Tuesday, September 16, 2014

Avanaut

"The First Attempt" by Avanaut

Why do I take photographs of Lego? That is a question that took me by surprise a couple of weeks ago. I realized I had never asked myself that question before. Finding the answer was not easy, and it took a brief conversation with my wife for me to see it.

I am photographing Lego because I am a never-was movie director making a living outside the movie industry. That's what my wife said, and it pretty much sums it up. See, I always loved movies. Star Wars, obviously, was huge, but many others as well, classics and contemporary. As a kid I made some movies myself with my dad's Super-8 film camera, but film was expensive and my dad did not allow me to hack the camera's filmport to produce a widescreen format picture. My movies were not very good; a widescreen wouldn't have improved them, but still. I would build miniature sets and models to shoot, but the miserable camera could not focus on anything, since it had no macro. I grew up watching great movies and reading all about them. As a teenager I subscribed to Starlog, Cinemagic, and Cinefantastique. Cinefex, Premiere and Empire came along a little later. I'm soaked with that stuff; it's in my DNA. I sometimes dream in 2.39:1.

That was a long time ago.

When I stumbled into photographing Lego Star Wars in 2009, I quickly connected to those times when I dreamed of making movies. I soon incorporated into the photos many of the cinematic ideas I had toyed with in my youth: widescreen, smoke, aerial particles, snow, blizzards, tight closeups and stories -- the short stories that I like to write to go with the photos. I think this through via cinema; even my "Leftovers & Alternatives" album in Flickr is allegoric to a DVD "deleted scenes" extra. Lego is a perfect medium for all this. It's playful, and there's so much to choose from. You can have a minifigure on a piece of a coloured paper and still make a strong photo with that; yet there's everything from a coffee cup to the Death Star to add, if you like.

This soon became a sort of creativity outlet, a free turf to express ideas I could not use in my day job as an illustrator. I see my photographs as single-frame plays I can write, produce, direct and shoot, but with characters and concepts I grew up with. In a way, I'm exploring an unfulfilled career path, but with Lego and present day tools, like the DSLR camera. It's old but it's new. It's perfect!

~ Vesa Lehtimäki

"Breaking in the Tauntaun (Revised & Rejected) by Avanaut 
"Last Ship to Rendezvous Point" by Avanaut

4 comments:

  1. A great read. Thank you for sharing.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Excellent read and great insight! Thank you for sharing!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you! We all have our unique backgrounds which determines how we look at things. All valuable, all interesting.

      Delete