Tag Archives: Photography

A night at the museum is about to get interesting

Despite what many movies would have us believe, working the night shift as a museum guard is probably a pretty quiet job most of the time… unless you work in this museum scene by Mark, who has crafted a fun story about a group of burglars who have infiltrated the dinosaur wing with less than wholesome plans while a trio of guards enter the scene on patrol. I like the use of a molded T-Rex head on the back wall, and the wall dioramas are lit to reveal displays. I do have one question, though, and that is just why are there so many cats roaming the museum at night? Maybe they are supposed to distract the guards. Were you able to spot all 3 burglars?

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Small pirates hit the high seas in LEGO

V (minifiguring it.out) assembles one of the all-time great tales of adventure: a pirate crew braving curses and danger in pursuit of gold. A storyteller at heart, V’s builds are filled with lore and recurring characters, like the captain of this vessel, Jasper “Tidebreaker” Vane, a serial source of bad ideas. V’s excellent photography showcases a brilliant shrinking of the classic pirate ship into the keel of a rowboat, with a few bits of foliage in the background helping sell the illusion of a miniature world.

I love how V’s scenes, working with a limited scale, still feel boundless and epic. And her cast of characters always make use of LEGO’s growing range of skin tones to create a more inclusive fantasy world.

V’s buildings are just as charming as the tiny ship, like this miniature mill with a straw roof, climbing vines, and a great half-timbered effect.

V is a member of dreambuilderslug, “an inclusive community of builders of all skill levels, inspiring, supporting, showcasing black/ brown excellence” that is well worth a follow.

Picture Perfect – Life in LEGO Polaroids (Guest Feature)

This started as a quick contest entry. Just one little diorama for the LEGO Ideas “Picture Perfect Memories” challenge. I thought I’d build a single model—frame it up like a Polaroid, submit it, and move on with my life.

Instead, I made six.

And who among us hasn’t gotten carried away and spent the whole night building? For me, there was something satisfying about having small ideas in my head that I could actually finish. Each one took a couple of hours. Nothing sprawling. Just compact moments, built quickly and intentionally.

I like building small. It forces you to be economical, which I think can be more impressive than going big. It also lets you focus on what really matters—telling a story.

Each of these builds is based on something that happened in my life, or something close to it. They’re impressions. Memories, simplified and captured in plastic. And in sharing them, I hoped to set a kind of template—something other people might follow to build their own.

Take a look at the story behind each of the six Polaroid vignettes and maybe be inspired to make your own

Don’t be hasty, master squirrel

Alternate Builds have been having a moment. Between Dicken Liu’s facehugger and the Sigularity of everything either remixing into our out of a Millenniun Falcon courtesy of this guy, what used to be a small niche of the AFOL world is spawning new viral stories every day. Not long ago, Heagh B. Vane shared a MOC of Treebeard made entirely from the ports of 10281 Bonsai Tree. Thousands of builders grabbed the instructions, including LEGO photographer Chris Cosmos. That’s when the magic happened. All this spring Chris has been staging photographs with curious wildlife, for example, patiently waiting for a cardinal to pluck a seed from Darth Vader’s minifig grip. Using Vane’s instructions, Chris assembled Treebeard and set the Ent out to engage with the local wildlife. And look who showed up to sample some of Pippin’s Lembas bread!

Vane’s Treebeard instructions are available on rebrickable should you be curious about trying this alternate build yourself. Merry, Pippen, and squirrel not included.

Hejjo Demokowicz’s immersive LEGO steampunk worlds

Immersive LEGO scenes fill the frame with bricks and make you feel like you’re getting a glimpse into another world. Hejjo Demokowicz demonstrates a mastery of the form with his series of steampunk districts that began in 2022, each depicting a solitary figure beginning a journey. The latest entry, District 3, depicts a snowy, urban realm. Hejjo draws on an eclectic mix of rounded parts for the white snow and the nougat path for a lush texture. Wrought ironwork impresses in both the foreground gate and the ornate station awnings in the background. A solitary character stuns with clever parts usage, such as eggs for arms, helmet shoulders, and a pirate’s beard as trailing hair.

Click to explore Hejjo’s other districts

Bringing the LEGO Endurance to life: an interview with photographer Benedek Lampert [Feature]

If you ask us, one of the prettiest sets to come out last year was LEGO Icons 10335 The Endurance. But we’re not the only ones to think that! Benedek Lampert is a toy photographer with a particular affinity for LEGO. In fact, as well as conducting official photoshoots, he even appeared on the LEGO Masters TV show! But when he came across the brick-built model of Ernest Shackleton’s famous ship, his next photography project immediately became clear. And the results are stunning, fully immersing us in the Antarctic and bringing new life to this exceptional set.

