3 Behind Scenes - Fav Photos 2025

Behind the Scenes 3

A continuing look at the 'magic' behind my doll photography

A Ballroom

I wanted to photograph my ladies in the blue roses gowns I'd just finished, and put together an elegant room with a window on the end. The walls are only 30" high (75 cm) and not tall enough to take a vertical photo with a group of dolls....

So I take the photos anyways, and just crop them down to cut off the front edge of the table cloth and the clothespins at the top

Photos in the Back Garden

I like taking photos of my dolls outside in the backyard, and it's at its best in late August into September. We have a lot of perennials, which all only bloom for a week or so here and there, so the garden is mostly green for most of the summer. So we pot up impatiens, begonias and fuchsias into pots in the spring, and place them in among the greenery to provide some colour.

The impatiens are huge by the end of the summer....

.. as are the begonias and fuchsias...

The best background for doll photos is from the patio facing south...

But the begonia and impatiens flowers are way too big out of scale for my quarter scale dolls. So every May we buy an assortment of hanging baskets of million bells specifically to use in my doll photos. The flowers are just an inch across, so the perfect size.

They come in a wide assortment of colours, but I'm partial to the pinks and purples....

This double pink one has been my favourite this year...

Whenever I want to take photos out in my 'doll's garden', I will place the baskets of million bells into position on the picnic table benches to create an in-scale garden setting. The much larger impatiens and begonias still work fuzzed out in the distance....

The patio table garden works so well for elegant gatherings....

Using a board covered with aluminum foil to bounce light onto the subjects.....

Putting Together Lonnie's Bedroom

I had given my sister free reign to do what she wanted with the Trip Journal, but it needed a few extra photos taken for the very end. And we thought it would be nice to end with a photo of Lonnie actually working on a mini version of it in her bedroom. So I had to set one up.

The room needed 'posters' so I printed out a photo of a Doodle Art my sister had recently finished, as well as one of the pictures from my Olde Fairy tale book....

I needed miniatures of the many maps and brochures used in the book, so photographed a lot of them. These are just a few....

I printed them all 1/4 scale and folded them into brochures and books. I also printed out several of the actual trip photos, including the ones on the page from the book she'd be working. I chose a page with a cut out totem pole, so I could have her cutting it out.

I took all kinds of photos of her working on her scrapbook, and in the end this was the photo that was used on the last page in the book....

Lighting

One of the most important aspects of doll photography is the lighting. When I take photos outside my patio, I have to take the photos facing the south, which means the dolls are facing away from the light. So I use an art board covered with aluminum foil to bounce the light from the open sky behind them onto the dolls. It's important not to have it too close otherwise it will reflect too bright a light onto them.

When taking photos inside, my favourite lighting is when I have the dining room table pushed into the bay window, which faces west. The best photos are taken on a sunny morning before the sun rises high enough in the sky to come through the window, but after the sun is high enough to hit the exterior south-facing wall of the kitchen, and bounce light into the dining room through the window. But my prop window unit is not that wide, so the light gets bounced not only through the window itself, but also behind it, adding more light to the subjects, which would otherwise be back-lit and mere silhouettes against the bright window..

At the Beach

I like taking photos down by the lake, but it has to be either in the morning or on an overcast day. It's because I can't take photos facing east because there's a big nuclear plant at the far end of the beach, which would be totally inappropriate in the background of some 'Medieval' scene. So that means I have to shoot towards the west, but it has to be before noon or it would mean shooting into the sun, and then the dolls would just be dark silhouettes against a bright background. So, a bright overcast morning is always best, because then there's soft filtered light without any harsh shadows.

Like in the scenes of Baron and Naomi's family holiday at the beach. I set up the scene, and then went to lay down on a tarp on the sand a few metres away, so I'd be down at the doll's eye level, and then I'd direct Jan to make any small adjustments if needed...

Then I'd zoom in to take the photos....

Iris' New Dress

I wanted to take series of photos of Iris making herself a new dress for her baby's first birthday, so set up the Victorian interior on the dining room table....

When taking photos with the dining room table pushed into the bay window, the light is brightest close to the window, and the scene will often need some extra light further in the 'room' away from the window. I'll often use a photography light, but the easiest, way to add the most natural light is to position the foil-covered board to bounce light from the window back onto the subject.

Then there's soft natural light coming from both directions without any harsh shadows. But again, the photos need to be taken before noon on a sunny day, before the sun starts to come in the window, like in these two photos, where it was already shining on the train of the dress, making it a bit over-exposed.

Bathing Babies

For the baby bath time scene I just needed part of the set, so moved the cradle and all the prop bags out of the way ...

