A few photos of Nyssa and her doll with the pink crabapple blossoms
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With spring came longer evenings, and after dinner Steve and Iris would often go out to the park with little Sena..  She loved her Daddy, and missed him during the days when he was at work...  He missed her too...    ..and it gave them a chance to spend some time together...   On rainy days the children were stuck inside, but iris didn't mind if they took over the entire parlour with their toys....  Nyssa's friend Elin always liked to come over and play with her dolls.  But this afternoon, Eric was busy laying out his train set with his friend Bordy...  and Elliot, Elin's little brother.   But Nyssa was more interested in the nice village the boys had laid out...  Elliot and Bordy didn't mind...
But that left Elin alone with Nyssa's dolls. ..  But she didn't mind either, since then she had all of Nyssa's dolls to herself...  Lisa was great with children, and she would often babysit the little girl next door...  
     Steve and Iris enjoyed taking baby Sena for a stroll in the evenings.  The fresh air made her sleep better.  Which meant they'd all get a better night's sleep.
   One lovely spring day, Eric and his friends headed over to the golf course to play a round of golf...        Eric, Nyssa, and their friends wanted a group photo taken of them with all their pets, so they gathered on the patio...   
    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...  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.  Just sharing a few photos of my doll family fathers.... Owen...  Steve in modern times...  and in Victoria times...  Lawrence...  Rex...  Jude...  Then there's Dominic, father of two sons...
Matias...  ...and Baron...  ...and I almost forgot about Gino, and his twins....  Happy Fathers Day!
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AuthorMartha Boers is an award-winning Canadian doll artist and costumer, who enjoys photographing, and coming up with stories, featuring her vast collection of ball-jointed and artist dolls. Archives
August 2026
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