I'm a photographer, my son is a Lego fanatic, it only seems natural the two should meet.
My son, Benjamin, has a special affinity for Star Wars Legos. He seems to spend most of his free time building, disassembling, and rebuilding them. He loves to setup different scenes from the movies and Clone Wars TV show. Over the Christmas Holiday he ended up with two new Battle Packs - set 7913 Clone Trooper Battle Pack and set 7914 Mandalorian Battle Pack. He informed me that these two sets go together and make up a scene from the end of season 3 of the Clone Wars. There is supposed to be a huge battle on Mandalore between the Mandalorian group Death Watch and The Clone Army.
We decided it would be fun to take pictures of the scenes he sets up to document all the creative ways he uses his Legos. This sounded like a fun project we could work on together, so we decided to go ahead with it. I did a little research online and found that there are quite a few Lego A Day sites that showcase some amazing work and imagination with Legos. We decided it would be fun to create a blog that we could keep these photos online for other family members to view as well. We also talked about doing some Stop Motion movies with his Star Wars Legos and began researching the best software to use for this.
As with many things in life, what started as a simple project, quickly became complex and labor intensive! We decided for the time being to focus our energy on photographs and then maybe explore Stop Motion over the summer when we will hopefully have a little more time. However, we decided that instead of just taking random photos that appear in most 365 day Lego projects, we will take more of a storyboard approach to our project. We will attempt to tell a story over time with each photo adding to the last. Maybe, just maybe, these photos will be the foundation of our Stop Motion movies this summer. At the moment, it all sounds good.
In addition to photography, I like to add special effects to photos and movies using some of the industry standard software such as Photoshop, After Effects and Red Giant plugins. As a result, most images will probably be jazzed up a bit - hope you like it!
I'd like to say that I could do a 365 photo a day project, but that probably won't happen. My goal for this blog is to post a new image on Tuesday and/or Thursdays. We'll see how that goes. Expect the first post this Thursday. Our story will revolve around the aforementioned battle packs and their ongoing struggle to gain control of the Taylor household. If you're a Lego and/or Star Wars fan, enjoy the ride and stop by often to see how the Troopers are doing.
And so it begins, The Lego Project...
James & Benjamin Taylor
