottom of the scene; a blue one was held for a few seconds diagonally in front of the blue wizard; a red one was moved in front of the evil wizard.

I combined this with some LED panel (purple) in the background and another white LED panel as front light. Flashes placed sideways and pointing at each wizard completed the setup and provided hair light.

Waving the gels for a short time in front of the lens brings the typical blue vs red opposition (good vs evil; peace vs rage) over the corresponding portions of the image, much like a foggy aura.

A word of caution when using gels like that: they are not optically neutral so image sharpness will deteriorate! Leaving gels longer of course can create too much blur so I typically make a few test shots to determine the proper time and exposure for a desired effect.

If one doesn't have gels, colored plastic foil can also be handy, and can even be wrinkled to create special effects.

I hope this gave you ideas to think out of the box and test new ways for your LEGO photography!

[brickcentral]

@yc-solo here, this month I will offer you a few tips on how to use color to affect mood in your LEGO photography.

It is known that color has an impact on perception and can be used to effectively convey messages in visual arts.

Combining warm and cold colors can be useful to create opposition, isolate a subject or project a desired mood to the viewer.

To illustrate this, I used a simple scene of a lone knight walking among a random structure. I lit the scene with two flashes on either side of the minifigure. These were mounted on tripods and each affixed with a snoot on which I plugged a cap containing a round color gel and a honeycomb grid. A LED panel was used as front light.

I first wanted to convey a sense of danger, I used the red gel in front of the knight and a cooler color behind. This made it look like he walks towards imminent danger (a cave with a fire-breathing dragon?)

Now the fun thing with this setup is that I could create different moods by only changing the color gels.

By switching red and blue gels I could instead make it look like the knight emerges from a dangerous place.

Changing the red gel to yellow, danger is gone now our brave knight looks like he simply emerges from a warm, cozy place (a tavern or inn?) and steps into the cold of winter. It's all cold and lonely when all is changed to blue.

Of course varying light intensity and hardness can help cast stronger shadows that will accentuate the mood.

Now, which scene fits your mood best today?

In the next weeks I'll share more on other color techniques I use to play with colors in my LEGO pictures.

[ycsolo]

"And into the forest I go to lose my mind and find my soul." (John Muir)

While watching my daughter playing on her new trampoline, I took a short break and couldn't resist shooting this beautiful set in front of my vegetable garden -- here, a growing jungle of pumpkin and zucchini plants. I felt this could be an exotic place for the Republic troops to hunt for separatists. Who knows what really hides in those woods...

Thanks to Lego and Brickcentral for sending me this set for a  photography project.

Wishing everyone a good start in the week!

[ycsolo]

Shot while on family holidays at the feet of the alps last year. Now I long for some time off...

[ycsolo]

The Classic Space vehicles were often called "garbage", "junk", "bucket of bolts", "flying dumpsters", and so on. For those who knew how to fly, fix and adapt them to the harshest environments, they were simply called best friends.

[ycsolo]

As my very first post on Tumblr, here is a picture I made of my original little sail boat which ended up as gift-with-purchase set #40487 on August 1st last year at LEGO.