3 Behind Scene - Fav Photos 2020

Behind the Scenes - Part 3

A continuing look at various photo setups, and photography tips....

Rosie at the Window

I was really liking the effect of having my dining room table pushed into the bay window so that I could play with real sunshine on the dolls posing inside the 'room' setting. With the table on an area rug, it is actually quite easy to push around. The rest of the setting could be quite dark, so I used a photography light to help make it brighter....

The resulting photo...

Layla's Birthday

It was the standard set-up on the patio table, with baskets of million bells supported on black pots on the surrounding benches. The trays were for carrying items outside, and the white card is for bouncing more light onto the doll's faces....

One of the photos....

Rosie & Miho

I thought I'd take some photos of my two lovely, single fashion ladies.....

When someone doing a bit of gardening, wandered into the background....

A Forced Perspective Problem

My camera has quite a wide-angle capability, so I usually shoot quite close to the dolls. But then the pillar will appear to lean. I was rather fed up with always getting a leaning pillar, so tried taking some photos further back, away from the dolls, and zooming in instead. The pillar ended up straight, but it also created a new problem. If I shot closer to the dolls, then the background urn would be further away and look more in scale (left) But if I stood further back, then the urn ended up looking huge (right). So I guess I'll be going back to a leaning pillar again...

Rex and Bianca
Another Forced Perspective Problem

I had taken Rex and Bianca and their horses up into the country for some romantic photos....

Then I thought I'd try moving Rex's horse back a bit just for something different. However, that didn't work at all. He ended up looking like a midget beside his lady love. It might have worked in a setting with no trees, but to make the forced perspective work in a forest setting, he would have to be on the same plane as Bianca. In other words, right beside her.

Or it would also work if he was by himself......but what fun is that?

Sena's Birthday

There were several photo sessions for this story, some spread over weeks. I took some Behind the Scenes shots for some of them.

First, of Leona making the cake....on my kitchen counter....

The photo taken at the doll's eye level...

I wanted a 'wardrobe' to time travel through, but the old jewelry box I had wasn't quite tall enough....

So Jan built an extension out of scraps of mahogany, to fit underneath....

After staining and varnishing, it was a perfect match....

The bedroom used the old Art Studio walls. For the bed, I pushed one of the Victorian sofas up against the fireplace to create a headboard. The rest of the bed is made of an old, acrylic, record-player lid, covered with a folded towel, and some print fabric intended to become a shirt for me some day. It was a huge piece, and folded inside out, but I was lazy, so just used with the more muted, wrong side out. Much of the furniture is 'heirloom', passed down from Victorian times, so to give the room a more contemporary feel, I hung up some floral paintings, as well as the needlepoint birds (passed down from Victorian Times), and tossed a pile of modern print pillows on the bed.

To give the wardrobe a 'magical glow' inside, I duct-taped a string of Christmas lights inside....

Sometimes one or two lights showed in a photo, and I tried blowing it out with a 'lens flare'....

....but I thought it seemed like too much, so in the end I didn't post any of those.

The party scenes on the patio were shot a month earlier in September, when the garden was still nice. Like usual, I set up on the patio table, but I switched out the huge red begonia in the urn in the background, for my streptocarpus with the small purple flowers....

The scene set up on the patio, with pots of million bells around the edges....

The final, cropped-in photo, taken at the doll's eye level.....

While I was taking the party photos, Jan was walking around taking photos on his phone....

Kaye Wiggs Halloween

First, we have a giant intruder in the background when the girls were out getting their pumpkins....

For carving the pumpkins, the scene was set up with the patio table pushed up against the rock wall, with million bells raised on containers on the surrounding benches, then everything sprinkled generously with the tiny leaves from the locust tree in our front yard (in the terra cotta coloured pot). The scene is facing east so the brightest sky would light up the doll's faces. The trays are for carrying dolls and props outside, and plastic bowl on the ground held all the pumpkin guts from when I carved the pumpkins....

One of the final photos, taken at the doll's eye level....

the Mad Hatter's Tea Party

For years I've wanted to make costumes for the various Alice in Wonderland characters. A few years ago I made an Alice, in the traditional style, but I also wanted to make the Mad Hatter and Red Queen from the Johnny Dep movie. Well, this past October I finally made a Mad Hatter outfit.

I couldn't decide on whether to make it MSD size so he'd be more accurately scaled to Alice, but in the end went for KID size, so it could be used as a Halloween costume in the future. I started out with Milo as my model, but didn't really like him in the role, so switched to David....

It was a complicated outfit, made up of many parts. I decided to make the shirt and vest in one piece to help reduce bulk. I bought a couple of packages of tiny wooden spools, painted them, then drew lines on them with matching coloured pencil crayons to simulate 'thread'. The hat was the most challenging, since the doll already had such a big head and I didn't want it to be HUGE. I made a red mohair wig on a crocheted cap, which I glued into the hat.

So of course, once the costume was done, I wanted to shoot a Mad Hatter's Tea Party. It would be a complex set requiring several tables, lots of chairs, and lots of food and dishes.

In those situations I always set up the scene inside so I know exactly what I need to bring outside. It's a good thing too, since the three tables didn't have enough space to accommodate the cakes I originally chose.

The basic scene set up on the kitchen table. The only real 'Alice' characters I had were Alice, a Mad Hatter, and some mice, so I just substituted various other characters. After all, who says that the Tea Party depicted in the book and movie was the only one they ever had???

Once I had a decent table layout, I moved all the props onto a tray, all in the same position, so I'd know how to lay them back on the tables outside....

The scene would need a much wider space than usual, so Jan carried an old counter-top outside and laid it on the patio table, which had been moved down to the grass....

I had to prop a sheet of foam core behind one of the roots, to block the sun coming through the fence, and hide the front of the tabletop with leaves....

A Bush for All Seasons

When I took behind-the-scene shots the last three times I took doll photos out in the backyard, it dawned on me that they were all taken in the same place. Under the bridal wreath spirea bush in the upper garden. It has tiny in-scale leaves, and is one of the few places the ugly fence is hidden.

That's also where I had set up the Jurassic Park scene in the summer...

Then again in the end of October, with the Mad Hatter's Tea Party, set up again on the table on the lawn in front of it. By then the garden was almost empty, and the bush was starting to turn.....

Then again, two weeks later in mid November, with Monica and her horse.....

...and again, ten days later, with Eden in he first snowfall....

Hope's Birthday Party

A 'behind the scene's' look at Hope's birthday party....

..and going through the prop boxes to choose some food and drinks for the party (in the pink box lid in front). The chips and popcorn are real, just broken down...