Barbie Party

Posted on April 19, 2025 by marey mercy

I’ve taken some better photos of my kit #3 dolls, as well as one I got at Goodwill for $2.50. Someone donated a huge stash of Barbies to the Goodwill near my house, and the haul I got from them is unreal. But more about that later. Let’s take a look at some better kit photos.

My only gripe with this set is the doll with the blue and black wig – something about her face just does not photograph well. Her face always comes out looking flat, for lack of a better word. I probably need to get some shots of her solo in different wigs and see if that makes a difference.

The curvy doll is the one who looks good in every single wig, and she even rocks a bald look like a boss. She also wears all the outfits best, as these fairly simple, stretchy pieces benefit from some added curves.

As I mentioned in my last post, the tall model looks best in that Afro wig. I guess I should describe them by face mold instead of body type since they are all interchangeable, but I’m not familiar enough with the names of the different molds and am too lazy to look them up. Suffice it to say that the dolls in these configurations are my favorite, but I haven’t played around with them much to be certain.

Moving on to one of my Goodwill finds, it was windy yesterday, so I took this one out to see if I could get any decent shots of her hair and dress blowing in the wind. The results were mixed, but I had fun shooting them and felt like I came away from this set with a better understanding of how to shoot dolls and have fun while doing it. So I’m feeling a little more confident now.

I’m pretty sure this is a Barbie Extra doll; she came with different clothes on so I can’t be sure, but she looks closest to this one:

Bummed I didn’t get my hands on that purse

The dress she’s wearing in these shots is from a Liz Taylor doll I got for a steal on Amazon several months ago; since this is a curvy doll and Liz has a seriously snatched waist, I couldn’t close the dress in the back, and it gapped out a lot. But I used some body software I have to fix the rather shlumpy shape she had with the back unfastened.

Doll hair sure doesn’t move like wig or natural hair, and it’s surprising how much wind it takes to get it to move. I’m still working on that, as I certainly learned plenty of tricks to make my hair move around in portraits, but as of now I’m still learning how to get similar effects from doll hair. I have many shots of her falling over as the wind knocked her down for sure – not only was it windy, but I added a warehouse fan and pretty much had to blast it right up in her face as best I could. Even then, the dress moved a lot more than the hair did.

I got a lot of stray wispy hairs flying about rather than all of it moving at once, which makes things look a little messy. Also, I had the shutter speed way too slow in about half the pictures, so instead of capturing the hair’s movement, I ended up with a lot of hair blur. So as I said, still learning over here. Oh, and I remembered my old habit of wearing clothes in weird ways for added effect, and since I loved the two colors in the skirt of this gown, I took a lot with her wearing it upside down. This made up a bit for the lack of real movement in the hair. Remember my motto: when in doubt, strangely wear your clothes for more interesting shots.

Also, my tendency to over-process shots really has to be reigned in with these dolls. I guess because I am already dealing with a fake person, the photos can’t take a lot of fakery when it comes to editing. Most of these shots I over-processed the first time and had to start completely over. The only exception is the one above; it has that strange lens flare because there was a big pole in the shot that was distracting, so I found an effect to blur it out entirely. So heavy edits can still be used to fix errors or flaws, I guess, but what I’m learning is that when I’ve got an already great shot, I need to keep it simple instead of trying to make it, well, greater.

As I mentioned above, I came away from this shoot feeling more satsfied with the results and more energized than I have since switching to photographing dolls, and I even enjoyed shooting outside for once. So I’m hopeful I can move forward with more success and satisfaction. In fact, I took over 900 shots during this set, so you know I was feeling it.

Glitterbug

Posted on February 17, 2014 by marey mercy

I woke up this morning determined to take pics with my new black backdrop, but the truth is I felt inspired by nothing. I’m tired of my costumes, tired of doing my makeup, and tired of posing for portraits and jump shots and whatever else I might pose for. In short, I am tired of myself. Along with learning Photoshop for reals, it is most likely time for me to start working with other models, so I can actualize some of the photographic visions I have in my head that involve locations other than my little studio. I want to be solely behind the camera, and process shots of people other than myself for awhile (by the way, I had some sort of allergy explosion tonight and I am hopped up on Benadryl, so this won’t be the most well-written post I’ve ever created. Sorry).

