Behind the Scenes of the Quest - part 2

Taking more peeks behind the scenes of the Quest story....

Building a Cathedral

I had shot Aeran and Kyle's wedding in August of 2024 with my camera hand-held set on Auto. The intention was for the entire story to be turned into a book, but the original wedding photos were not sharp enough for print.  So I had to reshoot everything in January 2026.  Which meant setting up the entire set again...
​​The 'cathedral' set uses the china cabinet in the background to provide architectural detail, as well as depth. I always start with the floor fabric which protects the table....

After covering the table, and clamping the edges, wood shelves are brought up out of storage..

The wood shelves are stacked to create the raised dais at the front, and a carpet is laid down. Three styrofoam pillars are raised on empty plastic yogurt containers to give them extra height.

Black Bristol board is inserted behind the glass in the china cabinet to hide the interior, and a half wall is positioned on the back edge of the dais, behind the throne....

At this point it became apparent that the table wasn't going to be wide enough, so everything had to come off so we could insert another table leaf. Then I started all over again. Then I started hanging 'stained glass window' wallhangings on the china cabinet doors. I was going need more styrofoam wall units than usual, and was going to have to use the Tudor interiors as well as the 'stone castle walls'

I decided the walls were going to be too short for wide shots, so we went to Dollarama to get several sheets of black foam-core to raise the walls higher. We cut the foam core and hot glued it to the bottoms of the existing wall units.

I noticed the glass chimneys on the chandelier were extremely dusty, so took them down to clean them ... after all, every extra bit of light would help once I started taking photos.

The finished set. I wasn't concerned about all the black lower walls, as all the guests would be standing in front of them, so they wouldn't show anyway. And for wider open scenes, I'd just move the wooden railings currently along both sides of the middle off to the sides to hide the black.

The Wedding

I didn't take any behind the scenes photos back in 2024 until Aeran and Kyle were leaving after the ceremony.

View of the set from the hallway. The larger photography light was needed since the set was further back inside the room away from the natural light from the window, and there was a solid wall blocking the light from outside.  It was aimed at the white ceiling to bounce more light into the set.

When I retook the photos of Aeran and Kyle leaving the cathedral, I first had Aeran on Kyle's left....

Back in 2024 I'd photographed her on his right, which I thought looked better, so I switched them and reshot the entire sequence

the Balcony Scene

I was trying to come up with something new and different from all my other weddings, and thought of the couple waving to their subjects from the balcony after the ceremony.  I set it up right in the middle of the cathedral set, using one of the short wooden railing walls as the front of the balcony, and had to raise it on some wooden blocks to the right height. And I removed the wall on the window side so there would be more natural light coming in, so it would look more like they were outside.

Formal Portraits

I set up the dolls for their formal portraits on the picnic table, with the pillar unit and surrounded by baskets of million bells. However, in that position, they are facing north away from the light, so I used two foil-covered boards to bounce the light onto the dolls.

Then I just cropped in to cut off the boards...

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