Many of us take our toy photos, and post them online, and that is the end. The photos live and die there. They exist on the internet, in our phones on our computers and that is it. Many of us don’t even print our photographs. For those of you who don’t know the reason I started toy photography was to recreate my life with my husband in LEGO for our first Christmas married. It was the gift of photography. And that is what this article is about. It’s one thing to post your toy photos on social media, it’s a whole other thing to give it as a gift. Seeing the smile on people’s faces when they see an image that means something to them is priceless. Use your skills, take your incredible photos, and gift them. You never know what gifting that image would mean to someone. I don’t do it nearly as often as I should. Find one person to give the gift of photography to.
What Is The Gift Of Photography?
Back in 2015, I recreated my life with my husband with two minifigures and my camera. It was my first attempt at toy photography. The purpose was to create a photo album of our lives and give it to him as a Christmas gift. Since then, I’ve continued that tradition of giving my toy photography as gifts and you can to. Back in 2020, I watched a YouTube video by Peter McKinnon called The Gift Of Photography. What I took from it is that we all have the potential to give photography as a meaningful gift. Now, in Peter’s video he’s mostly talking about giving documentary-style photos and printing them for your friends and family. Which of course you can do, but since this is a toy photo blog, this is what I’ll be talking about here. As toy photographers, we can be giving the gift of toy photography in a very unique way
When it comes to gift giving photography, I tend to think of it in two categories, especially toy photography. The first type is physically gifting your work as a greeting card with a photo or printing it as an art piece. It can range from the greeting cards you see on the shelves to printing your photography as a poster or a canvas to be placed on a wall. This is a physical gift. The other kind is using your toy photography skills to create a photo for a specific person.
Making Your Own Cards
Greeting cards are perhaps the easiest way to give your toy photography as a gift. Whether it’s creating your own Christmas cards, and mailing them out or handing out your own Valentine’s cards. It’s a great way to share your toy photography with others. For me, it’s one of the joys of toy photography. There’s something so cool about making your own Hallmark card that looks like you bought it in the store or creating your own postcard and mailing it out to friends and family. One of my favorite things about Christmas time is receiving and sending out Toy Photo Christmas cards to and from fellow toy photographers. But, one of my favorite things to do is make Toy Photo Valentine’s Day Cards to hand out to my friends and family.
Tips For Creating Valentine’s Day Cards
These tips are specifically for creating greeting cards that you intend to print in bulk to hand out. The kind you would bring to school and hand out to your classmates. Not the thicker kind you’d mail out or give on someone’s birthday. Those are printed differently and I’ll give some quick tips on that later.
Back to the Valentine’s first snap or collect a bunch of photos you’ve taken you think would make a good card. Edit them how you normally would. Then create the cards themselves. I tend to use Google Slides or PowerPoint, but there are plenty of other create-your-own-cards sources, like Canva and even Adobe Illustrator. For me I like to use Slides, because I can create a template with a bunch of cards on one slide and print ten copies and I have hundreds of cards to hand out. The amount I can print and inexpensively is important to me as I work at a hospital and want to give cards out to as many as the staff as possible. Here’s a link to my greeting card template on Google Slides. Once I have my cards printed out I cut them out with a straight-edged paper cutter and I’m ready to hand out the cards.
When it comes to making Christmas cards or Postcards – I usually use a website like Moo or Shutterfly to create personalized cards. This is obviously a much bigger expense and I would not recommend using that to print Valentine’s Day Cards. However, it is great for mailing out Holiday Cards at the end of the year.
I always have a good time making these, but what I like most is giving them out to my friends and co-workers, for a lot of people they’ve not received a Valentine’s Day card from someone since grade school and it always brings a smile to their faces. And I highly recommend doing this. There’s something so joyful about handing someone a card you made yourself. I tend to write personalized messages on my cards also. Here’s a video of me handing my co-worker a card. I made a joke and said “Brick Drop” and drop the Lego card on her desk – we laughed the whole day. It’s moments like those that only come from gifting your toy photography.
Making Your Own Poster / Art Piece
This is as simple as printing your photography as a display and giving it as a gift. With this, I think about who I am printing this out for. I recently created a photo specifically for my friends’ baby shower and printed it on one of those square canvas photos, so that they can put it in their baby’s room. Maybe, your friend really likes Batman – then you can print them on of your Batman photos to be displayed. And to make it even more special – maybe write them a note. For some people, giving your work to someone to display as an art piece might seem egotistical and maybe it is. But, with a gift its about the sentiment. If you are giving someone something you know they’d like because you took the time to make them something special and specific to them using your photography skills then to me that is a beautiful thing. Printing your own poster or canvas printing is the same as it would be to print any photo that you’d hang up. The point is that you can use your toy photography skills, create something meaningful, and print it to give as a gift.