I have no idea yet how to go about all of this, so this morning I dragged myself to the grocery store to get the week’s shopping done, fully intending to come back home, suit up, and show up for photos even if I was frustrated and bored by the whole prospect. I don’t mind telling you, I was pretty grouchy about all this. I’ve been through it with other art forms as well, but the truth is that trying to create when one is out of inspiration is the pits. But I was determined to keep on shooting.

Then, on the way to grocery store, my best friend called and asked if I wanted to go shopping, and I jumped at the opportunity. She’s my best shopping partner, and I knew going out with her for a day would be way more enjoyable than shooting yet more photos of myself (oh how times have changed, a year ago I would have blown off leaving the house to get more pictures). So, I turned the car around, told my husband I’d get the groceries later, and got dressed to meet her up at the Galleria. Turned out to be the right choice.

We shopped, we ate a fabulous lunch, I picked up some makeup and a few bits and pieces here and there – then on the way out of Nordstrom I spied this, and just had to try it on:

It was a size medium and a bit too big, and it was wicked hot, but it was on sale for $43 and my friend talked me into buying it when I initially decided to put it back. I’m really glad she did, because it is kinda fabulous in a hideous sort of way (and no, there were no birds or other animals harmed during the making of this jacket – it’s fake). The jacket inspired me to take some photos when I got home, but it was about 3:30 before I got the chance to get started, so I quickly slapped on a ton of this white glitter pigment I bought at MAC years ago and barely ever wear, and slopped on a ton of sparkly eye shadow to complete the “look.”

The end result of the makeup was weird, and the shoot was fairly frustrating. As I said, that jacket is ridiculously warm, and it was about 70 degrees today where I live, plus my husband in his middle-agedness has decided the house needs to be perpetually 80 degrees. And from what I could tell through my LCD screen, the shots weren’t coming out so hot anyway, but I played around with lighting to get a decent effect out of all that glitter. When processing, I realized a lot of them were pretty cool, but I tried to stick to just a few to process.

I ended up using a silver reflector and a remote Speedlite off to the side to get a more glittery effect, and the result of that is a lot of shadows I am not used to for portraits, but I forced myself to live with it so I could get some good contrast in the shots.

Usually that much shadow around the eyes would make me crazy, but I decided to go with it when processing. This hasn’t deterred me from my new plan of enlisting friends as models and venturing out of doors for shoots, but at least I got some use out of my new jacket, and some new photos for the week. Plus I got to test out the new black muslin, which was OK, but I found it shows wrinkles more than the white one I used for so long and finally took down (I edited them out the shots by darkening the background). At least I don’t have the white balance issues with this one, where the backdrop turns out a different tint in every shot. Black is pretty much going to be black every time, so that’s reliable. And I do think it gives shots a much more dramatic feel.

I think my next backdrop should be gray, though, to get a happy medium. Black does some pretty harsh things to my lights, although adding silver reflectors, which I don’t normally use, probably messed with me some too.

I wanted to try some black and whites with the makeup, since I thought all that glitter would make a B&W look really intense and grainy. It did, but in general taking out the color made the photo boring anyway. I think that’s because the black background and my reddish-brown wig together so exactly mimicked the colors in the jacket that it appealed to me. But here’s one I decided to go ahead and transform into black and white:

Overall, not bad for shots I didn’t really want to take or enjoy taking. I think this last one is my favorite of the bunch:

No-Snow Day Part 1

Posted on January 28, 2014 by marey mercy

More sleet and snow was expected today, so school was canceled, then none came. Our city is going to have to figure out a better way to deal with this weather if it keeps happening like this, or we are all going to become terribly unproductive.

Well, not me – at least not as far as photography is concerned. Last night I came across a book about portrait photography by Natalie Dybisz, who got her start uploading photos to good old Flickr. I bought her first book, and found it interesting even though her self-portraits and mine don’t have much in common. Hers are much more representative of real self-portraiture with her emphasis on sets, props, and location; as I’ve mentioned here many times, I’m more aligned with fashion photography than the self-portrait kind.

