More Behind the Scenes

8/22/2022

Back at home, I needed to photograph the banquet to honour the signing of the Treaty. I spent several days trying to figure out the seating arrangements, and finally came up with what I thought would work best...

I had four of the Elves seated beside each other on the far side of the table, so I could see their faces, and no one would be in their way to block the camera. it was a challenge to make the two sizes of dolls interact with each other, since the Elves heads don't tilt to look up very high.

Since there was only room for four Elves on the far side of the table, I chose to have Willie sitting with her back to the camera. After all, we've seen her a lot over the years, and I wanted to highlight the other four. Even so, she was still included in the conversation

Ketchup

Meanwhile, Winston and Saphira were having dinner on the castle terrace (my patio table)

It's one of the easiest places to take doll photos, and I buy several hanging baskets of million bells every year, with their small petunia-like flowers, to serve as background in any patio scenes.

At that time, I was working on Winston's Photo Album book with my sister, and had filled in 'Crunchy things with Ketchup' as his favourite food. She suggested I should put a bottle of ketchup on the table when he has Saphira over. Which I did...

But I went one further. I had taken the photos of Winston and Saphira squirting ketchup on their drumsticks, then decided it would look more believable if there was actually 'ketchup' on it, so tried drawing some on in Photoshop....

I was not impressed. So I got another idea. I asked Jan to hold two drumsticks onto which I squirted real ketchup...

I took close-up photos....

Then 'cloned' the ketchup in Photoshop, onto the drumsticks in the photos. Much better!!

Leaving the Castle

I decided that I didn't want to go straight into the wilderness scenes right after the dinner scenes, so thought of going back to the Ruins Garden for some 'leaving' photos. I was still recovering from the pain from the last time I got down on the ground to take photos, so decided I'd have to do it on something raised. Which meant posing them all on the top of the railing on one of the big installations.....

It was a cloudy day, so didn't require any shading from my assistant....who was free to roam around.....

I really wanted one more photo, with the Greek Theatre this time, but didn't want to take the photo in the usual location where I'd have to get down on the ground, plus a theatre group was setting up for a rehearsal there, and they were in the way. So I decided to shoot right on the stage itself, in the direction away from where the actors were setting up.

I had just fifteen minutes to do a really fast photo shoot....and shot the photo while sitting down on one of the lower steps. Then it was everyone back in the box, as the costume rack was wheeled onto the stage....

1 Comment

Dorothy

8/22/2022 07:37:57 pm

My big smile continues. I had so much fun looking at these photos.

I love the photos with the catsup. I still say that. It's left over from my childhood days.

I love the last photo. It looks like Winston and Saphira are taking their bows as the stage crew is beginning to set up. I can just see a clothing rack on the right.