barbie fashion passion

Posted on May 1, 2025 by marey mercy

My next photoshoot with my You Create Kit #1 Barbies was an improvement over the previous one. I actually didn’t mind the time it took to set these up for some reason; I guess I am getting used to the differences between other types of photography and doll photography. I’d also like to start taking photos of Nacogdoches and East Texas, but that’s a post for another time – I haven’t started doing it yet so we’ll see how that goes.

This sign was hanging up in my bathroom but it fell off the wall, so I figured what the hell, let’s take pictures of it! I don’t think it totally works because there’s a lack of diversity among these dolls – there are different ethnicities represented, and one curvy doll, but for the message of the sign I think there should have been more variety for it to be truly effective. Mattel makes Barbies in wheelchairs, with prosthetic legs, vitiligo, and Down’s Syndrome – just to name a few – and the inclusion of such dolls would have really worked better. But I worked with what I had.

It was a happy accident that the lighting turned out so cool in these shots. I tried putting a light bender on my external flash and the results were better than I would have expected! Lots of nice shadows to play with.

When I first started photographing dolls, the stands made me crazy .I really thought I had to find a way to edit them out of shots, which is tedious and imperfect. But now I include them if they need to be included without giving it a second thought. However, I’ve also gotten better at finding ways to pose dolls without using stands, too. It did take forever to get the doll with the short bob and scrunch boots to stay leaned against the shelf wall though; she fell over every time I messed with any other part of the set. The “set,” by the way, is a collection of table shelving I got off of Amazon that can be put together in different ways. Kind of makes me think of a Bob Fosse “All That Jazz” set.

I’ve been working on re-bodying some of my original Barbie Basics, which came on non-articulated bodies. As much as I love their original body molds, they just don’t work for photos, so I’ve taken some of my dolls that are more “character” based (like my Barbie movie ones) and swapped out their articulated bodies with the Basics from the early 00’s. I tend to use Barbies with less recognizable face molds in my photos, so the ones based on familiar characters don’t need to be as posable since they’re just going to stand on a shelf for the most part. Also, I have a few collector Barbies that come clothed in pieces that can’t be removed, so they don’t really need articulation, and I re-body those as well.

Once I got the setup going, it was quite fun to move all the dolls around into different positions (as you can see LOL) and the Basics clothes being so coordinated and interchangeable made changing up their outfits a breeze. So even though at first I was less than thrilled with this line, the kit concept changed my mind on them completely. I’ve since purchased one other, which leaves me three more to go – the only one I probably won’t get is the petite one from this release; I really dislike her outfit and I’m not thrilled with her face mold either.

She looks better in the out-of-box photos I’ve seen posted on Reddit and Amazon reviews, but I still think I’ll give her a pass to save some money. I don’t attempt to collect an entire set of any release as it’s too expensive, and there’s always at least one I don’t want. For my money, choosing to dress a petite doll in a maxi skirt was a big fail here, and even though I can use the maxi dress elsewhere, I still don’t like the doll enough to bother with it. The other three, though, I still want to acquire.

I just got this one in yesterday, and I have to say these curvy dolls are growing on me – especially now that more clothes fit them. I wasn’t super-impressed with her after seeing the stock photos, but real pictures of her face changed my mind. She’s really gorgeous.

This is a tall body, and her skin tone should match the three dolls from my kit, which makes her head easily swappable with the others. Yay!

I totally missed the last platinum-haired Barbie release; when I could have bought her for around $35, I kept passing on her, and now she costs around $150. So I bought this one from Amazon last night. Blonde Barbies are usually my last choice, but these platinum-haired ones are everything.

Last but not least, I took some individual shots of the dolls while working on this shoot, so you can see the face detail better.

This doll is from the original Basics line of the 2000s

This is not a Basics doll but is from the Barbie Looks series that was released in the fall of ’24

Also, how amazing do these kit dolls look bald?

That’s all for now – I’m sure there will be more doll shots in the near future. Also I am working on another found footage horror review, and have written a few poems I could upload as well. Lots going on!

Dolly Shots

Posted on November 30, 2023 by marey mercy

I can tell I’m going to quickly run out of doll puns to use as blog post titles. Oh well.

