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My name is Benedek Lampert, a professional Hungarian toy photographer. I started this genre seven years ago, and during that time, this type of miniature photography has become part of my job for a living, and I have collaborated on multiple official campaigns with LEGO itself.
My recent project is about the Artemis program, featuring the LEGO Artemis SLS Rocket set, which is amazing because we can build the whole launch pad too.
Process Starting
I always imagine in my head the photo first. I can only think about the technical solutions if I know exactly what I want to see. It’s essential because you need a starting point where you can plan the scenery and the lights. Guys, the lights are almost everything. Especially if we are talking about a cinematic look.
With bad lighting, you can take a photo of a scenery and get a moodless, flat image that anyone can do with a quick phone shot. But if you set up proper lighting and create atmosphere, you can get an amazing picture which almost comes to life. The additional practical effects can boost this, and the result will be unique.
I should highlight two important things:
Never use front light! I use backlight behind the main object in almost every case.
Never forget the reflections. Many toy photographers forget to match the fore/middle ground with the background’s global light. So, for example, they create a sunset feeling lighting but just locally. The object and the whole scenery have a bluish tone. This common mistake completely removes the object from the context. We can’t feel they are in the same space. It looks like a badly masked CGI.
My Motivation in the Artemis Project
I am an amateur space junkie. I love space science, especially the Moonlanding. I even make educational videos about that, from a photographer’s perspective. I have had sooo much argument with people who say the Moonlanding was a hoax… But I have patience, and I tell and describe to them for the 789th time how it was.
I am really passionate about this; it’s fascinating how people in the Apollo program could achieve this almost impossible challenge. And now we do it again, but at a next level! In their honor (the scientists, astronauts, engineers, programmers, and many more), I put every bit of knowledge and energy into this photography project. I wanted to make something “WOW” which is worthy of this mission.
My Research
Of course, I did my research to understand what the Artemis program is all about. Why we go back, how we go back, and what the long-term plans and goals are. Really exciting. The Artemis program is actually the first step to landing on Mars. Long story short, the Artemis program’s main goal is to create a permanent moonbase where we can start our journey to Mars.
I looked at many photos of the Artemis I launch and studied how the rocket works and how Orion operates. For example, on the Orion photo, I was wondering, should I put some engine fire behind the module (because that would look cool) or not. So I watched some video simulations and I saw that during the Moon orbit, they won’t use thrust. Only for the Earth-to-Moon path. Actually, this is really logical; once they reach the Moon, the gravity does its job and keeps the Orion capsule in orbit.
Challenges
The biggest challenge was the lift-off image. I knew I would use cotton balls, and the old airfield nearby was going to be a perfect location. I miscalculated two things. One: the amount of cotton balls, I nearly ran out of them. Second: the mosquitoes. They ate me alive. Also, I had to be careful with the LEGO set not to get it destroyed during the transportation (spoiler: I crashed it before the last pic…). The fire smoke was quite a challenge to build from cotton. I made several test shots with the flashlight to see how it looked.
There were two types of lights: the flashlight and the continuous, natural global light. It’s good to know, you can set these two types by shutter speed and aperture. Because a flashlight usually flashes at 1/200, if you basically don’t need quicker exposure, the flashlight will be your actual shutter speed. It doesn’t matter if you use 1 sec or 1/100s; in a dark room, the final photo will be exposed equivalent to 1/200s (or your flashlight’s current sync speed). But if you change the aperture, that can reduce or increase how much light you let into the sensor.
So, after you adjust the desired flashlight values, the next step is to deal with the continuous global light. If you have it. In my case, this was the light of the blue hour sky.
Shutter speed can be adjusted over a much wider range than aperture, so we can compensate for the high f-stop value. Also, I needed a huge DOF to get a sharp image (even though I used 70mm). It means the shutter speed was around 1 sec.
Result: the flashlight was perfectly exposed because of the f/18 (of course you can use a lower value if you decrease the energy of the flashlight, but I used this because of the DOF), but I also could let in the blue hour lights thanks to the 1-sec shutter speed.
With the Orion photo, I realized something during the set building. If I just pour the gypsum powder on the table, its structure will be quite unrealistic and strange, especially when I use low-angle lights. As a solution, I took a simple A/4 paper piece and compressed the powder a bit, so I got smooth surfaces mixed with the powder texture. After that, I used my finger to “draw” craters in the gypsum.
However, I built the platform under the powder a bit curved, so I had to play with light to make it more “rounded”. With the shadows, I could achieve that the surface felt more curved.
The last photo, which represents the calm, mighty look of the rocket before the launch, was the easiest. I just needed a nice cloudy sky. But I was dumb enough to transport the rocket in a stupid way, so it crashed. I had to go home, rebuild it, and go back to the shooting location, which was the same place where the lift-off pic was made.
Conclusion
It was a privilege to work on this project. I really enjoyed it, and I hope you like the final images. 🙂 I learned many things from this photo series. I always learn from every new image, and still, I have a lot to improve in my knowledge.
In the end, if I should give one piece of advice, I would say: study the lights and how to light up a scenery. Toy photography is not a beginner genre, but the key is patience and learning. You have to know your camera well, and also the post-processing, which includes how to create a moody color grading. I usually observe my real-life environment, and how the lights or other objects behave. We can learn a lot if we analyze our real world. Only after this will we be able to bring it to miniature scale.
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