4 Behind Quest Scenes - Fav Photos 2024

Behind the Quest Scenes

Taking a look behind the scenes of some of the photo shoots for the Quest

Getting Ready to Leave

We were going to go on a road trip out west, to the Pacific and back, and I wanted to finish the story I started back in the spring of 2012. The goal this time was to photograph missing and additional scenes to help fill out the story. Back in 2012 I didn't have any props or horses, so most of the photos were just of the three main adventurers travelling through the spectacular scenery by walking. But this time I wanted to take horses and props, and since I wanted to take photos of their campsites along the way, I made two more tents. I had made the smaller one years ago, and had started, but never finished, the two bigger ones.

I gathered the characters from the story, and posed them with the tents. Back in 2012, my Asa played the role of Byuri's mother, but Asa had been repainted to become Queen of the Night, which meant I couldn't use her, so I dressed Soa in Asa's regalia to be used as a stunt double if needed, and also to become Byuri when she was grown up in one of the Epilogues.

I decided the group would need extra men to be in charge of all the supplies needed for such an adventure. The only other two guys I had were Narin and Adrian. Adrian has always been a Prince, and was definitely overdressed to become a 'servant', so I had to make him a more suitable costume. And Narin was usually an artist and Lawrence's secretary in another storyline, and was dressed appropriately, but he needed some weapons...

I was going to take three horses to carry all the supplies, so made three sets of saddle bags. I made some padded rolls from the tent fabrics to suggest they were the tents all rolled up for transport. Then I loaded them up with more supplies...

And then, just for fun, I decided to take my dragon family. They were not part of the story, but could be photographed alone, or with Byuri, their new friend....

The entire group of characters, ready to get packed up into the RV. The only character missing was the bald eagle.

Waterton Lakes

One of the places I needed to take photos was at Waterton Lakes National Park, where I wanted to take photos of Kyle and his horse arriving. Unfortunately Waterton Lakes is one of the windiest places in the entire Rockies, and both he and his horse kept blowing over. I managed to get them both to stay upright...

But the wind was totally messing up his hair and cloak. He looked like he was getting strangled.

I did manage one photo that was okay, then after we got home I used Photoshop to remove the cars in the hotel parking lot, as well as the water tower....

Then I wanted to take some photos of Kyle as he was approaching the castle. With the hotel being on a hill, Kyle needed to be photographed hand-held....

Next, I wanted some photos of Narin and Adrian leaving the castle with their horses. But it was way too windy up on the hill (70 kph gusts) to even attempt that, so we went to one of the picnic areas down by the lake, where I'd try set them up on a picnic table. Again, it was crazy windy and everyone kept blowing over. Jan would try hold onto as many dolls and horses as he could then let go just before I'd take a photo, but it was just too windy. And if a horse blew over, then the guy holding the reins would topple over as well....

Since the two guys were more important that the horses, Jan just crouched down and held onto their bases....

And I proceeded to take a few close up photos, before I just gave up.

Dragons in Crowsnest Pass

We stopped in Crowsnest Pass at the site of the Frank slide for some otherworldly photos of the dragons...

Bow Lake

A few days later, we were headed up the Icefields Parkway, and I wanted to take some photos of the entire group on the shore of Bow Lake. There was a little stream flowing into the lake, which I though would add some interest in the foreground, so I positioned the horses and the five dolls right along the shore of the lake by the stream. Then I sat down on the other side of the stream and directed Jan to make any small changes....

Unfortunately the spot the dolls and horses were standing was right in the shadow of a big tree, so they ended up rather dark against the bright, sunny mountains...

I did use my flash to light them up for some closer shots....

Then I figured the little stream would make a good setting for the two guys and their horses. I set them up, and Jan went down to make any final adjustments if needed....

Then I took the photos from the other side of the stream...

Hilda Ridge

A few weeks later, we were heading down the Icefields Parkway again. Most places were way too crowded with tourists to even consider taking doll photos, but the parking lot at Hilda Ridge was mostly empty....

So I set up the dolls and horses on the edge of the parking lot overlooking the valley, with the dolls facing into the sun....

Then I had to get down on a tarp on the gravel to take the photos....

Setting Up Camp

I had wanted to take some photos of the dolls in a campsite using my tents, but there had not been many opportunities. When we were staying in the Jasper Overflow Campground, which is a wide open area, with hardly anyone else there, it was way too windy the first evening. But the second evening was perfect, so I thought to set up a camp on the picnic table. I first covered the table with the tarp....

Then set up a scene for the epilogue, which only required one tent.

I started with a scene from the Epilogue, with Maya on a quest of his own, with only the eagle as his guide. I tried to make sure there were no picnic tables in the background coming out from behind a character so they'd be easier to get rid of later.

Now, a picnic table isn't very big, so I knew the tarp was going to show in photos, so I also took a photo of the gravel. That way I'd have a photo of the same kind of stones to paste into the edges of my photos later using Photoshop....

I was also not going to deal with real fires on our trip, and just used the fake fire from my castle fireplace for the photos. Then once we got home I tried to take some photos of twigs burning in our backyard fireplace....but it wasn't very successful...

