Desert Highway Sunrise

This is the Desert Highway Sunrise. This 960-piece set is intended to look like a framed photograph of a highway running through the American Southwest at sunrise.

The observer’s perspective is at ground level, looking down the road towards the sunrise, so the shadows, plants, and the road itself are used to achieve the illusion of distance. With the sun just starting to rise over the horizon, it is transmitting light directly behind objects and projecting shadows in strait lines towards the observer. The longer the shadow, the closer the object is to the observer. Similarly, plants that are closer to the observer are larger than those that are further away. All of the leafy plants represent members of the same genera so distance can be observed. With regards to the road, it is wider where the observer is standing, and gets smaller the further off into the distance. Furthermore, the space between the divider line gets smaller with distance, and eventually appears as a solid line when it is too far for the observer’s eye to distinguish between individual lines (resolution decreases with distance).

The photograph depicts a scene at sunrise. To that end, different color horizons were used in both the sky and clouds to represent the refraction of light as it passes through the atmosphere and clouds at a low angle of incidence.

In all, this set is intended to look like a framed photo taken using a filter to capture light as it refracts through the atmosphere.

Finally, I built this set because I wanted to create a display and I believe the American Southwest makes for an excellent subject. I think that this will make a great Lego set because it would allow people to build their own display. Displays are much more meaningful when the individual has a hand in its creation.