Behind Victorian Scenes - Fav photos 2026

Behind the Victorian Scenes

We had started work on a Victorian Family Photo Album, but noticed there were a lot of subjects not addressed in the older photos I'd taken in the past, so I decided to take some new ones to fill the void. And while I was at it I paid attention to taking lots of behind the scenes photos. so, this is how it was all done....

Dandelions for Mom

This scene was set up on the picnic table on the patio in our backyard. It was early spring with harsh back-lighting, so I needed the foil-covered board to help bounce light onto the subjects.

Then afterwards it was a simple matter to crop the photo down and extend the wooden table top so the board and edge of the table didn't show...

Frogs and Tadpoles

I wanted to take some photos of Eric and his friends out catching tadpoles. I wanted them to have a jar full of tadpoles, so made a bunch out of polymer clay, and baked them.

I hadn't quite figured out how to suspend them in a jar. I tried oil, thinking was thick, but the tadpoles just sank to the bottom, and that wasn't the look I was after. My sister had given me some bottles of resin, so I thought I'd try that. I mixed up a tiny bit, poured it into a small glass jar, dropped in some tadpoles, and promptly watched them sink and lie on the bottom...

So, as the resin was setting, I'd use a toothpick to 'pose' the tadpoles. Then after the resin cured, I'd mix up a bit more, add a few more tadpoles, adjust them before it set, then add more layers with the remaining tadpoles until the jar was full. The resin set rather cloudy, but that was fine since it looked more like pond water....

I was planning on taking the photos at the large pond not far from home, and would need to use our projector stand, so set up a scene on top of it at home...

So I packed everything up and we headed over to the pond. It's within the boundary of what's been designated the Rouge National Urban Park, and is right beside the main road...

It was early May and the leaves had barely started coming out on the trees. Which was a good thing, otherwise the pond would have been completely hidden, as it's very overgrown...

Thankfully, there was one small space with an open, unobstructed view....

We parked at the side of the road, and I proceeded to set up the scene on top of the projector stand...

Then I took close-up photos of the boys...

It was a partly cloudy day, so some of the photos were taken in the sun...

I totally forgot to take any close-ups pf the frogs, so we went back the next day to take those in the same spot. Jan just held up a piece of driftwood, which I posed the frog on.

Going to Work

My sister and I were working on putting together an album of Victorian family photos, when she asked what Steve does all day. So, I figured I needed to address that, and take some photos of him going to work. The family was clearly well-to-do, so I decided he could be a banker. But where to find a suitable location for some forced perspective photos?

Well, old Pickering Village in nearby Ajax has some nice old Victorian buildings that would be perfect. I had made a cloth cover for the projector stand so it would blend in better with many backgrounds, and painted it to look somewhat like concrete. Then we headed over to Pickering Village. I like to go first thing in the morning on a weekday so the north side of the building will be in the shade, and there's less chance of it being busy. I set up the dolls, and Jan held the foil-covered card to bounce light onto them...

I never risk having my dolls stand unaided, so had made fabric circles to cover their stands, and they were painted the same as the projector stand cover.

I took lots of photos close up, trying to make the top of the projector stand line up with the edge of the sidewalk, and avoiding the signs on the building. Then, when processing the photos I removed the edges of the stand covers in Photoshop.

Out with the Kids

I needed more photos of Steve doing things with his kids, so thought they could go bike riding together. The very first scene I shot was in early spring at the Rotary Park in Ajax.

I rolled out my moss mats on the picnic table, posed the dolls and their bikes, and picked a bunch of dandelions and spread them around. The moss mat blended into the background grass nicely, but the dandelions were marginally believable. It might have been more believable if I'd posed the dolls directly on the grass, but I'm old and tired and prefer not to have to get down on the ground if I don't have to. Plus, I just needed one horizontal format photo for the book.

Later that same day, we went to the trail through the woods down by the lake. I really didn't want to pose them on the ground, so I set the dolls and their bikes up on the projector stand. I sprinkled some gravel and twigs on the stand cover in hopes of making it blend into the background better..

But the photos needed quite a bit of post-processing work to blend the foreground into the background better...

Playing Golf

I found a small golf bag in my props drawer, and thought it might be nice for Eric and his friends to play some golf. So I found the felt putting green from 14 years ago, and chose a small round bead to be the golf ball. Then we set off in the car to find a golf course that would make a suitable background. The first one wasn't suitable, but the driving range a little further north was perfect. So we asked permission, hauled out the projector stand, covered it with the moss blanket, and proceeded to pose the dolls on top...

