I used a smoke machine to photograph Lego and the result was cinematic.

If you’re a film buff with dreams of capturing cinematic scenes, then without the need to hire an army of actors, set designers and practical effects crew, or start a career as a still photographer, cinematic toy photography will be just as close. how are you going to get. So when I decided to photograph the queen fighting a fire dragon, I attached the best macro lens I could find to my camera and turned to everyone’s favorite Lego.

I used a Lego Lion Knight Castle as the backdrop for my fantasy scene, but with a little creativity you can use any Lego sets or figures you may have laying around. And while a large kit gives you more freedom, a little creativity and thinking outside the box can make even a small setup work just as well.

Although I used a little Photoshop magic to enhance this image by adding flames shooting out of the dragon’s mouth and some embers, the lion’s share of the special effects were practical. To create the smoke I used the PMI Gear Smoke Ninja portable smoke machine. And the bokeh used to simulate flames is simply crumpled pieces of aluminum foil placed very close to the camera, reflecting orange and red light from the best LED panels for photography.

You can use twisted sheets of aluminum foil to reflect light and create bokeh, simulating a flame. Make sure the shiny side is on the outside and position the foil far enough away from the focus point so that it turns into attractive bokeh discs. This means placing it far enough in the foreground or background (I did both). A neat trick is to place a couple of layers of aluminum foil in the foreground to create different sized discs with a bokeh effect. This will add depth to your artificial fire. I used a tripod to hold the foil in front of the lens.

I placed a key light and a fill light on either side of the setup, pointed a red LED at the foreground foil, and a second red LED (hidden behind the lock) at the background foil. LED panels are a great choice because they are not too bright; otherwise it’s easy to flood close-up subjects with too much light. Models like my Lume Cube RGB Panel Pro 2.0 let you emit a variety of colors. If you don’t have colored bulbs, gels will work. And if you don’t have dedicated lighting, get creative with flashlights, lamps, and even a red light on your headlamp.

Working on a tripod will allow you to fine-tune your composition and free your hands to adjust the lighting and control the smoke machine. This way, you don’t have to worry too much about the shutter speed as long as it’s short enough to freeze any clouds of smoke. Keep your ISO low to maintain the best possible image quality. Macro photographers often choose a fairly narrow aperture, but I settled on f/8. This provided enough depth of field to make my subjects sharp, but still provided plenty of blurry bokeh.

I used a 90mm macro lens, but any close focusing lens will do. Unless you’re using a modern macro lens like the Nikon Z MC 105mm f/2.8 VR S, you might want to skip autofocus altogether and focus manually. I placed the dragon and queen in the same focal plane so that they would both be sharp, even with the shallow depth of field of my macro lens. While focusing, use Live View zoom to improve focus. Even if you use autofocus, it’s still best to zoom in on Live View after locking it to check critical focus.

It can be difficult to direct the smoke stream where you want it to go. Turn on the smoke machine, take a few photos, wait for the smoke to clear, and repeat. Then select four or five images with attractive feathers all over the frame and open them in the same Photoshop document. Use the best image as the top layer, then place the image with the smoke trail you want to add on top and add a layer mask. Invert it (Cmd/Ctrl+I) and use a soft white brush to selectively paint the feathers. Repeat this process with other images until you are happy.

Complete the fiery scene by adding a few embers in post-production. The easiest way to do this is to visit a royalty-free stock image website like Pixabay. I used image 3332789. The black background is critical because when you import it into Photoshop and resize it accordingly, you need to change the blend mode to Screen to make the black background disappear. Add a layer mask and use a black brush to paint over unwanted parts of the image. I used the same process for the dragon’s mouth fire (4177539).

I used a smoke machine to photograph Lego and the result was cinematic.

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