Using Lego For Creative Photography

Coming up with creative photography ideas is a challenge for all photographers, but one tried and tested source of inspiration is children’s toys. Lego lends itself perfectly to imaginative imagery because it’s strong, adaptable, recognisable and loads of fun!

Let’s dive into our quick guide and show you how to use this brilliant toy to create some great shots that would make a perfect canvas print for your kid’s bedroom wall.

Trying something new can be daunting, so it’s a good idea to start small, right? We recommend picking one Lego figure (let’s call her Jill) and experimenting with her in different scenarios. To begin with, take some shots of Jill on a small table to get a feel for the angles that work best and how light reflects off of her – she’s a lot shinier than a human portrait subject, after all!

To add some drama to your images, you can light Jill with a torch or even use off-camera flash gear. As long as you scale everything down and check your exposures you’ll soon get a feel for the amount of artificial light you need to make this style work. In fact, it’s a perfect genre for practising your strobist skills.

Don’t worry if you don’t have the skills to use off-camera lighting because natural light will still work great… and Jill won’t know the difference!

Because you’re working close-up your depth of field will be quite small, so start at about f/8. That should be plenty to keep Jill in focus and give you some lovely out-of-focus backgrounds. Oh, and a tripod and shutter release will help you keep your images nice and crisp.

Once you feel comfortable with your subject you can think up some scenarios to put Jill into…

Take Jill to the park, zoo or beach – they make great backgrounds!

Have Jill climb in and out of holes looking for adventure

Take her to the city for a day of sightseeing

Introduce her to some new friends – maybe Lego Batman or other superheroes!

Once you get the hang of it, you’ll be coming up with more creative ideas of your own. At that point, you might want to use more Lego to build scenes and experiment with different characters – there really is no end to the possibilities.

We love using Lego for creative photography, and we hope that our enthusiasm rubs off on you and you give this fun genre a go.