A Day In The Life Of Lego Batman [Original Photography]

Hey all

I've been looking at doing some more atmospheric Lego/toy shots in my little home studio. First on my list of things to try is to get some kind of smoke/fog effect in my shots. The perfect way to do this, or so I thought, was with one of those e-cigarette atomizers - they produce really cool smoke. However, I'm not a smoker and I don't really fancy sucking in the smoke and blowing it out onto the mini-set. Not only that, but it doesnt give the best control. So. I got myself an atomizer, a small air pump, and a battery and created my own miniature smoke machine. Details at the bottom of this post. Here are some images I shot with the smoke machine as well as my speedlites and modifiers

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Looking over the smoky streets of Gotham City

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A very tight spotlight and a pool of smoke.

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After a hard days work, there's nothing Batman likes more than sitting down with a hot brew

And here is the smoke machine in action. I wired up the 3.7v battery over the coil in the atomizer, took a spur off this circuit to add the pump and put a switch inline. I joined the pump and the atomizer together with a lot of hot glue and some aquarium tubing. The liquid is just a mix of vegetable glycerine (30%) and water (70%)

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Thanks for looking

Mark



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17 comments
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I love the spotlight image - just cracking. I'm somewhat lacking in drive and imagination for such things but never know, may get my finger out soon. The kids better start tidying their play room soon or I may have to pinch it for a permanent tinkering studio.

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Thanks. Just do it, grab a few flashguns or led lights and do it. In 3 hours I got quite a few images I was happy with.

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Wow these are so cool. Particularly like batman relaxing with mask on and cup of coffee LOL The other two are awesome as well, the smoke and lighting really captures the feel of some of the graphic novels. The mini atomizer is going to be useful for all sorts of cool photography experiments I am sure. I am happy to see these, I thought after some conversation we had a while back that you weren't going to do any more Lego (or at least branded / licensed Lego) photography. Screw the man, these are too cool to keep down!

@tipu curate

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Cheers man. Yeah, I won't be doing any selling of licensed stuff on makersplace for example but it's still a fun thing to do for "non-profit" on here and Insta.

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well that is good to hear. I really enjoy this type of stuff. I have been a major Lego kick last few weeks myself, stayed up until 3am last night working on a spaceship LOL

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That is pretty nice the way you did that, no suitable tool build one. I wish I was that handy like that at times. I do like the spotlighted one, when first viewing, (for me at least), it had an optical illusion of the smoke pulsing.

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Thanks. I like building random stuff to help with effects. I've created water dropping systems and macro rails. All sorts. I like electronics :)

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Mark! I just retrieved some of my oldschool LEGO! I'm gonna see if I can make some epic shots like yours <3

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