I used the 'wash tub' for the babies' bath and used soft bubble wrap and clear beads for the bath bubbles...

Training Camp

I wanted to take photos of Baron training to regain his strength, and thought I'd set up a training camp for the knights. It needed to be really big, and would be easiest at home in my own backyard. It was mid November and all the plants had been removed from the garden for the winter, so it was nice and bare, and suitable for background. We moved the patio table down onto the grass below the golden bridal wreath spirea bush, about 18" away from the rock wall so I'd be able to squeeze in between to set up and pose the dolls in the background. We put an old counter-top on the table for maximum width, and covered it with a tarp. I rolled out two moss mats I'd bought at Michaels and sprinkled rough sand in-between.

Then I started by positioning everything in the background in the upper garden, placing some of the flowerless million bells plants strategically as shrubs...

I used almost every available guy I had, and all the standing dolls were supported by wire poke-in-the-ground supports.
I made a quick 'jousting dummy' by stuffing Jamie's KID size armour with raffia and supporting it on a dress form. The archery targets were made of painted corrugated cardboard with hot-glued sisal rope edges, supported on art easels.....

Then I posed the dolls in the foreground, hiding Rex and Baron's stand behind their legs, and covering the bases with sand. Jude and Lawrence's stands were hidden with locust leaves. I also used more million bells plants as shrubs on the edges of the set.

Then after taking the sword fighting photos, I changed to the archery series....

Running Around the Castle

I'd been eyeing the raised stone garden at the corner of a nearby subdivision, wondering if it could pass as a 'castle'. But it's full of flowers all spring and summer, so I was keeping an eye out for when the plants would get ripped out for the winter. And in the end of November they finally were, so we headed on over. I had to go up into the raised garden to pose the dolls.

Baron was supported by a poke-in-the-ground wire stand in a 'running' pose...

I took the photos down on the sidewalk, so had to ask Jan to make any adjustments....

I thought it worked really well, although it was a pain to remove the subdivision name in the background from every photo. The kingdom in my stories doesn't actually have a name, but it's definitely not 'Enclaves of Pine Creek'. So, it had to go.

I'm thinking I may just have to go and use that spot again some time.

Adding to an Old Story

Back in early December I was trying to get in the holiday mood, and thought a Christmas story from 2018 would make a great book. So my sister and I got started. But back in 2018 I wasn't taking quite as many interesting photos of any particular scene, and there weren't enough good photos to tell the ending to the story properly. So, I made the decision to reshoot the entire ending. Which meant that I had to set up the scene in Santa's workshop exactly the same as it had been back in 2018, so the new photos would fit in seamlessly.

The original set from 2018...

The new set was almost identical, except for I messed up the order of two chairs. And I no longer had the same coloured balloons. But since I was reshooting the entire ending, it wouldn't matter. But everything else was identical, although I did pay attention to the time on the clock this time, positioning the hands at a better time, and moving them as I took the photos for the story.

Balloons were strung on ribbons from a string across the room...

I often try give depth to a room to make it seem more in scale. In a real human-size room the farther corners will be darker than the foreground, but in such small doll-size rooms, there is no scale to the lighting because the room is not very deep. So, I deal with it in Photoshop.
I process the photos with the foreground lighting like I want it to be....

Then create a darker version...

I copy and paste the darker version on top of the lighter version, and use the brush tool to bring out the foreground....

Then I crop in.
Then the foreground is light, and the background is darker, and the room has the depth of lighting like a real full size room...

I took a lot of new photos, and had to watch out for tension points, like in this next photo where the clock is positioned directly between Winston's horns - like some Egyptian god - so, I had to go reshoot....

Then after reshooting the entire ending, we decided the story was missing a few vital scenes. Like Santa out and about delivering gifts. So, on a cold snowy evening, we packed Santa and his sleigh into the car, and headed out looking for the best lit houses in our neighbourhood to use as background. We'd park on the side of the road, pull out the projector stand, place Santa on it and quickly take a few photos. Then I'd take close-ups so the stand wasn't showing....

At one location, where I put the sleigh on the stand with him, I piled snow on it to hide the stand...

And of course when working on a book, one thing tends to lead to another, and we decided we needed some photos of Santa and his elves loading up the sleigh. But where would they be doing that? Not outside in the snow. How about in a barn or stable, where the sleigh would be kept the rest of the year? So I put together a stable using walls and props I had on hand....

I had to check photos from the original story to dress the same dolls in the exact same Elf outfits....

Well, the stable scene turned out so well, that one thing led to another, and I used it for two more scenes that were not in the original story from 2019... Santa arriving at the North Pole

...and leaving on Christmas Eve...

All the new scenes made a great addition to the story, and the book...