The Professionals is a set of photographs of Lego men doing various jobs inside real-life versions of their workplaces, such as a Lego band playing a gig standing on the keys of our piano, and some tech support guys drinking coffee in an office / server room built among the circuit boards of my old PC. It was created as a mostly-just-for-fun second entry to a camera club exhibition, alongside the more seriously-intended Fluid Dynamics - but nobody took much notice of the art piece, and half the club enthused over the daft pictures of the Lego men instead. This was a surprise at the time, but ultimately I'm ok with it.
As became normal for most of my best photographic work, this panel was shot using an old 60mm prime macro lens, which belongs to my parents but had sat unused for several years until I dug it out and started pointing in funny places. The locations are dotted around the family home, and the lighting is from a mish-mash of random sources, while the Lego men themselves and all of their props came from my own collection; many of the characters are recognisable (albeit sometimes redressed a bit for the photoshoot) from my Murk Army stopmotion animation series.
The project almost had some serious casualties among its cast, as (despite careful measurements and a test run with old broken pieces) I somehow miscalculated the minimum safe distance the Lego could be from the edge of the lit gas rings while shooting the Catering image, and at least one of the characters ended up with scorch marks down his side - fortunately the damage was essentially limited to discolouration, and since his outfit was black-and-orange to start with and I'd already decided his personality was a bit maniacal, the post-accident look suits him.
Having finished the originally-planned set of six photos on time for the club's 2019 expo, I then started planning a 'The Professionals Panel 2' for the next year, producing another four images with varying degrees of success over the next few months. However, the second panel never fully materialised, largely due to a loss of momentum as the 2020 exhibition got cancelled thanks to a certain virus; for my last exhibition (in 2023) I submitted a hybrid panel out-of-competition, comprising five of the original pictures (all except Vehicle Maintenance) plus two of the new ones, Decorating and Pest Control. As of 2024, there remain at least two further images which I originally hoped to create for 'Panel 2' but, as yet, haven't got round to.
