On our trip out west I was always on the lookout for places to take doll photos, especially of their campsites. We were on Vancouver Island, and the campground at Pacific Rim National park was full, so we ended up in a private campground in Uclulet. It was on the former site of the Royal Canadian Air Force Seaplane base which was one of Canada's first line of defence against the Japanese during WWII. We were granted permission to take photos on any unoccupied campsites, including the larger group site, which was situated on the side of the hill which had been the site of an observation tower during the war.
Everything had been reclaimed by the rainforest....although the campsite ground itself had been worn bare, having been trampled by hundreds of feet over the years....
The top of the hill was still littered with moss-covered concrete blocks from the old observation tower...
Anyways, it seemed like as good a site as any, so I proceeded to set up the doll's campsite on the top of the hill. I'd made the tents with loops on each bottom corner so I could secure them with wire tent pegs into the ground. I had brought along everything else they would need in their camp, including logs for the fire, a fake cellophane 'fire' and even the stones to surround the firepit.
After positioning the dolls for the first scene, I would direct Jan to do some final repositioning of dolls and horses....
..as I was seated on a bench a bit lower down the hill to take the photos at a better, lower angle...
Jan was being silly when he took one of their tiny drumsticks and pretended to join the dolls for dinner...
The scene was mixed sunshine and shade so I tried taking photos using the flash....
Then I'd take the same photo again without flash. In the end I preferred the more natural lighting without flash. And as much as I was trying to avoid having the big concrete blocks in the background, sometimes I was too absorbed in just taking a photo of the scene that I really didn't notice them. Until later, when I had to get rid of them in photoshop....
After the photo session, I put everyone and everything back in their boxes, leaving just the tents. So Jan went up to pull all the tent pegs and take them down...
It was the end of just one of the many photo sessions that day.
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