Tag Archives: Photography

Barbie Party

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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.

I mean, come on

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.

Dolly Shots

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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
There’s that desk shelf again
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:

“Curvy” Barbie AKA Normal Sized Barbie

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!

Knitography!

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Well hello everyone! How the hell are ya?

So I haven’t updated since April, and since then I’ve been able to meet up with friends, hang out with my sister, and eat in a few restaurants with Doug. Hallelujah! Except oh wait – this is Texas, after all, and our super-low vaccination rate means the Delta variant of COVID-19 is on the rise in a major way, and Doug and I are back into quarantine mode. I’ll be damned if after committing to avoiding this stupid virus for a year I’m going to turn around and get COVID, even if it most likely wouldn’t be in some serious form since I’m vaccinated, because a bunch of people refuse to do their part and just take the damn shot already. And yes, I have family members and friends who refuse to get vaccinated, and they are all absolutely on my shit list. There’s no way in hell our governor is going to mandate masks, social distancing, or vaccines at this point, so if we’re going to stay healthy AND do our part not to spread the virus (since vaccinated people can carry it asymptomatically) we’re going to stay home. Again. Sigh.

But hey, I did this whole stay-at-home thing for like 14 months already, so I’m good to go. I’m still knitting a LOT, and although I still have much to learn I’ve managed to knit a few decent scarves so far. My plan was to keep knitting scarves until I had several more advanced stitch patterns down – my first full scarf was a basic garter stitch (and that one was a bitch because I bought a light weight yarn that was hard for a newbie like me to work with), then a seed stitch, and then a rib stitch. I tried stockinette with a border but the damn thing still curled up, so I don’t know what I did wrong there.

I was going to move on to a basket stitch when I got the idea to learn how to knit roses – and now I am obsessed. My goal is to knit a shit-ton of roses together to make a blanket, but that’s going to take a while, so in the meantime I thought I could at least get enough made to use in photos. Even that was going to take awhile, so I got the bright idea to just use photoshop to pretend like I’d made a shit-ton of roses. Problem solved!

This was done with only three different roses

I just snapped a photo of myself, then stood in the same exact spot and stuck a knitted rose on a knitting needle and held the thing up in all the different positions I wanted it to be, and then layered them all on to the original photo.

Yep-more roses

These little roses I turned into tea light holders, and they sit in a little silver platter on my office table. I’m pretty pleased with them! I’m currently learning to knit leaves I can add to my roses, but that involves both increasing and decreasing stitches, which is a new skill for me, so I have so far successfully knitted — one. I have a long way to go folks. But thanks to the Delta variant and a plethora of stubborn Southerners who won’t get vaccinated, I have plenty of time now!

*And yes, I realize many, many people cannot get vaccinated for various reasons. I do not fault those people one bit. In fact, the high risk of COVID to people who cannot get vaccinated make me fault the ones who could get it but won’t EVEN MORE.

This was done with one rose

Anyway, I’m enjoying both the knitting AND how I am finding ways to incorporate it into my photography – or knitography, as I have taken to calling it. I feel like there is loads of potential here to take both activities in some fun new directions.

This is one scarf I made that is half white and half yellow – I just layered several different shots of me throwing it around into one photo.

Aside from this, my summer has been light. I have put on some weight again, and tried to taper off my Lexapro since I dropped 20 pounds the last time I stopped taking it, but emotionally I couldn’t handle it. I finally realized it was ridiculous to put myself through the wringer mentally to lose a few pounds, so I went back on it and am trying to get the weight down without having to lose my peace of mind in the process. It ain’t easy, but at this point I have at least stopped the weight gain, which was really starting to climb. Haven’t lost any yet, but am no longer putting it on, so that’s a start.

Penny!

