More thoughts on lighting dolls

Well I actually came up with another tip on taking photos of dolls that was still on the subject of lighting. It is THE FLASH... no not the super hero the camera's flash.

Try to avoid it. No, really at all costs. Please... I beg of you. Flash photography when not using what a professional photographer is using never is as great as it could be. However when you are talking a point and shoot, a phone or even a digital SLR and a doll... we look dead. It takes all the contours that our faces have and makes them look flat, our coloring looks gone, the gentle blush of our cheeks isn't visible.

Wait for good natural light. It makes all the difference.

Example A: a Family portrait. Beth Andya nd Kendall were at our cousins and they all got together in a group photo. It was night time and this was taken with a flash and well they all look more like dolls on a couch than the people you know we are. 

 Example B: Beth in strong sunlight. Her eyes are so reflective. They look more lifelike and this isn't even an example of good natural lighting. This is still better than the photo above. Yes, Beth changes her hair often. Right now she is a red head and it is super curly. I think she likes to look closer to me. We look cute together now with our blue eyes and red hair.

Example C: Candace with a flash. So every now and then you forget to turn the flash off and this happens. Ugh. Well there is a reshoot of it. She is in same pose but we cropped it differently. 

Exampe D: Candace in same pose but natural light. I don't think it was the best day either but you can see her eyes look pretty not scary.  For brown eyed dolls the light is imperative,

Example E: Kendall and Andy at the beach... super cute pose but the problem with this photo is the angle the light is coming from. It doesn't light their faces. Their faces are in shadow. 

Example F: Kendall lying on the beach. Much better his face is lit nicely. I think he is a bit of a beach bum. I hope Beth doesn't get mad that I went into her photo archives and have been critiquing them. Ummm Kendall what up with the hair? Wow that is curly on the top. LOL It looks like he does when he first gets up. He is a goof. You have to live with him to understand. ( I know he is my brother but he is actually sort of cute, you know for a brother.)

Last one, is Example G: Rosemarie with her eyes looking exceptionally pretty. Glad she gave up on that lip gloss color since then. This is a really old photo of her. I do love her freckles though..

Well I hope this helps with your quest to better and more artistic photos of your dolls. Remember we like to look alive so give us a hand in our quest to look as human as possible. Now it is really late and since our humans are asleep we are going to play some cards, you know Toy Story was absolutely correct. In fact many toys were mad that the cover was blown. Anyhow UNO time with the doll siblings. 

Saige

Lights and thoughts before that

When we do photo shoots we have some walls we use that are actually cardboard trifold presentation boards. Some have been transformed into various rooms and others are plain solid colors. We have floors that are already created as well. This allows us to have a nice background for a photo. 

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Our barn set, the floor is made from scrapbook paper that looks like hay and we got scrapbook paper that was a wood floor cut it into boards and glued it all in, made fake windows by printing them out. 

It looks like I am in the an actual barn. 

These are not lit the best as it was raining that day. BOO but it allows you to get the scaled background idea. 

Other scale backgrounds we made for play and photography are a vet office...

School...

Wall with a mirror...

  And the new Confetti wall for mom's new shop Confetti Doll Designs.  All that confetti is glued individually on foam core. it fits inside the normal plain white tri fold.

You can find some great outside places that look scale for people as short as me as well... two of our favorite photos of me in real world are...

Old Train station, brick wall and sidewalk and 

 Walking the dogs with a creative focus. Because I am close and the buildings are so far away in the photo background it tricks your eye into thinking we are in scale. I am actually 1/3 scale. LOL

Now once you find a good background, you need to think about where the light is coming from when you shoot the photo. For example this is full sun in my face with the dogs. It can lead to harsh shadows so you have to be careful you are not in shadow in your photograph or it is something you can fully crop out later.  The sun is behind photographer.

Where I am against the brick wall that day was overcast. I had plenty of bright light but with a nice cloud cover to diffuse it so it eliminated the shadows.  That is the best light. I makes my eyes look bright and alive but no weird shadows on my face. The sun is behind the photographer and it was a different day and time. 

The two in the grey dress were shot inside the house and the light was coming from behind the photographer on her right. She is as far to the left as her body can be to not block her light source. 

The camera is held as level to me as possible, if at a slightly upward angle our eyes can look a bit odd so just slightly higher angle is best to make us look the most lifelike. 

So rules for a lifelike doll photo a recap:

1. Background scale 

2. Good light, Bright but not too harsh from behind photographer.

3. Angle of your photographer the sun and the camera.

Let me know if you would like in depth tutorials on background making. 

Saige

New series in art lessons... Photography

Photography is a really broad subject as art. What you are doing is using the digital camera or film (those relics do exist still but not in as much use as they were just ten years ago) to record the light as it reflects off an object. This holds true for both black and white and color photography.

However in today's world I am going to assume that for the most part, most people are using digital cameras (cell phones, tablets, what have you) Digital photography has so many aspects that we can cover. so we can have a big series on better photography.

There are some advantages to digital photography. Once you have made the initial purchase of your equipment you are not paying for film and developing to just see what you have. It also eliminates the wait time involved with film development. The cost of the chemicals needed to develop the film is also eliminated.

My mom took two different black and white photography classes and I got to see her old film canister. (we sold it last summer) It had a wire coil inside a metal canister with a black plastic lid that had a really strange bump on top. I can't imagine standing in compete darkness trying to wind the film into that coil and only touching the edges because if you touched it incorrectly you ruined the film.  So many things to go wrong.

Of course I do realize that the downfall of digital photography would be a digital memory fail of some sort. However if care is taken it is still the simpler way to photography,

We are first going to talk about taking photo's of dolls...or other inanimate objects....hey wait I am so not inanimate. Well you know short people like me.

