“Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time – quite literally the gold standard of video games.”

This is a composite image of several photos I shot. The base picture is an image of my LEGO Mecha Link 2.0 upgrade from summer 2018, taken in front of a tie-dye cloth backdrop. In his hand is of course my actual rare copy of the first edition of the Nintendo 64 Ocarina of Time gold cartridge — complete with the glitches and uncensored Fire Temple music.

To shoot this photo I pointed several yellow lights around the subject and background, to give it a warm look. In addition, I used a 100W incandescent bulb in a spotlight shined directly at the cloth backdrop, which made it appear as if the sun is emanating from the sky.

Later in Photoshop I added several layers of photos I shot of the sky with the sun and clouds over Queens, NY, which I mixed with original photo with masks and blending options. This achieved the look of a more majestic, almost godlike sky which mixed with the original tie-dye backdrop.