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| Photo credit: Benedek Lampert |
Toy photographer Benedek Lampert is at it again with another epic scene mimicking real life. In 2022, we shared Lampert’s Lego Eiffel Tower photograph, which looked like it could be the real thing due to the use of forced perspective and other tricks. This time, he set out to recreate the Endurance, the ship used by Sir Ernest Shackleton and his crew in the 1914 expedition aimed at crossing the Antarctic continent for the first time.
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| Photo credit: Benedek Lampert |
The story of that expedition is a remarkable tale of survival. The Endurance became trapped in pack ice in the Weddell Sea in 1915, eventually getting crushed by the ice and sinking, leaving the crew without a ship. Despite that, the entire 28-man crew managed to survive after a year and a half on the ice and an 800-mile journey in an open lifeboat by some of the men in a quest to get help. The wreckage of the Endurance was finally rediscovered in 2022, 107 years after the crew abandoned ship.
When setting out to recreate this expedition using Lego, Lampert researched the journey and referenced archive photos taken by official expedition photographer Frank Hurley. Lampert’s goal was to create a historically accurate scene, which involved paying attention to details and recreating actual events. He started with the Lego Endurance kit, a 3011-piece Lego set. While he explained that the original set is beautiful, it lacked the ropes covering real-life sailing ships. So, he added ropes to create a more lifelike model. He also removed the sails since the actual photos of the trapped ship showed those were not in place.
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| A behind-the-scenes look at Lampert’s setup. Photo credit: Benedek Lampert |
Lampert got creative with materials during the shoot to create the setting for the ship. He used powdered sugar as snow and ice and painted foam board for icebergs. A fog machine came into play to create a more dramatic atmosphere. Lampert even went so far as to use real fire for a campfire and lit a Lego brick with an LED to create a lantern. In terms of photography equipment, Lampert used a Nikon D750 camera. He used both a Nikkor 24-78mm F2.8 lens and a Laowa 15mm F4 macro lens.
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| Photo credit: Benedek Lampert |
One of the biggest challenges Lampert said he encountered was lighting. He explained that with toy photography as a whole, “in the same diorama, a poorly lit scene may indeed look like just a toy, while with different lighting, it can appear completely lifelike.” As a result, he said he experimented a lot with the lights while analyzing Frank Hurley’s photographs to recreate the same Antarctic light on his tabletop setup. Finally, Lampert relied on overlays to create a more dramatic, historical look. All in all, Lampert’s attention to detail and dedication to his craft are impressive, and the resulting images clearly show his creativity.
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This article comes from DP Review and can be read on the original site.