But how did he go about photographing it? How did expedition snapper Frank Hurley’s famous pictures help inspire him? And how did he get involved in photography in the first place? Well, you can watch a short video below on Benedek’s setup – but we also had a chance to quiz him about this latest project! Be sure to click the link below to see more photos, behind-the-scenes, and read our interview with him!

Step this way to read our interview with Benedek!

A Christmas morning to remember

Santa’s not getting any bigger. It’s the chimneys that are getting smaller, honestly! A Christmas crisis is averted in this LEGO scene by Jérôme Barchietto as the local fire crew turns up just in time to extract jolly ol’ Saint Nick from a tight squeeze. Hope the family at 10267 Gingerbread Lane left out extra cookies for Santa. He’s had a rough night!

Happy Holidays from us all at The Brothers Brick!

Spooky scary skeletons spell doom for the Lion Knights

In the LEGO photography hobby, light and focus are as essential to the creative process as which bricks to use. Photomark6, a member of the BrickCentral photography community, specializes in shots where the camera is brought down into a diorama, giving the viewer a minifig’s view of the action. (And he manages to sneak a cat into every scene!) With spooky season upon us, Mark delves into the darkness and captures the likely final moments of the Lion Knights as they walk into a necromancer’s trap.

The black skeletons with double-long limbs are especially frightening, the minifig equivalent of those terrifying lawn skeletons that loom over trick-or-treaters. And nothing screams horror like chains hanging from the ceiling. Mark uses some scary good techniques in the castle backdrop; the hinge bricks work great as cornices. In the background, Szazz Tam from the D&D Collectible Minifigures watches the knights fall. Can the Lion Knights turn the tides? If only skeletons were allergic to cats…

Well, shoot! That’s a big gun

Anyone who grew up on first-person shooters like Doom or Quake should recognize a few things in Steve Marsh AKA Rubblemaker’s LEGO build: the industrialized aesthetic, the glimpse of some otherworldly monster just waiting to be riddled full of bullets, and of course the ~~giant~~ minigun.

Tell the monster to wait a second while you inspect the build a little more.

The blue screen of life

In the bowels of a dreary-looking office building, life shines in the intriguing “Blue Screen” by Loïc Gilbert. Let’s let the builder tell the story behind this LEGO enigma:

The building had stood abandoned since 1992. …fluorescent lights flickered to life, joined by the faint whirring of old desktop fans. Then came the soft, steady drip of water. He glanced at the dim blue glow coming from an old monitor, but something felt off. The desktop wallpaper wasn’t static—it was gently rippling.

The mystery of the computer screen aside, my favorite aspect of the build is the way every mundane detail is brought to life with ordinary LEGO elements: the post-it note the mouse, the scissors, the ranks of tiles archived away in crates. I’m pretty sure I had that exact computer sitting on my desk back in 2002. Mine never came to life with a mysterious blue screen, though.

Olympic high dive build is a clear winner

With the Paris 2024 Olympics just days away, sports fever is really heating up. French builder FOXduFutur offers up a cooling plunge with a LEGO tribute to the 10-meter platform dive. The swarm of clear bricks that hold up the diver is a wonderful gravity-defying technique that mimics the bubbles around a diver seen in underwater photography. On that note, FOXduFutur delivers a gold-medal shot with incredible lighting and use of focus that captures the feeling of being underwater and elevates a relatively simple build into something truly special. (Here’s a behind-the-scenes shot of how they pulled off the shot).

FOXduFutur created this model for the BrickPirate LEGOlympics Challenge.

A pattern in the bricks

The overwhelming majority of the LEGO creations we feature here on The Brothers Brick are spaceships, cars, castles, and other objects and scenes. What we see far less frequently are abstract designs like this fascinating one by Crimso Giger. Sometimes it’s good to return to the basic rectangular geometry of the brick and see what emerges. Although presented as a two-dimensional artwork, this build lives in three dimensions taking up three sides of a cube.
It’s part of an ongoing exploration by Crimso into creating fascinating photos of LEGO and the interplay of light and geometry. Here’s one of my favorites. At first glance it looks digitally altered, but it’s pure LEGO. See if you can figure out how it’s done.