This is a great photo mom took of my sister Beth. While you don't see her face you get the feeling she was riding along on her board and mom caught that great shadow in it as well. 

She was standing still and the breeze blew her hair giving it a feeling of motion. (lucky shot mom, lol)

What mom?

I was just told not to bust my mom's photography skills. Truthfully she does ok. 

So in next post we will talk about lighting a photograph.

Saige

I have been bad about blogging...

Sometimes, even us dolls get really bad about blogging. I can't make any excuses why I just did. I really need to give you some more great art ideas that you can do. I will do my best to work at this harder as we all need to practice. I need to work on my blogging skills that is for certain.

Here is a really cool drawing my mom did. It was sketched in pencil then the colored it with colored pencils and inked all the details in . It isn't perfect but it is one of her best attempts at a Dragon.  It was scanned then into the computer so it wouldn't get lost.  It is a good way to preserve drawings. 

So to let you know what I was up to I have spent a ton of time standing around in a dress getting my photo taken. Yeah modeling. I have been working for Confetti Doll Designs as a model alongside their main model who's blog is http://iwantcandytoo.blogspot.com/ and her name is Candace. She is fun and has an adorable younger brother named Andy. 

I also recently did a little modeling for Dolls For A Cause. 

Their next campaign begins on August 31 on Facebook and it will run through the 7 of September. The awesome ladies that run that group have explained that they have recently changed all of their ways of fundraising. While they originally were using Ebay they found that the seller fees were dipping into their total funds available to donate, and by offering smaller groupings but more of them in comparison to one large group project they were able to make their donated goods available to a wider range of people. They are earning greater amounts of money to help where needed. Then the last change they made was moving to a more personal story. We have been finding people who have illnesses and have been donating to them in the place of the large corporate conglomerates. They supported a girl fighting cancer and Pam of our upcoming campaign is a close friend of so many of the ladies that sew and donate the clothing. 

Pink for Pam event can be found at this link, and you can learn more about the Dolls for A Cause group on their facebook page.

I absolutely adore this dress. I love how pretty I look and I feel very much like I was channeling Molly Ringwold in Pretty in Pink.

Keep practicing your art and I will work hard at a new project idea for you all to do. 

Love 

Saige

Dolls for a Cause

Off my art topic, but have you heard of Dolls for a Cause?

Dolls for a Cause is made up of a group of crafters and artisians who create unique one of a kind pieces of doll clothing, accessories and furniture and then donate them. They pick a cause or theme and all the pieces work around that to become a cohesive collection. When the collection is all together, it is then photographed and listed on ebay and the proceeds of the auction are then donated to the charity.

There are many crafters involved. You can find more information, here.

Past Cause's have included Susan G Komen for the Cure, and Autism Speaks.

Want to know how I know all about this great group? Sometimes I get to be the model.

Bet you want to know how I get to be the model, right? Well Lemonhead 103, my mom's shop on Storenvy is one of those crafters. When we host the auction, I get to model/.. well unless one of my sister's call it first.

I need to fight Candace for the Christmas one.

As soon as mom has a finished photo and auction information I will share it here.

 Now, go follow that fb page.

and Lemonhead 103.

It's beginning to look at lot like Christmas.... ( and other holidays)

I have been pretty bad about blogging lately. I have no real excuse. Ummm, perhaps I need to stop messing with mom's smart phone so much and playing games. Sorry.

Well the end of my reign as Girl of the Year is almost over. I am not sure if I should keep doing the art or if Candace or Kaya or Rose should take over the blog for some time. Not sure Kaya ever will take over, she is not sure what the computer is and is a bit afraid of it. She time traveled from the 1800's after all. Most of the technology frightens her. She prefers her buckskin dress to the modern clothes the rest of us wear. I don't know if she can type even. Hmm might need to teach her.

In the mean time, I hope that you have been practicing. Art is all about practice, and self expression.
It does not mean everyone will like what you create as we all have different taste.

So my assignment for you is Make some holiday cards. I am using the generic "Holiday" in place of Christmas because I will not presume that you celebrate it. However, what ever winter holiday you choose, MAKE SOME CARDS.... it is a great way to get some art time and make a unique one of a kind card for someone special, or better yet multiple someone's.

Don't have anyone to give them to? Sure you do. Find a nursing facility near you and take them in. Many patients in nursing facilities do not have many visitors. A card is a wonderful piece of cheer to share with them and a way to let them know that other people think of them.

Another place is a Children's wing of the hospital near you.

If you attend religious services, they may have a list of shut in's and Usually the religious officiant will go to visit them, some hand made cards from you would be a nice thing to take to them.

You have family I would think. Aunties love some art.

Share your art, even if you don't think it is good there are people who will appreciate your time and effort.

I would have mentioned the US Military as well, however there are many restraints on that program. There is a deadline so I think we may have missed it. If  not I encourage you to make cards for the military as well, We did that at 4-H. If you live in an area with a Base or have ties to an American Legion it may be easier to accomplish.
Whoever you choose to share your art and joy with this holiday season I know they will appreciate it.

Stamps and cut outs and scrapbooking embellishments can make it fun as well. If you scrapbook and you design pages that is art, remember , art is everywhere.

Love,

Saige

Well sorry about my absence, I got involved in creating my human brother's Halloween costumes and I had set a bunch of posts to auto load and apparently Blogger was being a bit Derpy so they never posted... I just caught them up. Hope you are still with me.

I am a huge My Little Pony fan, closet trivia about me, lol. Rarity is my favorite pony. 

I also got a new sister. Her name is Kaya. 

I should bring her in as a guest one day and do a post about Native American Art.  

Anyhow I will try to commence with the art ideas, and lessons once again. 

Sorry!

(Please accept this crazy rambling as my I am back to blogging more regularly. I hope, I will do my best anyhow.)

Love,

Saige