I’ve been doing a fair bit of reading since my last post, and have picked up some tips from others to improve my doll photos. One big mistake I was making was using too much light. Generally, when dealing with a human subject, you want as much light as possible on the face to balance out uneven skin tone and help hide imperfections. Not so with dolls. Too much light on a doll’s face and you end up with a hunk of plastic with eyes. You actually need more shadows on a doll’s face to give it depth and dimension. So yeah, learning this improved my results tremendously.

I’ve also had to pull way back on my photo editing – which has always been my first love – and put more care into the shots themselves. When taking self-portraits I worry mostly about color and the texture of fabrics, then I just twirl and jump and roll around until I come across a good shot or two. Dolls obviously cannot do any of that, so most of my time is spent on getting the setup and the pose of the doll just right before taking the photo. There’s a lot of upside to this. While much more time is spent actually taking the photos, a lot less time is spent editing them, and I also don’t have to take as many to get a good shot.So, it’s a different process, and I still get too heavy-handed with the editing on occasion because I can’t help myself, but overall I’m starting to really enjoy it.

Obviously, I am now obsessed with buying dolls, but it’s much cheaper than wigs and people costumes, plus I don’t have much room to build up a massive collection so that helps. And with “fashion dolls” like the Monster/Rainbow/Shadow Highs or the LOL OMGs, they usually come with extra clothes and accessories so I can mix things up. There are some gorgeous dolls out there I’d love to buy, but they actually cost more than a synthetic wig even at today’s prices, so that’s not going to be happening. Pullips and Blythe dolls are the two I’m drooling over, but I couldn’t see myself daring to take one of these and stick them in a tree to take a photo anyway, given their price point, so for now I’m sticking to dolls in the $20-$30 price range.

Pullip doll – price range $200-$400. These are supposed to have more posability than the Blythes, but I still like the Blythes a wee bit better.

Blythe Dolls – $250-$400 without customization – that pink one tho!! It’s everything.

After some experimentation, I’ve figured out the best lens to use (my 17-40 mm L-series)and where the best setup is around the house (on top of my desk). One nice thing is that I can sit in a chair while I take pictures! 🙂

She’s leaning on a little desk shelf I have that I turned over on its side – I also used some PhotoShop magic so that her eyes are looking to the side instead of straight ahead, and changed her skin from blue to pale.

My head is brimming with ideas right now for things to try, which is great – I bought several rolls of wrapping paper to use as backdrops as I still prefer to take pictures in a studio setting as opposed to outdoors, and all sort of things I have around the house can be put to use as props.Some work out great, others not so much, but it’s so much fun trying things out I don’t mind too much when something fails.

Wallpaper backdrop and $12 doll from Amazon

I freaking LOVE this doll’s hair and rockin’ outfit

I often look up photos of real people to help me get poses right. My little $12 Amazon doll in front of the wrapping paper was posed by looking at photos of poor children from the 1800s. And this rockin’ babe was posed in imitation of all those Charlie perfume ads from the 80’s with Shelley Hack in them. Remember those? In almost every single one of them she’s walking with this wide stance and her hair is blowing everywhere. I can still sing the jingle.

There’s a fragrance that’s here to stay, and they call it – CHAAARLIE!

OK so I had to add a background to this one – and check out those SHOEEEES!

I’ve started to look more at the clothes a doll comes with than the facial features, since these two brands I really like mostly look the same but with different hair. And since a set of clothes cost as much as, if not more than, just buying a new doll, I’ve got two more coming that I bought strictly for the outfits. But the dolls are cute too:

LOL OMG Melrose doll – I NEED those leggings!

OMG LOL Groovy Babe – I need those leggings, too

The OMG LOL’s don’t have as much movement as the Monster/Rainbow/Shadow Highs (their legs really aren’t bendable at all), but they’re about an inch shorter which makes them easier to deal with. I also like their big old anime eyes and the fact that they’re all pear shaped – lots of junk in the trunk and pretty small boobs. My Rainbow and Shadow High dolls are adorable, and I love the monochromatic color schemes, but they’re not curvy like the LOLs.

Speaking of which have you seen the curvy line of Barbies? They’re pretty awesome. Just wish they dressed them better. Although this one looks cute:

Sadly, my Madame Alexanders have pretty much been shoved to side, since they don’t fit the photography I’m doing at all, but I still owe them for the inspiration. More to come!

