Building the Dell


The Dell runs and relies upon a huge amount of fairy dust! For weeks the Tintern tinker fairies have been working away to harvest natures most magical treasure and transform it into a breathing, living fairy dell inside our studio!

Now the dell is nearly ready I thought you might like to see how they do it!

Once upon a time …

In the beginning the fairy dell was a figment of my imagination … My little girl, Alexis, 4, was fascinated by all things fairy (and still is!). I started to wonder if it was possible to build a fairy dell in my photo-studio that looked ‘Authentic’ as a woodland and not chintzy or dare I say it – chavvy?! I started to think about how I could use quality stage props and technical lighting to achieve an ambient looking, 3D fairy world for a special portrait of our Daughter. One that did not use or rely on computer trickery or ‘photoshop’ but one that could be created entirely in camera.

A Definite idea …

I had a very definite idea in my minds eye of how the dell looked and the feel that it envoked .. I think in hindsight everyone thought I had, at last, gone totally bonkers! If you have ever tried to explain to someone what you are seeing in your head then you’ll know what I mean!

Far flung props …

So I set about collecting research and pictures of props and finding that actually, what I specifically wanted, was not generally available. With military flair I commissioned a hand painted backdrop and had it shipped from the far east – Then I found my BRIDGE! My awesome (but big) bridge – the centre piece to the dell from which everything else would flourish … Trouble is that it was in America! Whilst we are on the subject of the States, the beautiful costumes came from there too! Boy, those guys really know costumes – the detail, the quality all perfect for what I wanted for my clients who by this time had realised that I was indeed up to something very special.

Almost daily, for a month, boxes and packets of all shapes and sizes were arriving … strange shrink-wrapped toadstools and flowers of every texture and description.

Kissing the frog! …

So imagine the scene … me, surrounded with woodland artifacts, in the middle of a ‘naked’ studio talking to a ceramic frog about ‘how am I going to do this and that’. At one point I even considered giving him a kiss for all his trouble (that’s when I realised I REALLY needed a coffee break!).

But, piece by piece, the dell started to take shape and the more I did the greater it looked. Well, I had a whale of a time- a sprinkling of leaves here, a dandelion head or two there.. et voila! A Dell. A beautiful fairy grotto in MY studio. I was overjoyed. I took test shots at most stages of the build to check if what I was doing was true to the vision in my head all those weeks ago.

The magic lantern …

And then, lightening stuck – like a bolt from the blue I had one of those ‘why didn’t I think of that before!!!’ moments. Not one to do anything by halves, I just HAD to find a way of illuminating the lamp – again, in camera so that it gave an authentic glow to a child’s face. How was I gonna do that? It is definitely NOT something that you can replicate with a computer. This was to become my ‘real’ fairy! I won’t bore you with how, but basically, when I push the shutter a radio control sends a signal to a mini flash unit inside the lamp at the exact same time as the studio lights go off. All I did then was disguise it as a real fairy with the addition of some wings from a plastic butterfly and everything was ready to go…

But would Alexis suss me, or would she BELIEVE?!