Tag Archives: Photography

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

The Brothers Brick is funded by our readers and the community. Articles may include affiliate links, and when you purchase products from those links, TBB may earn a commission that helps support the site.

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.

The black knight always triumphs!

“‘Tis but a scratch!” If I didn’t know any better, I would’ve thought W. Navarre built a large scale figure of that black knight. Yet, this formidable figure inspired by Dark Souls has no dismembered appendages at all and is actually threatening. While Navarre hasn’t shown the full figure yet, we see just enough. Leaning on his sword after a day of battle, the knight’s weary position conveys so much character. Navarre’s detailed build is not too cluttered, and we can easily tell what is what, and it works so well.

“Alright, we’ll call it a draw.” Check out more amazing builds by W. Navarre here!

Radon-86 gets glowing reviews

Part of the thrill in buying LEGO’s Collectable Minifigures is what builders do with them after they’ve unpackaged them. Yuri Badiner has taken the yellow robot from Series 22 and has given it a job involving radiation that the rest of us wouldn’t want to do. This is nicely built however, the real star here (besides the happy little bot) is Yuri’s exemplary photography. The tilt of the horizon is a neat trick they teach us in art school that can denote tension and danger. Clearly, this is a dangerous environment but this bot seems happy to do it. The way the composition is lit here also gets glowing reviews from us. Yuri is no stranger to good photography and getting his minifigures into hairy situations. Click the link to see what I mean.

TBB Cover Photo for January 2022: The king’s royal hangover

Why is the start of the new year in the middle of winter? It’s dark and cold out, everyone is tired. Even indoors can be dark and cold, just like this grand high-ceilinged throne room built by Andreas Lenander. After a night of celebrations within his keep, the noble king returns to his throne with a royal hangover to ponder the existential dilemma of ruling instead of partying. Or he may be wondering what’s taking his servant so long to fetch the breastplate stretcher…

We recently wrote about this grand royal hall, but we decided to use this immersive and atmospheric shot as the cover photo for our social media platforms. Despite my questionable interpretation of the scene (and one too many Bobby B references), the composition of this build and the photo speaks for itself as good storytelling. The king positioned on the white carpet draws the eye to the throne looming in the darkness, prompting the pondering of his situation. Does the darkness mean that his kingdom is in peril? Do the columns signify that the king is trapped in a risky position of power (and he’d rather be spending his life partying with peasant girls)? Ok, I’ll stop now.

Submit your LEGO creations for a chance to be featured across TBB social media for a month! Tag your submission with #TBBme. We will be watching this tag and look forward to seeing the submissions for next month. Check out the submission guidelines and share your builds today.

Keep up with The Brothers Brick by liking us on Facebook and following us on Twitter and Pinterest. And for extra goodies, follow us on Instagram, Flickr, and subscribe to us on YouTube, or join us on Discord.

Morning at the Museum

True story; I had a chance to work after hours at the Pacific Science Center in Seattle. I was contracted to paint display backdrops for a Mars exhibit. It was late at night, long after the patrons and staff had gone home and a security guard and I were the only two people there. I can say with confidence that a museum at night is a strange and eerie place. Some lights are on, others are off and incidentally, they leave the animatronic dinosaurs turned on so they were moving and roaring throughout the night. This LEGO creation called Morning at the Museum by Alex Eylar reminds me of that experience. To be clear, the skeleton T-Rex is from this set but the environment Alex has built for it and the lighting makes this a stellar creation indeed. Alex is quite good at setting a mood in LEGO. Check out what I mean in our archives.

Like this article? Tell all your friends!

Like this article? Tell all your friends!

Like this article? Tell all your friends!

Like this article? Tell all your friends!

Like this article? Tell all your friends!

Like this article? Tell all your friends!

Like this article? Tell all your friends!

Like this article? Tell all your friends!

Like this article? Tell all your friends!

Like this article? Tell all your friends!

Like this article? Tell all your friends!

Like this article? Tell all your friends!