BehindScenes - Fav Photos 2026

Behind the Scenes

Taking a look at the 'magic' behind my doll photo scenes...

Making a Stable

I had needed a stable for a couple of new scenes for the Christmas at the North Pole book, so had set one up on the dining room table....

It worked so well in photos, that I thought I'd use it for some other scenes as well, including Baron and Naomi and their children. But all the Christmas decorations had to go first...

I had put the stable together using all kinds of stuff I had on hand. I used a different fabric to cover the table, and used a mix of different wall units for the walls. The horse's stalls were suggested by using the styrofoam arch and pillars set against the wooden 'cathedral railing', and the wooden dividers of the stalls themselves were the head and footboards from Baron and Naomi's bed.

Then I added props one might find in a stable. I had purchased small bales of hay at Michaels years ago for some Halloween photos, and kept them in a large zip lock bag. Several had fallen apart over the years, and I sprinkled the loose hay all over the floor. After finishing the photography, I gathered up most of the bits of hay to save for future use, (yes, I keep EVERYTHING) and then vacuumed up the rest, as well as the dining room floor, and other rooms in my house that the bits of hay had wandered into.

Taking Holiday Portraits

I had Sarah and Elliot Henri standing on my workspace looking so beautiful together that I wanted to take some portrait shots of them together with our Christmas tree in the background. Since the tree is partially in front of a window, the photos needed to be taken at night so the tree wouldn't just be a silhouette against a washed out white background. But night shots provide their own special lighting challenge.
So, that evening I cleared off the end of my work table and moved it further into the room, posed the dolls, lit the candles, and tried taking a few photos with just the ambient room lighting...

But I didn't like how the wall light to their left turned everything yellow and washed out their faces. So I hauled over a photography light (standing off screen to the right) which casts a white light

..and reshot the photos with the much better, more natural lighting....

Building a Conservatory

I love plants, and especially flowers, and every year in Late November, early December the local garden centre gets a few tiny miniature violets and cyclamen. I like to buy several, and keep them in mini tea cups on my plant stand in the kitchen...

I like to use the tiny plants in doll photos throughout the winter. I wanted to take photos of them with Monica this time, as she loves flowers, but didn't think either of her regal red gowns were suitable to be wearing while working with plants, so I made her something more casual

Unfortunately I wasn't feeling very well most of December, and the tiny violets were almost finished blooming. Then for Christmas our daughter-in law gifted me with a small ceramic pot that she'd made, complete with a miniature orchid.

So I finally decided to take the photos I'd wanted to of Monica and her plants, before all my tiny plants were no longer in bloom. Since she was a Queen, and deserved a more elaborate setting than I'd put together in the past, I decided to set up a 'conservatory' on my kitchen table.

I used the wooden 'cathedral railings', and the styrofoam pillars and arch for architectural elements, and gathered all kinds of furniture and props that one would find, or use, in a greenhouse, complete with empty pots, a wheelbarrow, and a tub of potting soil. Then I filled in the scene with all my mini plants and ivies....

Then I had to rearrange the plants in the background, so none of the big pots from the hanging plants actually showed. I also needed to hang lots of ivies in the north window to hide the neighbour's flag, so it wouldn't show up in the background...

I had originally thought to have Lawrence get Winston to fetch a poinsettia for Monica, but decided after receiving the orchid that I would stay with real flowers only. No fake ones at all. After setting up the main scene, I noticed the mini roses in the flower arrangement one of our sons had sent us for Christmas. It had sprays of miniature roses. They were beautiful when the arrangement first arrived....

But the arrangement was already over ten days old, and the mini roses had shrivelled and dried up....perfect for my little story...

It was tricky taking photos in such tight quarters, as I needed to use my tripod in order to get the sharpest photos, but there wasn't any room to back up from any distance at all. Then there was the huge hanging light to deal with too. It provided warm lighting from above, but I still needed the photography spot-light from the side to prevent harsh shadows from the light above.

... and I had to shoot with the table on an angle, so I'd get the kitchen windows and door in the background, and not the bright yellow wall to the right. Which meant it wasn't wide enough to take horizontal format photos....

...unless I took close-ups....

But the entire settup was so nice, that I wanted photos of the entire scene....

...which meant some major cropping....

The set was on the end of the kitchen table for three days, so Jan and I had to eat all our meals at the end of Monica's conservatory the entire time. This was the very last photo I took....

and cropped into a square, it ended up being my favourite of the entire photo shoot...

Tiny Characters in the Snow

Taking doll photos in the snow is always a challenge, although the photos in the previous post were taken back in early January when we only had a bit of snow, well before two big storms buried everything. I always plan the set-ups inside, put everything on a tray, and head out with my camera. One of the biggest inconveniences in winter is that there's no place to put stuff. The patio furniture is in the garage for the winter, so there's nowhere to put anything other than on the snowy ground. I can't put trays on the garden itself, since it slopes and a tray would just slide off.

There's also no interesting plants in winter to help create a background, so I borrowed several little fake trees from Jan's Christmas village, stuck them into the snow to cover their bases, and sprinkled them with snow. There's not a lot of options for taking photos from different directions, other than a few close-ups...

Once I'd taken some photos, everything was shaken off, and it all went back inside, where everything ended up on heat registers around the main floor to dry off.

A week later we got hit with the first blizzard....

And then another....

So, then there was way too much snow for doll photos. Plus with a Polar vortex stalled over us, it was also way too cold out there.

Building a 'Cathedral'

I thought I'd share a step by step description of setting up the set that was on my dining room table all of January, even before sharing any more of the photos taken in it.

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.

I used the set all month, for a coronation...

a wedding....

and as a palace setting for lots of various doll portraits.

Mini Pasta

I had wanted to take Pasta Day photos for a while, and finally determined to do it. I had originally thought of making pasta out of polymer clay, but in the end decided to go with the real thing. So, we went to Bulk Barn to check out what they had to offer, and spent 35 cents on a bit of three different mini pastas; tiny elbows, mini lasagne, and some tiny shells. I started by making the little pasta art picture, then cooked up the rest, and added leftover pasta sauce....

I set up the scene on a box on the kitchen counter. That way the doll's eyes would be about the height of a real child their age.

There wasn't enough room for three chairs, so only Elliot actually sat on one...

But when it came time for him to hold up his picture to show the girls, I felt the picture covered too much of his face...

He needed to get up on his knees on the chair so he'd be taller, and he needed some help from an elastic band to stay in position....

And I forgot to clone it out in the final photo....