Mannequin Avenue

Posted on June 5, 2018 by marey mercy

Dang, I have been busy with these mannequin heads, y’all:

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First of all, I got the idea to stick a bunch of fake fruit to one of my mannequin heads. I really don’t know why this idea came to me, but once the thought occurred to me to do it I had to give it a go.

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I used double-sided tape to stick some fake fruit to the mannequin; I actually don’t have that much fake fruit – I used Photoshop to duplicate the grapes and stick’em all on there.

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I call this “The Grapehawk”

This one is my favorite of the fake fruit shots. Somehow my edits ended up making the mannequin’s face look so real, it’s almost creepy:

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What should I call this one? The Pear Devil?

I also gave her a grape beard in one shot:

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Now, some of you may remember that when I tried out all those Oribe products, I mentioned how shiny and metallic silver the Silverati shampoo is, and how much I wanted to take pics of it running down my face. That would have been pretty messy to do, but when using a mannequin as a model, it was just crazy easy:

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I really only took pictures of one mannequin. I composited this shot and changed the face a bit on one of the images so they didn’t look exactly the same.

These mannequin heads are so ridiculously easy to work with. The have these perfectly smooth, proportioned faces and they’re easy to manipulate as well as glue stuff to or smear crap all over. When I was done, I was able to just wash the old gal off with a rag and call it a day.

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The perfect “skin” tones on these mannequins make them super-easy to overmanipulate in processing. I don’t have to worry about uneven skin tones that don’t match up – and this all led to an absolute photo-editing frenzy. I started out simple enough, but as time went on I started to really go to town with the color and shading:

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See what I mean? The mannequin is such a great ‘blank’ canvas for some awesome edits and I can really cut lose in all sorts of ways I’ve never done before.

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Not to mention how easy the setup and breakdown is. I managed to shoot all these photos this morning before heading out to tutor in the afternoon. Usually that’s not even remotely possible – it takes me at least an hour to put on my makeup and then after the shoot is done, I have to wash it all off again. Not to mention how much longer it takes me to shoot myself as opposed to a perfectly still doll head.

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And I didn’t even need any fancy lighting, just my camera with my external flash. Heaven!

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I am sure eventually I’ll get bored with these mannequins, but then again, there’s all sorts of mannequins out there with all sorts of faces, and they do whatever I want them to do without complaining. The perfect models!

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I can’t believe how many photos I was able to take as well as edit today, while also eating two meals, tutoring a student, and swimming for half an hour. I’m over the moon with this new direction!

Doll Bearer

Posted on January 6, 2015 by marey mercy

Honestly, coming up with titles that rhyme with doll is way too easy.

In working with the dolls I purchased, I am functioning in a new manner photographically. First of all, I now have some conceived idea before I start shooting, as opposed to the usual process of self-portraits where I get in front of the camera and see what happens. But I’ve mentioned in previous posts how that process had already begun to bore me; in fact, last night I pulled up an old hard drive and was looking over some of my earliest self-portraits, and was a bit amazed at how much more I was able to pull off back then, when the posing was still new. I was using sheets tacked to a wall, no lighting, and a $150 point-and-shoot camera, but I still managed to create some pretty cool images. But as with all things creative (for me anyway), a process does grow stale, and I have to explore some other avenue. I know I’ve said it a million times, but I just don’t have many unique faces left to make, or costumes to put on that aren’t derivative of something I’ve already done, or leaps to make that I haven’t already, well, lept. So yeah, anyway – dolls.

My point is, working from a plan or vision can be incredibly intimidating when one is not used to doing it. With the more spontaneous process, it was pretty rare for me to come away from a shoot disappointed in every single shot, because I hadn’t known what I was looking for to begin with. But it does happen when trying to re-create something photographically that I’ve envisioned in my head. It gets a little scary to even try, for fear that I will put a lot of work into something that produces no decent, tangible results. But as I think I said in my last post, even if I flop with some of this stuff, I am at least learning what not to do, and can apply those lessons to the next session. And it’s not like I was never disappointed when shooting selfies. I remember one session that I was so excited about, only to find out when I loaded the photos onto my computer that the color balance went crazy (this was with my first, very old Canon Rebel, the original of that line) and I was horribly green in everything and could not repair it for the life of me. Or the time I got dressed up and posed for an hour only to have the CF card lock up and lose everything! So you know, it’s always something.

