Photographer Builds Miniature Wildlife Scenes Utilizing the Objects That Threaten Endangered Animals

Photographer Benedek Lampert’s new collection, The Nature We Replaced, combines the miniature worlds the photographer is understood for crafting with highly effective environmental storytelling.

As Lampert explains, his earlier miniature pictures collection have centered on bringing real looking worlds to life. This time, although, the emphasis is on which means moderately than recreation.

“Nature, wildlife and environmental storytelling have always been close to me, and I couldn’t think of a more universal issue than the future of the planet we all share,” Lampert explains. “Drawing on more than ten years of experience in miniature photography, I set out to create a series that uses illusion not to deceive the viewer, but to confront them.”

In his new collection, Lampert put miniature variations of endangered animals, like polar bears, sea turtles, orangutans, and extra, into environments “that should never exist.”

Each of the intricate environments Lampert constructed is constituted of supplies that threaten that habitat and the animals that decision it residence. Plastic baggage are Arctic ice, fishing nets are oceans, wooden merchandise are the forests which can be being destroyed, and extra.

“Every landscape is constructed from everyday human waste or objects associated with the destruction of that ecosystem,” Lampert says.

The photographer says his goal is not just to present another look at the ongoing environmental destruction that is endangering animals, but to visualize the “uncomfortable contradiction between wildlife and the world we continue to build around it.”

Lampert adds that he worked closely with the German figure and toy company Schleich to see if it would support the project, and it immediately got on board, supplying Lampert with realistic animal figurines.

Lampert tells PetaPixel the thought for his new collection really got here from an “unexpected place.”

“There was a TikTok trend about a penguin that kept getting separated from its colony and wandering off into the mountains. I thought it would be fun to recreate that story in my own style, so I bought a penguin figure and created a miniature scene based on it,” the photographer says.

While engaged on that picture, he realized that he actually loved photographing wildlife figures. His preliminary concept was to create a practical wildlife collection, however as he began considering extra about it, Lampert realized that he wished to do one thing conceptual with a a lot deeper which means.

Behind the Scenes

This completely different strategy got here with distinctive challenges, however Lampert particularly cites his tiger picture, The Forest We Burned. as probably the most difficult.

“Interestingly, it wasn’t the miniature set itself that took the most time — it was finding the right atmosphere through smoke and lighting,” Lampert explains. “I had a vision in my head, but even I wasn’t entirely sure what I was looking for at first. The final image emerged through experimentation, especially when it came to the smoke. I went through countless variations, adjusting its density, how much of the scene it concealed, and how it interacted with the light until it finally felt right.”

Lampert provides that the ocean turtle picture, The Ocean We Captured. was additionally “surprisingly difficult.”

In that case, it was creating the phantasm of an underwater scene that proved most difficult. Lampert used smoke right here as effectively, however on this case to create the hazy form of look seen underwater.

Despite his greatest efforts, it was not potential to create the refined gentle rays, the Tyndall impact, in-camera whereas additionally preserving the remainder of the scene.

“To recreate those subtle light rays, I enhanced them very carefully in post-production using the original lighting already present in the photograph, keeping the effect as natural as possible,” Lampert says.

An Exaggerated View of the Path We’re On

In distinction to Lampert’s typical work the place he recreates actuality as intently as potential utilizing intricate miniature scenes, sensible results, and collectible figurines, he says that The Nature We Replaced is extra about delivering an exaggerated model of actuality that “fortunately cannot yet be photographed.”

Lampert, like so many individuals, doesn’t need to see endangered animals go extinct or habitats proceed to be destroyed. He hopes that his photographs function a stark, arresting warning to folks that we, people, are collectively sending Earth and its inhabitants towards destruction.

“I hope this visual exaggeration helps communicate the severity of the challenges facing these species and ecosystems in a way that statistics or documentary photographs sometimes cannot,” Lampert says.

“In many ways, I think of the series as a visual caricature. It doesn’t depict reality as it is — it deliberately exaggerates it to draw attention to very real issues.”

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Image creditAll photographs by Benedek Lampert