toys | mareymercy.

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!

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.