Still More Behind the Scenes

Continuing on with the Behind the Scene shots, this time from the final chapter....

the Queen Travelling

I wanted to illustrate parts of Kassia's back story, which started with her mother's love of travelling. I figured as Queen she would need a sizeable escort, but I only had one JID guy to be her knight, so that meant using some FIDs as well. I try to avoid using the two kinds together, since they are different aesthetics, but I didn't have any choice.

​We took them all to a little trail down near the lake. Then after doing a rough posing, I got down on the ground to take photos, and had to direct Jan to make any adjustments...

I had put the two FID guys in the back thinking that with their smaller heads they'd look like they were further back.  But now I think it might have worked better with them up front. Then the FID's heads would appear larger, and the JIDs smaller, evening them all out.
​Something to try next time.

In the Garden

Whenever I'm taking doll photos down on the ground...in 'public'....

There's always the chance someone will come walking by....

the Fairy Court

I needed to shoot a Fairy Court, but had no idea how I was going to get across the feel of an actual court room.  I figured, with it being a Fairy Court, it would be outside, likely in some spectacular garden setting. But how to make that look like a courtroom?  It was September and my garden's days were numbered, so it was then or never. So I did the best I could.

I needed an extra big space, so we moved the patio table into the middle of the lawn. Then Jan hauled out an old counter top to lay on top of the table to give me a bigger surface. Then for the 'garden' perimeter we set all the baskets of million bells around the outer edge on the tops of big garden containers standing upside down on the garden benches.

​It was a bright sunny day, and the backyard was in dappled shade - which makes for bad doll photos - so after setting up the scene, I needed Jan to hold the big beach umbrella so the dolls would all be in solid shade...

With flowers on three sides and the garden curving around the background I put together a court room using all kinds of furniture and props. Then I positioned all the dolls.

I'd pose the dolls, take some photos, change their poses, then take more photos.

It was nice that I could take the photos from several different angles.

But it took a long time to shoot all the different scenes....