Our old girl Penny had a rough June. She has vestibular disease, which is common in old dogs. It’s essentially when small blood vessels burst in the inner ear, and the symptoms can be scary because they mimic a stroke, but vestibular is much less serious in the long run as dogs generally recover from them 100%. Penny has had three vestibular “events’ as we call them, where she gets major vertigo and struggles to walk and stand. Initially she also gets so nauseous that she throws up, but now that we’ve dealt with this before we have medication on hand that helps her with both the dizziness and the nausea. Mid-June, she had another bout of this; she was lying down on a beanbag chair when all of a sudden she rolled off it and started shaking her head around. We knew right away what it was, and tried to get medicine in her before she threw it up. It was unpleasant night as she couldn’t walk well enough to go outside, so she peed and pooped in her dog bed for about 24 hours before things kicked in enough for her to be able to walk with our assistance.

Dog harness

We bought a harness like the one pictured above, and it was a real lifesaver once Penny regained enough balance to be able to walk outside. She was still terribly dizzy, but she COULD walk, and with this harness we were able to help her keep her balance. Her recovery took a while this time – it’s been a little over a month now and it’s just been in the past few days that she’s been completely back to normal. We still keep the back harness on her all day and use it when she goes out, as her back leg strength still isn’t as good as it used to be and it allows us to help her stay upright when she goes to the bathroom. But she’s finally back to walking around the house on her own, and even being able to sleep on the bed with us again – although she still needs help with the stairs that get her up there. For the first three weeks, when she couldn’t get up on the bed, I actually slept on the floor in my office right next to her, which was not good for my back let me tell you, but it was good for my heart. After losing Sprocket in December, we are both even more sensitive towards any pet that gets sick right now. Even after so much time has passed, we still miss that old boy something terrible.

RIP Sprocket. We miss you!

That’s all for now, although I do have a bit more Knitography to process. So maybe we’ll be speaking again soon!

Knitty Kat

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Over spring break, I had enough free time to get in the mood to take pictures again. I’d gotten so stuck in a certain setup and process that I’d “perfected” over the years that it never occurred to me it might not be serving me well anymore. Looking over some really early photos gave me the idea to experiment with some techniques I hadn’t used in years, and they worked out brilliantly.

I’ve always been partial to using softer light than this, but I’ve had the technology to use stronger, brighter light for a long time. As I’ve gotten older, all those soft shadows I’ve been using on my face weren’t as flattering as they used to be – LOL – and directing more light to my face really did the trick.

I’ve also gotten away from using my wide-angle lens for portraits, because to be honest, that totally makes sense, but when I first bought my 17-40 I used it for everything, and in looking over old portraits I realized that hey, they actually didn’t look half-bad. Plus, when working in a space as small as mine the wide-angle really makes it easier to take photos, even if I am just doing portraits. It allows me to incorporate more movement and flowy fabric as well as creating stronger lines that for whatever reason are really working for me right now.

Obviously, I also used a LOT of makeup.

I had a lot of fun doing this over the course of two days, but soon real life emerged again and I haven’t had time to do a photoshoot since.

When the pandemic began, my husband and I committed to staying home as much as possible because we didn’t have to leave the house at all. I switched easily to tutoring from home, and he was already retired, so we went into full lockdown in March of 2020 and still have just barely come out of it. We got vaccinated a month ago – Johnson & Johnson vaccine, but since it’s been over a month we aren’t at risk of blood clots – and while my husband was able to meet up with a few friends to sit outside and have a nice lunch, no one I know has been fully vaccinated so I haven’t ventured out yet at all. But, when this all started I decided since I wasn’t going to be anywhere or doing anything, it would make sense to just tutor as much as possible so I didn’t get bored. So, since last March I’ve been tutoring every single day, seven days a week, and now I’m pretty much stuck with it until the end of the school year because I don’t want to abandon any of my students so close to the end of the semester. But part of my own personal return to normal will be setting some new boundaries and giving myself some days off again. My point is that this should allow me more time to get inspired to take photos again. But we’ll see – I’ve got some other creative endeavors going on at the moment that I’m balancing.

I’ve written about how I took up coloring last year, and while I am still doing that fairly often, more recently I decided to learn how to knit. I’ve only been doing it for about a month now, so I’ve not knitted much more than a bunch of lumpy squares, but I have to say it’s a very enjoyable hobby even when whatever I’m trying to make doesn’t turn out.

