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The photos no one will ever see

Maëlick (aka Reiterlied) - 10 Comments

I struggle with social media. I talked about it recently, here and on my own blog.

It’s been over a year now that I’ve had trouble finding the motivation to keep on with the various social media platforms I use(d).

Social Media Tiredness

I’ve been struggling with being active on social media as a viewer.

After a few years, a part of me feels like it’s always the same. I often find myself scrolling through Instagram, simply double tapping a few photos that caught my attention for more than half a second, and then directly jumping to the next one.

There are still many photos that amaze me. At the same time, there are so many photos out there that it’s hard to truly enjoy everything. It takes too much time.

Social media has become to me the fast-food of photography. It has nothing to do with the quality of the photos, but rather the way we consume it. Like fast food, social media is made to be consumed quickly and it doesn’t encourage you to spend enough time to truly enjoy someone else’s photography.

(For enjoying others’ photography, I find meeting with them in the real world, exchanging prints and hanging them at home to be more effective.)

Continue reading “The photos no one will ever see”
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SiP went Paris 2018

Ballou34 - 14 Comments

After several toy Safaris around Europe, in Stockholm, Hamburg, London or Edinburgh, it was time to visit Paris.
It was the second time for us to be in the City of lights, after an exhibition at Le6Brick earlier this year.

#SiPgoesParis2018
#SiPgoesParis2018 – Picture by @Ballou34

The edition of SiPgoesParis 2018 was awesome.
Everyone seems to have enjoyed this event:

20 people from 7 countries (Czech Republic, England, Finland, Germany, Sweden, Turkey and France),
around 50 km of walk during 3 full days,
hundreds of LEGO minifigures,
thousands of pictures taken,
and very little sleep…

But let me share with you a “10-minute” taste of what happened between June 15th and 17th.
Just follow the guide!

Follow the guide
Follow the guide – Picture by @Nutelasabe

The famous monuments

A weekend in Paris means that some stopovers are unavoidable.
We started the weekend at the Eiffel tower. Even though we arrived relatively early to avoid tourists, it was not early enough and we quickly shared the spot with a few wedding photographers.
 Continue reading “SiP went Paris 2018”

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Fun

Maëlick (aka Reiterlied) - 3 Comments

Toy Photography and Fun

At first, fun seemed one of the easiest words of our little project. For me, fun is the main reason why I started both photography and toy photography. Some four years ago, I was looking for a new creative hobby. I ended up buying a camera, and after, I eventually went into the attic looking for my old LEGO collection. It’s been fun since the beginning and only keeps on getting more fun over time.

But because this word is so important to me, coming up with a single photo that best represents it appeared to be more difficult than I thought… Continue reading “Fun”

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SiP goes Scotland was a blast!

stuckinplastic - 8 Comments

SiP went Scotland.

It’s been more than a week since our toy safari in Scotland became history, but we haven’t reported about it on the blog yet. Between the Where is Anton contest, the LEGO House opening, Skaerbaek and the Ninjago Movie madness, it’s finally time to tell you how great this weekend was.

Here’s a little summary of our adventures.

Friday Morning

In the morning the ones to arrive first in Edinburgh met for a quick walk to the castle, while some others tried to fix the transport of the day (an adventure on its own). After some quick lunch and food toy photography, it was time to take the first real dip into the hometown of Harry Potter himself. We managed to visit some of the key Harry Potter locations in the city center such as Victoria Street, Candlemaker Row, and Greyfriars Kirkyard.

The first toy photo of the safari in progress!

Greyfriars Kirkyard

Kirkyard or fancy word for historical graveyard is a toy photographers dream, and before you knew it everyone was exploring locations, leaving no stone unturned. Well, kind of. Continue reading “SiP goes Scotland was a blast!”

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To boldly go …

Jake - 2 Comments

Growing up, and to this day, even, my absolute favorite genre of any media was Sci-fi; I was raised on classics like Star Wars, Trek, The Twilight Zone, etc., so I was very happy when I saw that Series 17 of Lego’s Minifigures had a Retro Spaceman, and even more excited to have the opportunity to review him for Stuck In Plastic!

Space themes are nothing new to Lego, especially the Minifigure range which seems to more often than not have at least one space related figure per series. However, this is the first mini figure that’s themed on early/mid-20th-century sci-fi designs, and I have to say, Lego did a great job with this Minifigure!

Right out of the bag, our spacefaring friend comes equipped with his helmet, his ray-gun (both of which are new molds to my knowledge), and his cape (which I personally think he looks better without). Continue reading “To boldly go …”

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For whom?

kalexanderson - 4 Comments

What part does the viewer play in the art of photography? What do you want the viewer to see?  When I wrote my blog post “Why” the other day, I got a question from Reggie about how to get a bigger audience for once toy-photographs. And that got me reflecting on “for whom am I doing this?”

And what part does the audience play in my photography? Continue reading “For whom?”

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The Best Thing About Locations

Avanaut - Leave a reply

Some of you may have noticed a small change of style in my recent photos on Instagram and Flickr. Yes, I bought myself an underwater camera and I love it!

The Lego Deep Sea Explorer on a practice mission in the cold waters of a lake somewhere in Finland

Continue reading “The Best Thing About Locations”

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Bring a Friend

Avanaut - 8 Comments

I have liked to bring little friends with me to the trips I’ve made over the past few years. I don’t like to bring too much, usually just a few Lego minifigures, or an action figure or two, not more than I can fit in an old eyeglass case that I can carry around in my pocket. If there’s time and I feel like it, I go for some freewheeling photographs with what I got.

My own favourite is the series of photographs I took with my phone a couple of years ago with an impromptu traveling companion IG-88. That storyline came up unplanned and unfolded by itself and the entire shoot was completely effortless. One shot per day.

Last year it was an Indiana Jones Lego minifigure. There were some nice individual images but no storyline like it was with Iggy.

Anyway, this summer I decided to bring a bigger friend with me to our family trip, bigger than an eyeglass case. My Action Man figure with frogman gear (gear looted from the kid’s stash) was my choice.

I admit, I carried some Lego too.

I was going to do this last year already but I did not have the camera for it and I dropped the idea. It was a mistake because I experienced a spectacular timeless day snorkeling in this beautiful little cove with nobody else in sight but us. It would’ve been a perfect place to shoot.

This time the beach we were in for a few days of our trip was not good for this kind of photography, the waters were not clear and it was all sand. We decided to take a little boat trip to a nearby island for some snorkeling and sure enough, it looked really good for shooting some photographs too. Only, we made some miscalculations with our schedules and when I was about to go for the shoot I realized we had only about an hour before we were supposed to get back to the boat off the island.

I grabbed the Action Man and plunged in with my camera and quickly shot a few dozen exposures while the waves kept ripping the facemask and regulator off of the figure. That ruined a lot of frames but not all of them.

This was a nice catch. I saw those tiny bubbles coming from the air supply and I quickly aimed the camera at the figure hoping it would focus right. It did, but I aimed too high and the feet were cut out. It’s not too bad, though, I kinda like the framing, it works when cropped to a widescreen ratio.

It’s a good start, I think. Yes, a start, because I’m going to go for more as soon as I can. I loved this!