Most of my early photographs in Flickr, which is the platform of my beginnings, are not that much about the photographs themselves but more like a series of enthusiastic experiments with lights and techniques.
Before the spring of 2009 I didn’t know the world of toyphotography existed, it was all new to me and I pored over the photographs I found online. I looked up everything and realized there were things that were being done and things that weren’t. Smokes and snow was a virgin territory and that’s where I went.
First it was smokes, mists and laser beams with action figures, then, in the fall of 2009 came the Lego and snow.
My One photograph is from December 6, 2009, uploaded to Flickr on the 7th. It’s a crummy photo, noisy, out of focus (the camera I had then, Canon 400D, had a focus through viewfinder only and I never seemed to get it’s diopter adjustment to work right), because of that, I sometimes have wished I had not uploaded it at all.
This is a special photograph for two reasons, however, and that’s why I chose it for my One.
First, I included a behind-the-scenes photograph to go with the post. I knew my technique could be something that people might find interesting because I had received a lot of questions of how I made the snow photos. I thought I’d open the technique for anyone willing to give it a go.
I was right, the post caught the attention of Jesus Diaz of gizmodo.com and he made a post about it.
The result was a chaos that lasted about a week. My views went up to a million per day (only for one day, though) and my mail went crazy. I had never experienced anything remotely like that and it was very confusing, scary even. I could not work during those days, all my time was spent on responding mails.
After five and a half years I still get questions and comments on photographing under water, but in reality my last snowfall photographed with water was on December 22, 2009, less than two weeks after the One.
The snow (along with the smoke) became my signature technique, I perfected it with baking powder about a month later with a snowtrooper image I use as my online avatar even today. This, after testing with powdered sugar and talcum powder first, they were horrible to work with.
For a while I was alone in the blizzards of Hoth, these days I have plenty of friends there.
Full time illustrator, part time photographer. As such, I created blizzards with Star Wars Lego and had an influence on how The Lego Movie looks like.
