FIRST PLACE: “THE ROAD MUST BE TROD, BUT IT WILL BE VERY HARD. AND NEITHER STRENGTH NOR WISDOM WILL CARRY US FAR UPON IT” BY TOM MILTON

Prize: Andy Warhol’s Marilyn Monroe LEGO® Art set

I am an artist and designer from Bristol, UK. I’ve been taking toy photographs for many years now, including LEGO minifigures, six inch scale action figures and miniature spaceship models. I’m a huge fan of practical effects such as light painting and intentional camera movement. But I particularly like to photograph in anamorphic, with a wider aspect ratio and a truly cinematic feel. I think of myself as something of a hobbyist movie maker, telling small snippets of stories with my camera and my toys.

“The road must be trod, but it will be hard. And neither strength nor wisdom will carry us far upon it”. This quote is the first part from a passage in The Fellowship of the Ring. It struck a cord with me due to the nature of how I took this photograph, and just seemed the appropriate title.

I love taking toy photos on location and this one was pretty special. It was three quarters of the way up Mount Snowdon, the largest mountain in Wales, UK, so I can certainly say with a smile that wisdom was out of the question.

One of the major challenges was to get focus throughout the image so there is some focus stacking taking place so each of the Fellowship are sharp and the surrounding mountains of Snowdonia are also clean and crisp. I really enjoyed the challenge of getting these two dramatically different scales to work together in the same photograph. –Tom Milton

Once again, we want to extend a huge thank you to everyone that participated by sharing a photo, joining a discussion, or showing support for your fellow photographers in the LEGO® Build and Capture photo group. We invite you to check out everyone that participated and fave, share and create galleries with your favorites!

A special thank you also goes out to Four Bricks Tall for her help on the judging panel. You can check out her LEGO® photography here.

To watch the recording of the announcement of the winners, visit the SmugMug Live YouTube here.

If you enjoyed participating in this contest or browsing through all of the awesome entries – we invite you to check out the the annual “Your Best Shot” group to share your best shot of 2021. We hope to see you there!