5 Behind Scenes - Fav Photos 2024

Behind the Scenes 5

More behind the scene sneak peaks at how the photos were taken...

Agnes in the Garden

I take all my exterior 'garden' doll scenes on the table on my backyard patio. Right now it's late September and the garden is starting to look tired as it fades into fall...

But all the photos of Agnes and Matias in their garden were taken in August, when everything was much fresher. Every spring I always buy several baskets of million bells, with their small in-scale flowers, to serve as background forms doll's 'gardens'. I set up a scene using the pillar unit and million bells, with the upper garden and urn in the background, but then the dolls are backlit because the open sky is behind them. So a white card is necessary to bounce light onto the dolls, and because the table isn't big enough for something to support the white card, I always ned a volunteer to hold it for me...

The white card bounces light onto the dolls. Unfortunately the pillar in the background isn't tall enough so I always have to extend it higher in Photoshop....

The scene with Agnes visiting Naomi also needed a white card. But I'd gotten tired of always having to extent the top of the pillar, so Jan added an extension...

I take the photos using forced perspective, but that still has certain limitations to consider. I need to take the photos close to the dolls in order to make the urn on the pillar in the background look a reasonable size, but then the pillar (and everything else including the dolls) will start to flare out towards the sides. But if I get further back away from the table to get a better view of the dolls, and then zoom in, the urn on the pillar starts to become too big and somewhat out of scale.

Naomi's Birthday

I shot all the photos for Naomi's birthday in April. But then when I started posting the story four months later, I realized there were important scenes missing, especially with the sewing machine. The initial photos went from the surprise to the hug....with nothing in between....

I felt I needed more photos to fill in the story, and that meant setting up the entire scene all over again. Every detail had to be identical in order for the new set of photos to fit seamlessly into the first set. The bed covers needed to be the same, the pillows stacked exactly the same way, Naomi's robe draped the same way on the chair, and in the scenes after she'd opened the first two gifts, those had to be positioned exactly the same way on the bed.

And I had to find new pink ribbons to tie onto the sewing machine that would resemble as closely as possible the ones in the first set of photos. Then an entirely new, additional set of photos were taken to fill in the scenes where Naomi reacts to the sewing machine...

And while I was at it, I also took additional photos I'd not considered months earlier. Like the children hugging their Mom...

...as well as a more intimate photo of Baron and Naomi first thing in the morning...

Photo taken in April...

New photo taken in August....

The new photos fit seamlessly into the story. The only discrepancies in the photos were the heights of the candles in the background, which I wasn't even going to try and deal with. And I realized that I'd forgotten to put Baron's boots at the foot of the bed the second time. But otherwise everything else was perfect in Naomi's Birthday.

Furniture and props

Just a few photos of my doll furniture collection along the wall of my basement photo studio. It first started out years ago as a single book case, but expanded over the years as my collection grew. The shelves house all my furniture and medium sized props. All the smaller props are stored in labeled boxes on the main floor.

The corner shelves in the basement used to house toys for our kids, and then our grandkids, but most have moved on, and my doll furniture and horses are slowly taking over.

I forgot to take a photo of the three other horses (the most often used ones), all the styrofoam castle pillars, and my collection of doll size carpets stored on an old dresser on the other side of the room. Oh, and there's boxes with picnic tables (3 sizes), bicycles, and lobster traps, and an OG car stored under the photography studio table.

Pirates

August is International Pirate Month, and I had wanted to take some photos for it, and use my Captain Hook figure. Pirates obviously can't be photographed in my backyard. They need to be photographed at the beach, and they'd need to be posed on the ground. I don't do well getting down, or up off the ground anymore, so I find it works best to set up the scene I want at home first so I know exactly how I want to position everyone down at the beach....

I also have to take into consideration the background and lighting at the beach. When taking doll photos in the sun, it needs to be low in the sky in order to minimize harsh shadows on their faces. The middle of the day is the worst time to be taking doll photos in the sun. I also needed to consider the background at the beach. The shoreline to the west is more natural, and to the east there's a big nuclear power plant. Well, I definitely did't want the nuclear plant in the background, so I needed to take the photos first thing in the morning when the sun was low in the sky to the east, with the more natural beach to the west in the background.

So I put everyone in a box, and put them in bags along with all the props I'd need, and we went to the beach...

Then I set up my scene, and got down on the tarp to take the photos. So, even though it had started out as a clear sunny morning, the clouds soon moved in to help create the perfect lighting...

Egg Day

June 4th is Egg Day, and I decided to take a photo of my little Forest Dweller mice making off with some real full size eggs. I felt it would look more interesting if they'd accidentally broken one, and two ladies were busying themselves trying to scoop it up....

But the broken egg kept spreading on the counter....eventually reaching both little ladies, and soaking into their clothes

So I had to strip them down and wash their clothes...

Weeding the Garden

June 13th is National Weed Your Garden Day, and I wanted to have Owen and Leona, and their kids, out trying to get control of their overgrown garden. Maybe they'd been away on an extended vacation, or had just moved into a new property, and the gardens were completely overgrown with weeds totally choking out the flowering bushes.

I had set the family up on my dining room table so I'd know how I wanted them posed, then took them all out to the edge of the back garden, and used my 'poke-in-the-ground' wire stands to support them.....

Then I had to lay down on the grass to take the photos....

Although it was also one of the few times where it worked to take a photo from the standing position. The higher angle helped emphasize the enormity of the task before them...