I’ve only managed to make one actual THING so far, which is a very skinny scarf -I tried to make a normal width at first but I kept screwing up when I got past about 6 stitches, so I settled for a very skinny one. It’s also kind of short because after successfully knitting a bunch of rows without having to start over, I began to fear screwing up and went ahead and bound it off.

It’s a “knitty” – get it?

I am currently trying to make a wider scarf in a different stitch pattern, but I’ve had to start over a ton of times so far, which is fine, because as I said before, it’s still a relaxing hobby even when I keep messing up. It only took me a few days to get the basic knitting stitches down – knits and purls – which is pretty miraculous considering my inability to follow instructions, so the rest of it is just finesse and practice. If you’ve ever wanted to try to knit, trust me, you can do it if I can. I am generally hopeless and being crafty with my hands. I’ve tried to learn to sew I don’t know how many times and have always failed, for example.

That’s all for now – I hope you all are getting your vaccine on and otherwise doing well!

COVID-365 Day 6

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STORY OF A SHUTDOWN!
We bought this about a month ago and my husband put it all together – well, I did have to help him assemble the console but the technology was his responsibility. I do know how to start up the system and play pinball, but that’s about it. However, I am a pretty good pinball player! I don’t even know how many tables this thing has as I haven’t played them all yet, but it’s a hell of a nice way to pass the time and holds a lot of nostalgia for both of us.

Photo No-Go

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As I may have mentioned previously, one of my bright ideas I had about getting into coloring pages was to use my own photos as pages to color. However this turned out to be much more challenging than I expected.

So obviously, this doesn’t work. Coloring greyscale images is actually a thing, but it’s not my thing at all. One of the coloring books I bought was in greyscale without me realizing it, and in researching online how I could color the pages I discovered greyscale coloring usually is done with colored pencils, which isn’t a medium I enjoy working with at all. It can be beautiful though:

an example of greyscale coloring

Since I wasn’t interested in that process, I started thinking of ways I could create a more typical coloring page out of my pictures. I did some research online and found a few different techniques, but none of them really created an actual coloring page with clear lines. Every suggested process I tried ended up looking something like this:

My next big idea was to convert the image into this rather messy format, print it out, and then trace it keeping only the lines I want. This seemed to be a decent solution, but for some reason it still wasn’t working for me:

It’s OK, but it still didn’t satisfy me, plus I found the whole process boring. From transforming the photos in Photoshop to figuring out what lines to trace, it just wasn’t any fun and I still didn’t feel happy with the results.

This was my second attempt
And the traced result. I actually did end up coloring this one.

Choosing which lines to keep and which to leave out was tricky; I always felt like I still had too many lines and they got in the way when I was trying to color. And the lines all felt ‘weak’ and rickety and difficult to color within for some reason. Compare my attempts to one of my coloring pages that has a similar image:

Why is this so much better? I can’t explain it, I just know that it is.

I even found some free sites online where you could upload a picture and the software claimed it could convert it into a coloring page, but guess what – all those sites used the exact same processes I had used on my own and disliked. So I pretty much gave up and decided I just wasn’t going to be able to color my own photos. No big deal – I had plenty of other stuff to work with. But a few weeks later I thought perhaps I could find someone on Etsy who had the capacity to covert photos; lo and behold I found the perfect person! It’s an artist with a shop there called MGSCustomArt, and she hit it straight out of the park!

Now THAT’S what I’m talking about!

See how much more satisfying this is? I swear to God I never could have done this and I’m still amazed at how good this artist is at it herself. I sent her three photos the first time, and it took about two weeks to get them back, which was fine. I just ordered another print from her today and sent it along to her as well.

She charges $10 a page, which I know sounds like a lot when you can buy a whole coloring book for $6, but to me having my own photos looking like real, actual coloring pages with exactly the right lines and clarity while STILL looking like ME is totally worth it! She has a lot of positive reviews at her Etsy site with uploads of other people’s pictures, so you can go there and see samples of other photos she’s transformed. Lots of people have had more personal photos than these turned into coloring pages – pictures with family, friends, or pets – and they all look great!

I just sent this one off to get converted also

So, if this is ever something you’ve been interested in doing, give MGSCustomArt some love because she is the best I’ve found. I have never seen anything even close to what she can do!