So here is a photo that I visualized so clearly, and which seemed so simple to pull off, that I spent 6 hours trying to force it to work, because I just could not accept that it had been a fail. It’s not horrible, but it is not at all as convincing as I thought it would be:

Let me explain.

I knew Madame Alexander made both angel and devil dolls, and after my first purchase of the Spain doll I photographed earlier in the month, I got the idea of having an angel doll on one shoulder and a devil on the other, while I looked confused, or amused, or..something cute. Anyway. First of all, I spent a pretty penny on that stupid devil doll, which came to me a hot mess; her outfit did not fit and was clearly not made for her, she was old and loose and difficult to pose (in fact, before the end of the shoot her arm fell off) and she looked really old. On the other hand, that angel doll was quite cheap, and it is exquisite – a really beautiful doll. Go figure. I think I pulled the poses off fine – and I must add that I did a hell of a good job contouring my nose with my makeup on this day, which I usually botch up terribly. And I was very meticulous about shooting each doll standing on the same fuzzy sweater (which I stretched over a stool) and to shoot them in the same light, and in basically the exact same position they would be in were they actually on my shoulders. But in spite of all that, they just would not work in the composite shot. I thought the fact that their feet would be on fuzz in each shot would make them easier to stick onto my shoulders, but the blues didn’t match and wouldn’t mask right and it just looked phony. I did the best I could, but this is so far away from what I envisioned, and I don’t think the end result is nearly as entertaining as it had looked in my head. Plus, six hours editing y’all. And in the end I still wasn’t happy. The devil in particular just looks awful. I couldn’t pose her very well to begin with, and she never did look like she was really standing on my shoulder, she just looked glued on. So I used a clone tool to add some more fuzz to her feet and called it a day. Sigh.

Then, I took a bunch of shots of the angel because she’s just sooo pretty, and although I still have some others of her to process, the one I chose to work with first was also a bit of a fail, in my opinion. Since the arm had already fallen off my devil doll, I got the idea to make the angel have four arms, and scrambled around in my box of doll parts to find one. When shooting these photos, everything looked so nice and colorful – all that pastel pink and blue – but when I went to edit one of them, it just didn’t make much sense. It’s a doll with extra arms, and that’s about it. It doesn’t communicate anything, and she’s just kind of lying there doing nothing. Bummer.

I edited the hell out of her to try and make this connect with me better, but it never did. I think my biggest issue with her was that her body was made in such a way that she is not facing the front entirely; her body is a bit twisted to one side, so try as I might I never could get her to look like she was really lying down in a peaceful manner – she just looks like she has either scoliosis or restless leg syndrome. I added a boatload of filters to try and turn this into something, but in the end I just stopped and considered it as good as it was going to get.

One thing about that first shot, the angel and devil one, was how easy I thought it would be to pull off, and how wrong I was about that. I’ve done other simple composite shots quite successfully, and they did not take much time to execute, and I really thought I planned out how to put that one together well to get an excellent end result. But I was wrong. On the other hand, this idea for what I have titled “Doll Soup” I thought would be a real bitch – and it was the easiest thing I’ve done yet.

This past Saturday afternoon, about two hours before I needed to go into the school and work for a bit, I got an urge to try out this shot I’d visualized some time before. Even when talking to Doug about what I wanted to do after I first thought of it, he agreed that it would probably be quite difficult to get the doll placed in the soup just right, and then keep all her doll-parts posed while I took the shots; he even thought I might need to put something like styrofoam under the soup to keep it all “floating” properly around the doll parts. Nope. On a total whim, I took the can of soup, dumped it in this small pot, then placed first her head, then her arms, then her legs into it (she is disassembled, BTW). First time trying, everything fell right into place, and proceeded to stay there while I not only took about 40 or 50 shots in the kitchen with two different lenses, but also while I moved the pot into my studio to take shots of her in there. And there was no great planning to any of it: stick doll parts in soup, take photos, done. But in the end, these are the best shots I’ve taken of the dolls so far. At least as far as realizing a vision is concerned. And, I took them in a rush without much prep at all, right before needing to rush out the door to take care of errands. Certainly not my usual routine for creating quality work.

