I'm sure after my last post, many people were aghast that I would use real flames so close
to my dolls. So I thought some 'behind the scenes' photos and explanations were in order.
First of all, I would never risking damaging my dolls, or causing some kind of out of control inferno. I carefully selected the doll's campsite to be on a huge flat spanse of granite - and swept off any debris that could possibly catch fire. Jan built the campfire out of stones he'd gathered from the gravel campground roads (and washed) and built the campfire using bits of birch bark and fallen branches. I positioned my dolls around it in a wide semi-circle, so that they'd all be about a foot from the actual fire. Then I got down flat on the rock with my camera....
to my dolls. So I thought some 'behind the scenes' photos and explanations were in order.
First of all, I would never risking damaging my dolls, or causing some kind of out of control inferno. I carefully selected the doll's campsite to be on a huge flat spanse of granite - and swept off any debris that could possibly catch fire. Jan built the campfire out of stones he'd gathered from the gravel campground roads (and washed) and built the campfire using bits of birch bark and fallen branches. I positioned my dolls around it in a wide semi-circle, so that they'd all be about a foot from the actual fire. Then I got down flat on the rock with my camera....
Once I was down, I was too far back to reach anything to fix anything, and theres no way I was getting up again until I was done, so Jan had to adjust anyone's direction of gaze. Then I set my camera on 'multiple' consecutive shots to hopefully catch a nice set of flames, as such a small fire tends to burn out very fast. And we were ready. Jan lit the fire......and I started to shoot....
The light breeze from the lake blew the flames to the right......and then to the left.....
The light breeze from the lake blew the flames to the right......and then to the left.....
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Or, the breeze died and poor Ringo was totally obscured by the smoke....many times...
The tiny fire would burn out rather quickly, so Jan rebuilt it several times.
Several photos had flames that were way too big and out of scale to look believable....
Several photos had flames that were way too big and out of scale to look believable....
And poor Ringo looked like he was about to be totally consumed by the fire....
In the end, I had 16 photos to work with, and chose one with a nice trail of smoke to one side,
and Photoshopped some extra flames from other photos in in order to make a nice campfire, which was a simple enough thing to do, since all the photos started out the exact same size....
and Photoshopped some extra flames from other photos in in order to make a nice campfire, which was a simple enough thing to do, since all the photos started out the exact same size....
On hindsight, it might have been nice to have changed some of the doll's poses, but the
main focus on this series was to get a decent-looking campfire, and since there would likely
by Photoshop involved afterwards, all the photos I took needed to be as identical as possible.
Plus with an open flame, that had to be the main focus of our attention.
The dolls did smell a little 'smoky' like a campfire, when we first cleaned up the scene,
but the smell had completely dissipated a few hours later.
main focus on this series was to get a decent-looking campfire, and since there would likely
by Photoshop involved afterwards, all the photos I took needed to be as identical as possible.
Plus with an open flame, that had to be the main focus of our attention.
The dolls did smell a little 'smoky' like a campfire, when we first cleaned up the scene,
but the smell had completely dissipated a few hours later.
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