I was asked to photograph these beautiful hand crafted dolls made by The Midnight Elves. The Midnight Elves is a group of talented artistis. They creat these dolls to be sold to raise money for the Motueka Rudolf Steiner School in New Zealand.

 

There were no constraints at all on how I photographed them, but they wanted a showcase of their work. Since the dolls help to take children into their imaginitive worlds of make believe fairy tales, I wanted to depict that world. 

 

I photographed the dolls outside in broad daylight against blue sky. We suspended the dragons from string, which I removed in post. I photographed them from below to make them look as through they are on a journey upwards through the stars. I lit the them using Elinchrom rangers up close through brolleys positioned to show off the texture of the dolls. With a small aperture, I made the sky very dark. I added the stars afterwards. I orignially thought I woudl overlay a night sky, but that wold have looked too realistic. I ended up drawing in the stars using a wacom tablet in Photoshop.