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Ella Antoine '27 adds a plastic snake and plants in the flower bed outside Olive Cottage. After positioning them just so, she brings in her model — a 1.5-inch tall, yellow LEGO man wearing a button-down shirt, sunglasses, and a fedora. She crouches down, zooms in, and carefully captures her shot with her iPhone. She adjusts her angle, takes more pictures, and adds a few props before wrapping the shoot.

“I never thought I would be taking pictures of LEGO Minifigures,” says Ella.

Pomfret’s iPhoneography class teaches students the ins and outs of using the camera on their smartphone. Students engage in a series of assignments that explore the intricacies of light and shadows, self-portraiture, panoramic vistas, and macro and micro photography. 

After Ella picks up the LEGO pieces, she edits her photos in Adobe Lightroom to enhance her images. In a picnic scene she captured, she enhanced the colors to make them more vivid and pop off the bricks that she selected as a backdrop to imitate a picnic blanket. 

The purpose of the LEGO assignment was to capture a storyline in which the Minifigures appear. The Minifigures should not be seen as toys but instead require the viewers to suspend their disbelief as the LEGO characters interact with the background. “It’s all about perspective,” says Ella. 

In a photo taken by Chloe Galvin ’26, two Minifigures wearing sweatshirts and athletic apparel are positioned on some rocks. The image is taken from below to create the illusion that the characters are rock climbing.

Sean Rhatigan ’25 photographed his Minifigure lumberjack with an ax, safety vest, and hard hat. Surrounding the LEGO man are broken twigs in the foreground, and a tree is in the background. Sean also picked out a Spider-Man Minifigure and a piece of string. He carefully captured a picture of Spider-Man swinging from the string — a substitute for the superhero’s web shooter capabilities. “It took a little while to get the focus right, but I used the techniques that I learned in class and turned off the macro lens to capture the image I was hoping for,” he says.  

Learning how to harness the capabilities of the smartphone’s camera will help our student photographers hone their craft. “I love photography. It is my favorite form of art,” shares Sean, who has taken many photography classes at Pomfret. There are so many different things a DSLR camera can capture, but you don’t always have one with you. You can, however, quickly pull out your phone and take a great photo when you see a beautiful sunset.” 
 

See more photos from the assignment

 

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