When I first saw the photos of Vesa Lethimäki, I was pretty impressed. I have not seen any pictures of Lego minifigures, that looked so realistic and charming. His talent was also discovered by many others and even Lego approached him and worked together with Vesa for the Lego versions of „Lord of the Ring“ and „The Hobbit“. Now, I had the chance to talk with him about his work, his technique and the „Lego Movie“.

Tell us something about you, what you do and your artistic work.

I’m a designer/illustrator by profession. I lost drawing to work and I had to come up with another hobby, so I bought a camera.

What is your background?

I have an MA in arts and I’ve spent a large portion of my work life designing for journalism in magazines and television. Worked also as an illustrator for a long time since late 1980’s, full time from 2006.

What picture would you show to people to show them what your photos are about?

I’d like to show two photographs because there are two apparent lines, or styles, in what I do.

First The Art of the Frigid Plains of Hoth, a photograph I took in March 2014. I like to try new things, ideas I have not seen elsewhere, experimenting with new stuff does not always work, but I am happy with this one. It is perhaps not the single most interesting photograph I’ve taken but it has all the elements I’d like to think are my own. The Lego on Hoth series came about when fooling around with the Lego sets we had in our home in 2009, there were items that were from Hoth of the Empire Strikes Back. I realized I had not seen any falling snow or blizzards in Lego photographs and I set out to make some, Hoth was the perfect testbed. After a few trials and errors I found that baking powder was an unparalleled substitute for snow in this scale and I made some nice photographs with the technique. Now, there are others that make these blizzard shots these days and I just needed to push this further to make them stand out, I want to go my own way and do something others haven’t. I added ice to the blizzard, as I had not seen that before either, well, not like this, and certainly not as a controlled sculpture. This photograph is, perhaps, the perfect example of my philosophy in doing anything, I am not always content if I walk a trodden path.

I try hard not to replicate what others have done, claiming to come up with something I haven’t is low by any standard and I could never take pleasure from that. Still, having said that, I do photograph things in a way I know I am not the first and only one to do, the Casual Parking is the perfect example. I have toyed with the idea of having spaceships in real environment since childhood, I’ve made some Super-8 movie experiments of this in early 1980’s (total failures!), and I even took some photographs back then as well (like this rare survivor, a Lego photo from 1979 or 1980), but with a camera that had no macro whatsoever. It took me a long time to return to those old ideas as I got around to actually photographing miniatures again no sooner than in February 2012. Now, I am not saying I had this in my head as it is, there were ideas but I couldn’t pin them down and make use of them, I was getting close, though. Then I discovered the work of Cédric Delsaux and realized he had already done what I had circled around for all those years. It was such a devastating moment, I was discouraged and I decided to quit on the subject altogether. After some soul searching, however, I figured if I made sure I do not lead people on, and if shifted my idea closer to my wintery world, just a touch away from what Delsaux did, if I was open and honest about it I just might have enough room to have a little fun and enjoy photographing the miniatures. I’ve since made some more Y-wing photographs and some Millennium Falcon photographs but I’ve also made sure people know about Delsaux, Michael Paul Smith and Bill George. They are an inspiration and they were there before me.

What does inspire you?

Honesty, creativity and originality. I am enchanted by people who are open and come up with something I have not seen before, be it a new look to a familiar subject or a classic look on a new subject does not really matter, all I need is that it surprises me. I am also inspired by music, I cannot work without music, anything goes from classical to Punk rock. As long as it’s good, I listen to it while working.

When and how did you come up with the idea of taking photographs of toys and Lego?

It was a coincidence, really. I was documenting our kid’s toys with photography, just to make sure there is a photograph of them before they break or vanish. When I got to the Star Wars toys my own background as a movie freak and youth as a Star Wars fan kicked in and I just got carried away. I guess I’ve had it in me all my life, with this it just came out… again.

How do you come up with your ideas for the shootings of the Star Wars figures?

The photography I upload to Flickr is the result of me simply having a good time, I find photographing these things a very relaxing way to express oneself without the pressure and expectations of real life work assignments. It’s like a creativity outlet, the ideas just come to me from a life-long relationship with the characters and concepts that make Star Wars. It’s totally effortless, if there is no time to play with these things I simply do not upload, there’s no obligation.

Your pictures give me the feeling, that there is life in them. On the internet I read, that you use your own technique called „Forced Atmospheric Perspective Photography“. How does this work and help for the look?

The „Forced Atmospheric Perspective Photography“ term is something I made up, I think it describes pretty well one of the discoveries I’ve made during photographing the toys. You can scale pretty much everything down (except water and fire) and make a nice photograph of it, but at one point I realized that in relation to the scaled down elements there is one detail that is always overlooked and thus doesn’t scale down along with the rest – and that is air. I densified air with smoke and whatnot to scale it down and created forced depth, a „Forced Atmospheric Perspective“, if you will. I think it worked well. It is, of course an old technique moviemakers and animators have used for ages, I just applied it to something I haven’t seen it used for before.

How much is done in post? And how much time does one photo take?

Not much done in post except removal of dust, support rods or threads. I do adjust colours and contrast, of course, but I do not add anything to the photos once they’ve been taken. Except when it’s obviously needed, like the Star Wars scale model shots, they’re photocomposites. But even with them, all the lights and such are built in the model, they’re not photoshopped in afterwards.

I’ve read, that Craig Welsh, who worked on the „Lego Movie“, approached you and asked for your expertise. Have you seen the finished movie? What do you think of it from your artistic point of view?

Actually I talked mostly with Grant Freckelton, it was not really a technical thing but rather a philosophical approach on how to densify space in miniature photograph. Everything about this experience has been a thrill for me.

I saw the movie and I liked it a lot. I found it astonishing how they managed to avoid chaos and build a cohesive world out of the gazillion bricks they used.

As one of the last questions: What website, book or artist can you recommend to everybody?

I have some photographers I follow, I just love Michael Paul Smith’s automobile photographs, as mentioned earlier, and of course the Cédric Delsaux Black Lens project and Bill George’s work. I am constantly impressed by the Lego works of Chris McVeigh, and Mike Stimpson always puts a smile on my face. In Instagram I find many a charming photographers, Smokebelch2 and leahminium being closest to my heart, I guess. I like books as well, Star Wars Chronicles is just excellent if you like the filming miniatures from the original movies, Sculpting a Galaxy is another great book on the subject. But perhaps one of my all-time favourite books of this genre is J.W. Rinzler’s Making of Star Wars, trust me, that book has it all!

What‘s your message for the world?
Make love not war. I know, it’s a classic but relevant every day.

Go to Vesa’s Flickr account Avanaut, where you can get lost for hours clicking through his awesome pictures. You should also check out Avanaut on Twitter and Facebook.