Some quick tips- make sure to use high-quality photos – now that I’ve been printing more I realized I should be saving and taking my photos using the best possible settings.
Pictured above is my co-worker and friend Grover. He is one of the three people who was in the room with me the day I decided to start toy photography. He was sitting right behind me when I practiced toy photography for the first time. When he got an opportunity to work somewhere else I gifted him a Batman photo I took from my first true year of Toy Photography. I printed it as a poster and on it wrote Because I am Batman and I am Better Than You. Because Grover made that joke to me every day for years. While it’s one of my favorite photos I’ve ever taken, the quality isn’t good which I found out when printing it. But, to me and to Grover that didn’t matter- what matters is that it is something that represents our friendship.
Creating Toy Photos For Others
Maybe, you got into toy photography because you wanted to take photos of your favorite toys. Maybe, you got into it to recreate your favorite movies or television shows from your childhood. Regardless, of how or why you came to toy photography there are probably some scenes in your head that you wanted to create for yourself. As a toy photographer, you also have the power to create that experience for someone else, someone in your life who isn’t a toy photographer. You can bring their ideal toy photo to life, this is another gift you can give. Whether it’s taking a Basilisk photo for your nephew or recreating your aunt’s favorite movie the idea that you can bring an idea to life for someone in your life with your photography is a gift you can give.
When I was in middle school, I made it a goal to watch The American Film Institute’s top 100 films of all time. My aunt promised me she’d watch Gone With The Wind with me so even though it was on the list I waited. I ended up watching nearly all the movies by the time we got to watch it together along with my cousin and my brother several years later. Anyway, she requested Rhett and Scarlet and so here it is. Frankly, my dear ” I gave a damn”. Excuse, the curse but hey I’m quoting the movie – the point is it’s really easy for you as a Toy Photographer to create something special for someone. The set up for this shot is my computer screen and two figures on my desk that is it. A set that took minutes, but was worth it because my Aunt was happy. She probably would like this more as a print but at the time it wasn’t possible. However, the point of this is to say that we can use our photography skills to not only create images we want to see but we can gift images to our friends and family too.
My Final Thoughts
For me giving the gift of photography means, creating something special for the people I care about using my toy photo skills. It’s how I got into toy photography, recreating my life in Lego. It’s how I share my passion for toy photography with the people I work with. With my friends, and with my family who are always supportive of me, but don’t quite understand why. Before I started handing the Valentine’s cards, the only people who knew I even did toy photography were on the Internet and my immediate family. And it was something they know I do, but didn’t really understand. But, giving out cards, and creating toy photos that mean something special to them helps them see my hobby in a new light.
The thing I got most from gifting my toy photography with my coworkers and friends was something I didn’t know I was missing until it happened. When I started toy photography it was never about getting famous on social media, or getting my toy photography seen. But of course, somewhere along the way. I did want to be recognized for my work. I did want my toy photography to be seen, by other toy photographers. And I thought getting my work printed would be absolutely amazing.
Then when I got a small feature in BrickJournal one tiny blurb and my co-worker was so happy for me that when I showed it to her in the cafeteria I cried. When I got asked to be in it I was excited. But, it was the moment I showed my co-workers at work that it happened that my work was printed and I cried that it hit me. She bought a copy, and I signed it and she framed it. It’s displayed in her home. I don’t even have one up on display(something I should probably do). It was that moment in the cafeteria that meant the most to me in all of my toy photo career up till that point. And that would have never happened if I didn’t make those Valentine’s cards all those years ago. It was in that moment I learned that gifting toy photography means more to me than getting recognized for my toy photos because what meant more was sharing my love of toy photography with the ones I love.
Maybe, you’ve never thought about giving your toy photos as a gift to someone, but I hope you try it because there truly is nothing like it. Because, when you do big moments in you toy photography life mean so much more when you can share it with others. I started my toy photography because I wanted to recreate my life with Lego and photography, and now I try to give the gift of toy photography every chance I get.
If you want to learn more about Making Toy Photography Gifts Read This Article by Teddi Deppner and here’s one on Printing Your Photography
Who are you giving your toy photos to?
Have you ever made your own greeting cards?
I’d love to know.
Other Articles Mentioned
Shelly has greeting cards you can buy from her shop.
Here’s a link to my greeting card template on Google Slides. – You’ll find Valentine’s And Thanksgiving Card Samples
YouTube video by Peter McKinnon called The Gift Of Photography
My Original Gift – My Origin Story
That’s an inspiring article, Sabrina! Actually makes me ask myself when and why I stopped making calendars for friends and family. I used to… Once you’ve completed a couple of six image narratives (or create series anyway) it’s not all that hard to come up with twelve or thirteen pictures.