| “Space Cowboy Saturday” is a once a week photo activity on Instagram that you’ll find being used as a hashtag. When you view this there’s a plethora of interpretation what the words meant. When I heard of the word “Space Cowboy” it immediately referred me to the Japanese anime hit series Cowboy Bebop from the late 1990s that featured Spike Spiegel as the aforementioned guy being called with such name.
But the term was used heavily as a hashtag for the day namely a Saturday activity going back to 2017. At that time my interest in LEGO photography was basic random of what set or build I have with me until I got rekindled into the interest for anything LEGO space-related named the Classic theme. |
The Classic Space theme is one of the original sets produced by LEGO from 1978 to 1988 and continued to expand with Space Police series as well as M-Tron and Blacktron themed sets. I only have a glimpse of interest for this theme as most I owned from my childhood are the Town system sets and as an adult is fairly selected sets ranging from City, Creator 3 in 1, with a sprinkle of licensed properties from DC, Marvel, Star Wars, and discontinued themed sets.
I never had any focused interest in what theme from LEGO was really into until I got in Classic Space since the fond memory of having a couple of Classic Spacemen were from a toothpaste promo by Crest toothpaste in the Philippines back in 1983 and that the earliest time I ever acquired two white spacemen and the last I ever owned growing up was purchasing an M-Tron set with my own lunch money at the former Giftgate branch in Harrison Plaza.
Blacktron Cowboy
Lately, it’s the one theme that’s tied my interest with LEGO that has something to do with the space theme regardless if there’s one in City or Creator sets that have them. These challenging times with the pandemic and since everyone struggling with making a living to have that luxury to even purchase a LEGO set I try to go back and see what resource I have to reuse them for my Toy Photography.
The beauty of a LEGO photographer if you have enough parts or Minifigures sometimes you’re unaware that you actually have them to put together an idea or a story for your composition and with the case of Space Cowboy Saturday it is improvised as you piece up something to shoot for the day. Normally I already have Classic Minifigures standing by and I recycle most of the familiar ones and setting them up with what I have been cooking up a few days earlier.
But sometimes they get thrown out of the window when you suddenly discover parts of a Minifigure that can turn into a new character for your story at last minute like the Blacktron Minifigure that I had put together before heading out for an errand. This Minifigure was from the parts of the “Lil Ben” SigFig that Brick Pixel gifted me before flying back to Manila two years ago, which he handed to me during the last SBLUG Meet I have attended. The rest of the parts are from some random vintage Minifigures that SMU Toys sent to me back in 2009.
Fake it ‘til you make it
This phrase has been sort of a mantra that I first heard during my early days in my former day job back in 2004. The phrase works when you’re also trying to produce a composition in putting a Toy Photography post for “Space Cowboy Saturday” on Instagram, which I have been participating in since acquiring my first two Spacemen.
There have been several spots I could use this Minifigure and the go-to place is a park with rocky terrains that would fit with the way this figure is being part of that vast world at the same time you think of also the nature of being a cowboy with a mix of sci-fi theme in it. I rarely use a Minifigure stand and have very little use for visual effects to make the figure appear to fly, hop, or even float.
For this post, I’d go basic and practical without the use of the Pic Mix app in erasing the stand or the piece that supports it from “floating” instead of basically use the terrain to make it appear the figure is moving at a pace while he fires his blaster. To those curious where I got the blaster effect I borrowed it from one of the Transformers War For Cybertron: SIEGE Battle Master figures that came with them. The blaster effect fits snugly into the laser gun of the Retro Space Hero from CMF Series 17.
Overall Composition
At the end of the day, it comes to which best photo to use and I don’t have alternate shots. This is just me because one thing I learned from putting together an image it has to be ONE PHOTO THAT TELLS A STORY in one shot. You can share alternate photos, but it takes out the best one you have chosen in the first place.
This is just my opinion about crafting an image that people will forever associate that particular character or figure. If you put so many versions of this image it does give praise, but it also takes away what you really focused on sharing, namely that single image that defined your work.
But writing a behind-the-scenes reveal of that image will also give insight on the process of how you put it together. There are better images that are being shared on social media. I’m just basically putting this together for myself as an improvised challenge to come up with an idea and I guess this Blacktron certainly is my new favorite character for today’s #SpaceCowboySaturday!
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