Then a week later we went up to our son's cottage for a visit, and he always has a big fire burning, so I took lots of photos. I took photos close up and at a distance so I'd have a selection of real in-scale flames to Photoshop over the fake fires in the story photos depending on if the photos had a close up fire, or it was more in the distance....

So here's the final photo, with the gravel and flames added, and all the background picnic tables removed...

Then I was inspired to shoot the KFC scene with the dragons...

The final scene I shot on the picnic table at the Jasper Campground, was of Adrian and Narin setting up (or taking down) a tent.

Then in post production with the gravel added in the foreground...

Camp in Uclulet

On our trip out west I was always on the lookout for places to take doll photos, especially of their campsites. We were on Vancouver Island, and the campground at Pacific Rim National park was full, so we ended up in a private campground in Uclulet. It was on the former site of the Royal Canadian Air Force Seaplane base which was one of Canada's first line of defence against the Japanese during WWII. We were granted permission to take photos on any unoccupied campsites, including the larger group site, which was situated on the side of the hill which had been the site of an observation tower during the war.

Everything had been reclaimed by the rainforest....although the campsite ground itself had been worn bare, having been trampled by hundreds of feet over the years....

The top of the hill was still littered with moss-covered concrete blocks from the old observation tower...

Anyways, it seemed like as good a site as any, so I proceeded to set up the doll's campsite on the top of the hill. I'd made the tents with loops on each bottom corner so I could secure them with wire tent pegs into the ground. I had brought along everything else they would need in their camp, including logs for the fire, a fake cellophane 'fire' and even the stones to surround the firepit.

After positioning the dolls for the first scene, I would direct Jan to do some final repositioning of dolls and horses....

.as I was seated on a bench a bit lower down the hill to take the photos at a better, lower angle..

Jan was being silly when he took one of their tiny drumsticks and pretended to join the dolls for dinner...

The scene was mixed sunshine and shade so I tried taking photos using the flash....

Then I'd take the same photo again without flash. In the end I preferred the more natural lighting without flash. And as much as I was trying to avoid having the big concrete blocks in the background, sometimes I was too absorbed in just taking a photo of the scene that I really didn't notice them. Until later, when I had to get rid of them in photoshop....

After the photo session, I put everyone and everything back in their boxes, leaving just the tents. So Jan went up to pull all the tent pegs and take them down...

Cathedral Grove

On our way across Vancouver Island we stopped in at Cathedral Grove, which is an untouched stand of giant ancient trees. I took Byuri and two little dragons along in a bag, as we walked the trail through the forest. We came across a huge tree that had fallen across the trail.

The fallen tree seemed like the perfect spot to pose Byuri and her friends and take a photo....

French Beach

Another spot I took advantage of a fallen tree was at French Beach. The driftwood on the beach there was gigantic,

and just the right height for some forced perspective photos...

Serpent River

I took all the dolls along again on another trip several months later in order to shoot additional scenes for the story. I wanted a scene of Adrian and Narin with their horses travelling in the fall, so we stopped at the Serpent River roadside picnic spot along the Trans-Canada between Sault Ste Marie and Sudbury, where I posed the dolls and horses on the rocks by the river, and I sat down to take the photos. Then I directed Jan to make any final adjustments....

...and took the photos taking advantage of the few coloured trees in the background...

Saint-Roch-des-Aulnaies

I wanted to take some 'village' shots for my story, and the only place I could think of in Canada where there might be some building that looked the right period would be in Quebec. So on our fall trip we went to the picnic area that juts out into the St. Lawrence River on the south shore east of Saint-Roch-des-Aulnaies in Quebec. We actually took photos there twice. The first morning it was very sunny, which doesn't make for the best photos, but I took a set anyways. Then the following day we went again and set up the scene again and I took a second set of photos. This time we used our projector stand to give some extra surface area to the picnic table so that we could set up both tents, and I set up the scene....

I took the photos at the doll's eye level making sure the church steeple was clearly in the background.

It was quite overcast and the doll's faces were quite dark, and I'd forgotten to bring a white card, so Jan used the white photography umbrella to bounce some light onto the doll's faces...

it was very windy, and we needed a way to secure the tents. They do have loops along the bottom for tent pegs to be stuck into the ground, but one can't poke a tent peg into a solid surface - like a picnic table. So we emptied out the RV pantry of every available can, and placed the heaviest ones on the main tent pole stand, and the rest inside the tent on top of the tent pegs. The cans work very nicely, and are invisible until it's time to take everything down....

Inside the RV

So, where do we store all the dolls and props in the RV you ask? Well, our RV at 22', is the smallest size RV that has an actual bed permanently in the back. During the day the box with the larger props, and the horses stand on the bed. The two large tents fit inside each other and are suspended from an overhead compartment handle...

The RV has a lot of interior storage, and the cupboards over the back bed are where the dolls go. Years ago I made special doll boxes with stuffed cushions inside to safely and securely hold a doll for travel. The boxes fit three high in the overhead compartments there. The boxes get new labels each trip for whatever dolls are coming along. During the day if there's a photo shoot, the boxes come down and get stored on the bed, and they get put away again in the evening. The horses and prop box end up out of the way on the front seats at night.

the Tavern

I had been looking for an old stone building in the villages along the St. Lawrence in Quebec to pass as the outside of a Medieval Tavern, and we ended up at the old mill in Saint-Roch-des-Aulnaies.