I don't like to have my dolls stand unsupported, so I cut tiny holes in the moss blanket for the boy's stands to poke through, and made sure the vertical supports were hidden behind the boy's legs...

Then I took some photos of the driving range...

so I could paste some of the flags into the background....

Lisa Babysitting

I wanted to take some photos of Lisa babysitting. But the whole purpose was to show her making some spending money of her own, so she wouldn't be babysitting her own baby sister, as that would have been expected for free. So I chose a different little girl, dressed her in something appropriate, gathered some different toys than Lisa's own little sister had, and set up a scene on the patio table...

I didn't want it to look like her own backyard, so posed Lisa with her back to the house with my kitchen in the background. It was actually the very first time I'd photographed anything in that direction. But with the dolls being in the shade I needed my foil-covered board to bounce light onto the scene...

Then I took the photos straight on at Lisa's eye level...

I was especially pleased with the close-ups...

Drawing Dinosaurs

I had been wanting to take some photos of some children drawing dinosaurs for some time already, and then thought it might be interesting to do it as part of my Victorian series. Two years ago, my Victorian family had been featured in one of the scenes in the Drako story,

I had practiced the set up on the dining room table so I'd have a rough idea of what I was doing once we were at the lake....

I photographed the scene down at the beach on a cold November morning....

I had wanted to do a photo for 'Draw A Dinosaur Day' which is on January 30th for some time, but it came and went. Then when I was working on extra photos for my Victorian Family photo album, I came up with the idea of having the kids draw pictures of what they imagined dinosaurs might actually have looked like, once they got home after the scene at the lake.

Problem is, if I'd drawn all the pictures myself they'd all have been a similar style and looked too much the same. So, on Mother's Day when our son and daughter-in-law came over, I thought since they liked to be doing something, and they are both very creative, I'd get everyone to draw some little dinosaur pictures for me....

I ended up using the two my son drew. He had explained that he'd recently bought a very comfortable pair of brown pants, which is why he gave both his dinosaurs 'brown pants'. LOL. Okay, then....

Parkwood

I was looking for an interesting building that could pass for a 'Victorian Hotel', and thought Parkwood Estate in downtown Oshawa would be perfect. It was the home of R.S. McLaughlin, Canadian auto baron and founder of General Motors of Canada. The 15,000 square foot, 55-room mansion was built between 1915 and 1917 in the Beaux-Arts style. It is a National Historic Site, and all the art, architecture, gardens, landscaping and original furnishings are all faithfully preserved. It is a very popular site for filming, and professional wedding photography. The grounds are free to the public, but there's a fee for tours inside the mansion.

These photos were taken several years ago on a previous visit in the fall, when the gardens were full of flowers...

We took a chance and headed over in the middle of the week, on a cool day in spring, hoping there wouldn't be any filming going on, as the place would have been closed to the public. As luck would have it, it had been closed the previous week for filming, but there was no one there that day. The only people around were the staff planting the annuals in the gardens, and the security guard, who came over to check to see if we had permission if we were doing commercial photography. After all, we did have quite a lot of stuff with us. But we explained we were just doing some doll photography, and he said that was fine. Then he started to tell us all about, and point out, the special trees planted throughout the property, and about the movies and TV shows filmed there recently.

With all the stairs and railings, there's all kinds of places to stand dolls for some photos...

Cleaning up after posing the dolls on the top of a railing...

Forced perspective, taken at the doll's eye level...

Same spot, but with dolls moved and photographed in the other direction...

We'd brought some horses along, and I had to get down on the grass to take the photos, and then ask Jan to make any adjustments...

A photo, taken with care not to include the blue garbage bin in the background....

The wine and dessert scene was set up on the top of the stairs railing down to the formal gardens.

A photo taken straight on at the doll's level....

Wellington Beach

I took the dolls along on a spring drive out to Prince Edward County, and decided to take some photos of Steve and Iris at the beach in Wellington. It's always easier to set the dolls up on a picnic table as opposed to down on the actual ground. So I set them up on the table and sprinkled sand on the table around them, while Jan shaded the dolls with an umbrella.

Then he moved the umbrella when I wanted to take the photos...

In Victorian times the well-to-do would promenade along the seashore, so I posed the dolls as if they were walking along the beach

Then I took the photos straight on at the doll's eye level....