This vignette was shot on top of a piece of sheet metal, taken with a wide-angle lens with a closeup filter, and taken in front of a web of Christmas lights. Although I took this photo inside my house, the original idea was supposed to be shot outside. Shortly after taking the photos of my spacemen in front of Christmas lights for a bokeh effect, I decided to one-up this setting by shooting a group photo of the astronauts in front of a large display of multicolored lights. To do this, I scouted for locations in Queens and Long Island that had good vantage points in front of Christmas lights. I found a Catholic school in Whitestone called St. Mel’s, which had an impressive array of lights.

On one Saturday night I drove to the school/church to shoot test photos, but alas found no suitable areas to setup the whole group photo with their instruments. The best I could do was to shoot a few photos of individual minifigs along a railing, but not the whole band. I ended up not using any of the test photos, and instead opted to shoot the scene indoors. The major challenge I ran into was getting the whole band in focus while keeping the Christmas lights blurry for a bokeh pattern. Due to space limitations in my attic studio, I wasn’t able to achieve the proper depth-of-field techniques I wanted, and instead settled for the yellow drummer out of focus. Another major issue was the fact that the Space Policeman (red visor, lead guitar) kept toppling over at any slight jolt.