Automotive photographer Dominic Fraser recreates iconic Porsche moments at home using Lego and his cameras while unable to travel for work due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Thanks to a mammoth amount of global events being canceled coupled with COVID-19 travel restrictions, many in creative industries who would usually be covering the events or out on photoshoots have found themselves grounded at home with more spare time on their hands than usual.

While some photographers are using the time to create curated print collections based on an impressive backlog of photography archives, others like automotive photographer Dominic Fraser have found new ways to put the camera to work.

Normally traveling the world shooting life-size cars for most of his 20 year automotive photography career, Dominic has instead turned his attention closer to home and to something MUCH smaller in size – Lego size to be precise.

Inspired by his children’s Lego sets, Dominic decided to recreate some of Porsche’s most iconic shots from motoring history using the colorful Lego Speed Champion sets and his Sony cameras.

“I’ve got house full of cameras that weren’t doing anything and I found it incredibly frustrating because all I wanted to do was create something,” explains Fraser. “Rather than doing nothing, I decided to use Lego’s Speed Champions models to try to re-create some of my favourite images from motoring history. I started with Audi and the quattro because we had that particular Lego in the house, but then I decided to model a series of Porsche images because the cars and the pictures are so iconic.”

While shooting cars on the job is second nature by now to Dominic, photographing the Lego car set-ups posed an entirely different set of challenges that needed to be solved in a new way to achieve the desired outcomes.

On the process of recreating a “Legofied” version of a specific photograph, Dominic commented, “Once I’ve settled on an iconic shot to recreate, I study the details and think about what I can actually see. It’s amazing how much the brain fills in gaps with a normal photo, but with the Lego images it’s a bit different.

“If anything, it’s helped my photography because I’ve really had to think about the technicalities of the shot, and to visualise exactly what I’m trying to capture,” he says. “It’s been a more conceptual process than I’m used to with actual cars – in real life, you shoot much more in the moment.”

For those keen to know exactly how he did it, Dominic has been kind enough to share the behind-the-scenes “magic” it took to create the images.

The Porsche 919 Hybrid in the Pit Garage

“To recreate the image of the 919 Hybrid in the pit garage, I had to think long and hard about the technicalities of the shot and what I was trying to capture. There’s no track so I can discount that, even though I know it’s there, and the grandstand is miles away.

“With the Lego, I needed to bring the grandstand closer and then play with focal lengths because the recreation needs to have as many elements in focus as possible. In real life, you can blur the grandstand out and the reader’s brain will fill that gap with its assumed knowledge. Not so with tiny plastic bricks.”

“I also needed to position things so that they look correct in the camera frame. There’s a lot of trial and error to make sure the scene looks realistic – the lighting angle is really important so if you’re trying this at home, pay close attention to where the sun is. The lighting position is vital for replicating a shot – especially this one – so I positioned a torch to mimic the sun peeking through at the top of the frame.”

“None of this impacts the photographer on a real shoot because they are just focusing on the moment, but when you have to actually build the scene, it makes a massive difference.”

The Porsche 917K at the Goodwood Festival of Speed

“The first thing I did to recreate this image was to make sure the whole set felt correct. The startline at the Goodwood Festival of Speed is so iconic that you can sometimes forget the details that make up the scene – I’ve been there loads of times but still had to remind myself. Simply by building the straw bales and tress, along with the start gantry, you instantly create that sense of Goodwood.

“Then it was a case of applying some of the skills I’ve learnt in my day job to create a way to take a car-to-car tracking shot, but in miniature. The blur comes from a slow shutter speed and a camera mounted on a tracking ‘car’ running ahead of the 917 – just as it would in life size. To ensure everything stayed in focus, I tied a piece of string between the 917 and the camera car so that the two were pulled along at exactly the same speed. Afterwards, I simply removed the makeshift tow-rope with editing software.

“I was quite pleased as this was the only ‘post’ alteration that I had to do. Unlike in reality, no shots were made up of several photographs comp’d together, and there was no need for special editing effects.”

The Jumping Porsche 930 Turbo

“If you look closely at the iconic 930 Turbo image – originally shot by Jeff Zwart and famously appearing as a backdrop in the US sitcom ‘Seinfeld’ – you’ll see the car kicks up some dust in the original photo. I really wanted to show that in the Lego shot because it would make my recreation even more realistic. I sprinkled some grit over the Lego floor and then used a camera sensor blower to ‘puff’ the dirt into the air.

“It’s important to think about the background in your image. The original shot I was working on here has a blurred-out landscape so I decided to set this scene up in my garden. The bushes at the bottom of my garden are the right shade of green and because they’re far enough away, I managed to blur them out so that you can’t make them out in any detail – just like in the original.

“The final trick with this image relates to the wheels. When a car jumps in real life, the wheels drop out of the arches because the suspension drops. Lego models don’t have any springs or dampers, so to make the wheels appear lower, I built a second ‘false’ floor. It was then simply a case of suspending the car with some string – which I edited out afterwards using Photoshop – and pressing the camera shutter release. It’s these little details that aren’t easy to spot at first but they make all the difference in a realistic recreation.

And Dominic’s final word of advice for anyone considering this as a new hobby…..

“If anyone wants to try this at home I recommend using a pair of tweezers to put the stickers on: it’s time consuming but worth it because when you’re focused on the car in such detail, you notice when something isn’t quite right.”

For those who don’t have the patience but love the outcome – you’re in luck as you can purchase a few of Dominic’s lego recreations as prints over at his website.