Photography Tips

Since getting into Blythe I have noticed that my photography has slowly improved. I thought it might be helpful to share a few tips I have picked up along the way. I am in no way shape or form a brilliant photographer and do not consider myself an expert but maybe these tips will be useful to someone!

Calling it a tool kit is probably going over the top for a few cardboard tubes, a comb and two bull dog clips but I'm feeling fancy today. I also use a a piece of foam board about A3 in size. 

So as you can see I prop a bit of foam board up against my boyfriends lego storage (we sound about ten years old!) and clip a big piece of paper to it. It's pretty glam. The two pics side by side show my doll from the front and from the top when held up with a card tube. By creating a curve with the paper it gives the impression of a continuous background. The card tube is invisible from the front. 

I like to take my pictures in a well lit room but I always set everything up so that any direct light from the window is hitting the back of the foam board. My doll basically has her back to the window. This might seem odd but it will help to avoid harsh shadows in your image. If you want to play with shadow, face your set-up the other way!

I personally like to hide the pull ring in most situations as I think it makes the image look neater. It can be less distracting if the pull ring is not there. To do this I pin the pull ring to the back of my doll's outfit, like this:

Sorry for the slightly blurry photo in this here photography tip blog post. Haha. 

Implying action is a lot easier with Licca and other posable bodies but that's not to say it can't be done with regular Takara bodies. When you take a picture of a person they generally aren't standing stock still. For instance, an arm or a leg might be bent or a head slightly turned.

Cropping your images in different ways is another easy way to add interest to your images. You can use photo templates, as I have used above (from Pugly Pixel) or use photo editing software to do this. If you do this with a full photograph you have more cropping options. However, you could photograph your images like this straight on to your camera.


I haven't gone in to photo editing with applications like photoshop or picnik but I will make a little post about that in two weeks. Next Wednesday Ask Clem is back!