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Raya and the Last Dragon

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In this post, I will review the three sets from Disney’s latest movie: Raya and the Last Dragon. These are 43181 Raya and the Heart Palace, 43184 Raya and Sisu Dragon, and 43185 Boun’s Boat. As a fan of both Disney movies and Dragons, I had high expectations for both the movie and the sets. As for my previous reviews, I don’t intend on being exhaustive. Instead, I will focus on what I found interesting from a photographic point of view. If you are looking for generic exhaustive reviews, you can most likely find plenty of them online.

(Note that the sets were provided by our friends at LEGO.)

While this post won’t spoil anything major about the movie, it might still contain light spoilers. (That said, the LEGO sets contain light spoilers themselves.) Still, if spoilers are an issue, I’d recommend not reading this post and go watch the movie first ;-)

Before talking about the sets, I want to focus a bit on the movie.

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Looking back at SiPgoesTT

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Time flies…

We’re reaching the end of the first quarter of 2021, and my last blog post dates back to early December when I wrote about my Elven Harry Potter project for SiPgoesTT. But even though we’ve already announced our project for 2021, we’ve never concluded SiPgoesTT.

The truth is, since December, writing a recap blog post about SiPgoesTT was on top of my to-do list.

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Back at the Elven School of Witchcraft and Wizardry

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In yesterday’s post, I didn’t mention Harry Potter. It’s because my relationship with Harry Potter is complicated. I already talked about it last year. I discovered the book series as a 10-year-old and fell in love with it. But the movies disappointed me. Still, I can’t deny that, alongside the Lord of the Rings, they are the most emblematic fantasy movies of the 21st century.

Originally, we picked Fantasy as the last movie genre of SiPgoesTT as it’s perfect for the holiday season. Last year I had so much fun with the Harry Potter Advent Calendar that I thought it would be ideal to do another project with the Elves as part of SiPgoesTT.

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Imaginations from the other side

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As part of SiPgoesTT, our last movie genre of the year is fantasy.

Fantasy as a movie genre comes from the same genre in literature. It strongly relates to our previous two movie genres: science fiction and horror. The similarity lies in all of them being speculative fiction. The main difference is that fantasy uses myths and folklore as its main source of inspiration. However, it’s not uncommon for the border between them to be blurry with genres such as science fantasy (e.g. Star Wars), steampunk, and dark fantasy (which would include many of the movies listed below).

The Influence of Fantasy

Alongside Adventure, Fantasy is undoubtedly the genre that has had the most influence on my own photography. Do I even need to say more when my most photographed subjects are Elves and Dragons?

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My struggle with Instagram (and social media)

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I struggle with social media. Particularly with Instagram.

It’s been going on for years now. More than once, I wrote a draft for a blog post about it, but never posted any of them. It gradually became worse, but it felt like it couldn’t get any worse during this summer.

I still check Instagram multiple times a day. However, each time I scroll the app on my phone, I feel the same: there’s barely anything interesting. I feel completely disengaged from the platform as a viewer.

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How I failed at recreating one of my toy photos

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Sometimes you make an image that you love, but end up not entirely happy with it. There is a tiny detail that you think is a bit off. You might notice it as soon as you take it. Or it might be years later. Eventually, you decide to attempt to fix it by reshooting the image.

The sad truth is that this is not always a successful endeavor.

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First impressions on the new LEGO Haunted House

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I’ve been lucky to spend the past weekend building, playing with, and photographing the new LEGO 18+ Creator Expert 1073 Haunted House.

A week ago, on Monday, I got a notification from LEGO that a mystery package was on its way. Back then, I had no idea what to expect. Stefan told me it could be the leaked set that was “everywhere” online. As I don’t really follow people sharing leaks, I didn’t know what it was. When I finally saw the photos, I had mixed feelings.

I knew at some point I would have to take photos of the next Fairground set for LEGO. Yet, I had no clue what it would be, and couldn’t really imagine what LEGO could come up after the Ferris Wheel, Carousel, and Roller Coaster.

Even though I’m currently busy taking photos for our friends at LEGO, I want to take a break to share my early thoughts on this set. As I’ve said, my initial reaction to the official pictures was rather mixed. But I also knew I just couldn’t really judge such a set based on images. Now that I’ve had time to build it, play with and look at it over multiple days, I think I can put words on the good, the bad… and the ugly.

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Photographing a modular building

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I love LEGO’s modular building series. But while they’re among my favorite sets, I had never photographed any. They’re great sets to build and look great in Beastburg, my own LEGO city. As an outdoor photographer though, they’re not what usually inspires me to photograph.

However, I didn’t buy the two previous modulars, the Diner, and the Garage. I initially wanted to as they look beautiful, but I ended up making the decision of skipping them. The main reason being that the style is quite different than the previous buildings I own, and thus they wouldn’t fit that well together. (And then there was the other problem that my city would eventually be full…)

But when I saw the first images of this year’s modular, 10270 Bookshop, I knew I’d have to get it. And then it happened that we’d get one for review from LEGO. The idea of challenging myself with photographing yet another type of large LEGO set was planted in my head.

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Road Movie

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Our first theme after resetting SiPgoesTT is Road Movie.

A road movie usually tells the story of one or multiple characters who leave home and go on a road trip. Often, it is all about the protagonist(s) changing and growing from their travel experience along the way. Road movies do not focus on the goal of the trip, but rather the journey itself to reach it.

Road movies have a long tradition in North American culture. This isn’t surprising. Most people in the USA live alongside the two coasts, separated by thousands of kilometers. Quite the opposite of Old Europe, where everyone’s live close to each other.

While travel stories can go back to The Odyssey, it’s the story of Huckleberry Finn in the late 19th Century that inspired the modern concept. It was also popularized during the Golden Age of Hollywood with movie adaptations of classic literature such as The Wizard of Oz and The Grapes of Wrath. Following World War 2, Jack Kerouac’s On The Road also became a significant source of inspiration. It’s then in the late 60s that the concept of road movie became a genre of its own, with classics such as Bonnie and Clyde and Easy Rider.

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Celebrating 4 years of LEGO Pirate Photography with the Pirates of Barracuda Bay

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Today is a special day.
The new LEGO Ideas set, the Pirates of Barracuda Bay, is publicly revealed.

But Sunday, I noticed it’s even more special to me.

For the past 10 days, I’ve been playing with the new Pirates of Barracuda Bay LEGO Ideas set, taking pictures for LEGO. All this in secret. This has been a very special project for me as I have a special relationship with pirates.

And today, on the day I can finally talk about it, it also appears it is the 4th anniversary of one of my favorite photos. The One that changed everything.

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