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MOORHEAD — To an untrained eye, the pictures on Jonathan Ness' Instagram page might appear to be from the latest Mandalorian episode, or Predator movie. Take a step back, and you will see they are action figures.

"I want them inspecting the crash, seeing if they made it out, if they're, like, charred on the inside somewhere," Ness described, while setting up a scene of snowtroopers from Star Wars inspecting a crashed snowspeeder.

Using things like a can of fog and the natural elements of the great outdoors, he is creating a scene straight out of planet Hoth.

"You want to be conscious of how long they've been out," he explained. "You want to give each guy a personality. Some guys are calm and collected, some are exhausted."

The 23-year-old Minnesota State University-Moorhead student said he got into toy photography about 17 years ago.

"You don't want to see the whole thing, but you want to see enough of it to be like, 'Wow, those are real people standing over a crashed ship,'" he said.

On some shoots, he breaks out the explosives to get the visuals he wants.

"My friends and I blow up fireworks for it," he said with a smile. "We sent debris flying, we kicked up dirt (...) my shutter got filled up with rocks and closed up."

He jokingly said he keeps that particular camera as a trophy. His favorite lens is a 55-year-old Canon FL Macro, saying he prefers to shoot with the vintage glass.

Ness carefully paints, weathers and modifies the action figures in his dorm room on campus. He could tell you what every ship and character comes from, and remembers the exact changes he made out-of-box.

It is a careful process, making these figurines look battle damaged, but he admits he is not gentle on his brushes.

"They actually work better now that they're messed up," Ness explained while holding up a mangled paint brush, before picking up one of his several dozen battle damaged action figures. "It might be hard to see, but he's got a silver metal scrape look on his helmet."

He said this hobby and the friends he goes out on shoots with — have helped him get out of dark places in life.

"In a lot of ways, this hobby has been beneficial for me in ways I can barely understand even now," Ness said.

The end results are well photographed scenes, often with short stories about the horrors of war in real life — blended with a twist of science fiction. His thousands of followers may soon see the short story he makes from this Hoth photo shoot.

Ness said he has spent several thousand dollars on this hobby since starting 17 years ago. This includes the action figures, ships, camera gear, paint and other equipment.