Dybisz actually works with models too, but her work always incorporates interesting environments and unique lighting, as well as some killer Photoshop skills I can still only dream of possessing. Her new book also highlights several other self-portrait photographers, all of whom have radically different styles and processes; I love reading about how other artists work and get inspired, as it generally makes me feel less like a freak for working the way I do. There are as many types of photographic processes as there are photographers, and every once in awhile I need to be reminded of that.

I knew since today was an off day that I wanted to do some more artistic shooting, so reading this book last night generated some good ideas for me to work with. I was determined to start early and not spend the entire day working on photos, but of course I failed at that. I finished up the shoot fairly early as I didn’t take nearly as many shots as I usually do (mostly because the shots I was going for were so specific that there wasn’t a lot more posing to do once I got what I was wanting) but then of course I spent the entire rest of the day editing obsessively. Whatever. I am happy with the results, so I’ll consider it worth it.

I took two very different types of photos today, so I want to share them in two separate posts. Problem is, I like both sets so much I can’t really decide which ones to share here first. I guess I’ll go with the straight-up self-portrait shots, then share the arty ones tomorrow, So here goes:

Taken with my 85mm

OK, so that shot isn’t all that different from what I’ve done before, but I did take a few snaps of the makeup before hitting the set, just because I always do. To speed things along, I kept the makeup very simple; I modeled this after a picture of January Jones at the Met Ball last year (scroll down), when the theme was punk (I think). It’s just a lot of heavy eyeliner and really not much else, so I went with that because I knew I could do it quickly and get on with the shooting. And no, I didn’t pull off her eyeliner look well at all, but I got the basic idea. The wig is a fabulous asymmetrical one called Tulip – it only cost $13.95 and it is amazing, It also went well with the punk makeup I had going.

Self Portrait with Hammer Pants

So there it is – my first ‘real’ self-portrait. I wasn’t brave enough to go venturing outside or anything (plus it was cold), but I tried to squeeze into my limited space some things that represent me, at least in a humorous way. There’s no deep meaning or anything here, in fact, I centered the entire set around that fab t-shirt I got from ModCloth, then made sure to get my mirror in there as a tongue-in-cheek reference to my own vanity, and dragged a bunch of my fashion props out of the old hat box I use to store them. The clothes thrown on the chair represent, well, the fact that I am a slob who always has clothes thrown over a chair somewhere, and those Uggs are actually my house shoes. The trickiest part was getting my reflection right in the mirror so it showed up in the shot; took about eight tries to get this right, and this was the last shot of the eight.

What I really like about this one is that you can see my laptop in the mirror, where I have another photo of me pulled up in Photoshop (it’s actually the portrait I shared at the beginning of this post; I was working on editing it while taking these shots). My glasses are tossed on the floor here, since I always have them thrown on the floor somewhere during a shoot. The bunny ears are fuzzy and I like them, so there you go. Also decided to hang one of my fuzzy sweaters over the chair, because I love fuzzy things. And yes, white balance was a bitch once again, and each of these shots is a slightly different tone. To hell with it, that’s something I can’t ever get consistently right.

Of course I had to jump in one of the shots. I also had to crop the hell out of these; I barely had enough room in my little studio to get everything into the frame, without having to go beyond the boundaries of the white backdrop. I considered at one time just letting the edges of the backdrop show, as well as the edge of my clothes closet and the bookshelf full of old workout equipment, but in the end, that was too much reality for me even when trying to be so representative, so I cropped it all out.

Finally got the white balance right with this one

All in all, I’m pleased with how these shots turned out. Nothing like what I usually do, and I expected to be completely disappointed with them, but they did what I wanted them to do, and they weren’t hard to set up or edit. So, something different, but kinda fun – tomorrow, on to the arty-ness!

Oh, and I also spent some more time on Polyvore this morning, but the looks I created were more for myself than for sharing – they weren’t all that exciting, but they did serve to compile some of the stuff in my closet into outfits I can remind myself to wear later (mostly for my two fuzzy sweaters, actually – they are fabulous to look at, but they have kind of a frumpy shape, and I’ve been struggling to figure out how to wear them). I did not make a Polyvore set for the gold hammer pants, however. Let me figure out how to wear the fuzzy sweaters before I take those suckers on.