The Adventures of Lego Man: Nature
Lego Man / Running From Skeletons
This is a departure from my normal work. Maybe these are micro-landscapes? Over at The Patch, a Google+ photo challenge community I help moderate, the monthly theme is "Toy On Parade". The concept is simple. You choose a single toy to incorporate into each of your weekly photos. Each week has a different theme. This week – Nature.
I had a lot of fun making this image and it became a nice father/daughter bonding project. My daughter got very interested when I started rummaging through a long-ignored bin of Legos. I told her about the project and almost immediately she started rattling off about all sorts of situations "Lego Man" could get into. We gathered up the pieces we needed and headed into the backyard garden to set up the scene.
I used a wide angle lens and a wide open aperture to capture the scene. I got low, about eye level of Lego Man, and snapped a few frames. It was mid-afternoon with a lot of harsh light. The answer? A drugstore black umbrella. My daughter held it in place, casting a uniform shadow across the scene. I increased the ISO a little to keep the shutter speed at 1/60th of a second – for hand held, that's about as slow of a shutter speed I can do and avoid motion shake – and bam, bam, bam, fired off a few more shots.
Processing was simple, a five minute job. I started with the Kryptonite preset in Perfect Effects 8 and tweaked it from there. I added a slight Lens Blur with the tilt shift preset and adjusted the Vignette a little. The final touch was in Aperture to sharpen Lego Man.
What is the next adventure for Lego Man? Next week's theme is Work. Do you have an idea? If you do, join The Patch and share it.