This next one, which I took in my office, didn’t come off quite as I pictured it, but it’s certainly close enough to satisfy me:

It did take some time to get myself positioned right in front of the camera for my mouth to show properly, but again, that little doll head posed like a trouper throughout the whole ordeal. Tons of shots of me picking up that spoon and posing, then dipping it into the soup to get more noodles or whatever, over and over, and still – she didn’t budge. Good doll.

I really don’t think I needed to edit this last shot; the first two are the real winners. But after the disappointment of my angel and devil shots I was excited to play around with some that were at least close to what I wanted to see, so I kept going with them.

Who knows what’s next with these little gals – they are unpredictable for sure, but always up for a shoot. As for me, I start back to work tomorrow, so wish me luck. Another semester is up and running!

Dollapalooza

Posted on January 4, 2015 by marey mercy

I just checked my blog, and I haven’t shared any photos here since December 21st – but I certainly have a taken a lot of them! The first day of the break, I pulled all the furniture out of my office and just left it set up for photos the entire two weeks, so I could be basically ready to go whenever I wanted to do a shoot. It was a good plan, and I took a load of photos, many of which I’ve yet to process. But I’ll share what I can for now.

As you know from my recent posts, I bought a slew of dolls, in varying conditions, from eBay with the intent of taking pictures of them. I shared the first few in my last post, so going back to that, here are some photos I took of one of the headless dolls I received:

This a favorite of mine; I simply stood the doll up on the old brown chair that’s in my office and played around with her a bit. I love the yellow, black and white of the dress, especially against the brown, and of course there’s the whole headless thing. I edited the doll’s feet (and the base of stand she was on) so it would look like she’s floating. It was pretty successful even SOOC, but of course I messed with it in Photoshop quote a bit. I would talk more about exactly what I did, but I’m tired quite honestly, and can’t formulate my thoughts all that well. So I’ll keep my comments brief.

I do also love this shot. Also taken just sitting on my chair. I desaturated most of the shot for a vintage feel, and added a little texture to age it also.

Not really interested in this one and probably won’t share it anywhere else but here. I thought I could composite a floating head shot into the set, but I popped off these shots quickly and didn’t take the time to get a floating head I could really use. I settled for this one, but I don’t really think it works. The head is at an odd angle, and I hadn’t yet discovered the transform tool in Photoshop that I now know how to use, and that helps to change the angles of a layer if you don’t like how it’s aligned in the photo.

I really tried to get a photo of either Sprocket or Penny with the doll head in their mouths, but they weren’t having it. This is as close as I got. Also the color balance was wonky in these shots, so I just gave this one a monochrome treatment and called it a day. Then of course, there’s my new baby doll Sherbet:

This was from a different shoot, utilizing my backdrop and better lighting. I thought this shot had nice lighting but was rather boring; in the end it’s just a doll. So I messed with it – a lot. And the end result was a little disturbing.

Creepy enough for you? What I did was warp just his face, and added a light leak to conceal a little the transition line on his face between where I used the warp tool and where I didn’t. Not sure I like it, but I bought Sherbet to be creepy, so in that regard at least he did his job.

Another one where I liked the light a lot, but it’s just…doll. So I added some tilt-shift and motion blur in the hopes of making it more interesting. Not sure I succeeded, so let’s move on. Speaking of creepy:

More warping! Not really sure how successful Sherbet’s first photoshoot was, but at least I got some good experience out of it. I also don’t know if he’s going to work for my project taking a doll around with me on errands and things and putting him into an otherwise mundane photo. He’s really BIG, and I think to pull off taking pictures of dolls at random places in public the doll in question should be a lot smaller. So, I’m going to keep looking for that. Not sure what to do with Sherbet in the meantime, but I’m sure I’ll come up with something.

I’m going to stop here because it’s late and I’m sleepy, but I’ll have more doll photos to share soon. And another bag I spruced up.

Happy Sunday everyone! I’m back to the grind on money, but I’m OK with it. All good vacations must come to an end.