At the moment, I am going through all of my photographs of the Sasha Outfits that I have made, and I came across some fun ones that were taken when I had finished making the Lilac Collection.
The tiny Sasha in Motion (approx dimensions 7.5cm/3″ x 10.5cm/4″) has been one of the most influential, of the Sasha Doll Booklets, on my own Sasha photography and collecting. I find the photographs in this booklet to be very inspiring.
They give wonderful ideas about how the Sasha dolls and babies can interact with each other. Now and again, I’ve tried some of these balancing acts with my own dolls.
When I am photographing my Sasha dolls in one of my settings, it is the tiny movements, the slight tilt of a head, and having the dolls create eye contact between each other that can make the difference between a nice image and an image with some life and sparkle. In the two photographs above, the left-hand one has the baby looking straight into Greg’s chest, in the right-hand photo, the baby has her head tilted upward towards Greg’s face and I find that this image has me making up stories in my head. Is she asking Greg to lift up her teddy? Is she asking to get up onto Greg’s shoulders? What is she asking?
It is fun posing the dolls. Some of my Sasha stories are planned, I take photographs to fit the story that I want to write, but others, evolve differently. When I have finished creating the setting, I start to move the dolls around within the set and then the story starts to be written alongside the photography.