Ellowyne's Ennui is proud to present

Introduction :

This tutorial will explain the basic notions you have to know for photographing your dolls. These are the tips I personally use and certainly are not the only way to achieve a picture. I am far from a professional photographer and am still learning everyday.

Please feel free to share your tips if you want to.

Prepare your doll for the shooting

-Prepare your doll.

Take the time to dress your doll and prepare her for the shoot. I like to do this the day before the photo session, so she is all ready and I don’t have do hunt for that purse or that special jewelry.

Make sure you set her hair nicely and try keep any silly-single-hair out of her face. You might want to spray some mineral water on her hair to have more control. Just wet it a little, you don’t want it to be soaked, just slightly wet.

-Posing

Most of the time, Ellowyne is well balanced enough to stand on her own when she wears shoes that are made for her. But sometimes, she just won’t. You can of course use your stand, but if you don’t want the stand to show on the picture, here is a tip...

Place a long metallic skewer behind her that will act as a third leg. Fix it on her back with pins or with a hair barrette. If the pointy end slips on the floor, just prick it into a piece of eraser (rubber). When you take your picture, make sure the skewer is hidden behind one leg.

Lately, we have been lucky enough to have dolls with a lot of articulations, which is great, but it can sometimes complicate the way we pose our dolls. Make sure you pose her in a natural way, pay attention to the position of her hands and elbows. Ellowyne is not the most articulated doll around but she can hold quite a lot of position anyway. Take a look at pictures in fashion magazines or just take poses in front of a mirror to have better ideas for posing. (see pic A)

-You might have noticed that Ellowyne has a bigger head than other dolls (if you haven't, are you sure we are talking about the same Ello??;-)).

On some pictures, her head can looks even bigger than it is and will disproportionate your doll too much. (see pic A). To avoid  this, when you take pictures, make sure you balance her body slightly backwards, or angle your camera slightly underneath your focus point.

Set the lighting

-Get Light!

First, make sure you have enough light. The problem when you take pictures indoor, is that you will never have as much light as there is outdoor. So the best you can do is to try to optimize your lighting. I always use 20W low energy bulbs (see PIC B), which equals to 100W with a regular bulb.

-Which bulbs?

You can choose between daylight or soft (warm) light bulb.

The soft light bulb (see PIC C) are the ones you usually use in your home, they give a soft yellow light. (check for warm light on the package and something around 2700K (for Kelvin's)

The daylight bulbs (see PIC D) are less common, and can sometimes be harder to find (go to big hardware stores, you should find them there) and they gives a white light. (check for white light on the package and something around 4000 /6000 K (for Kelvin's) )

It’s up to you to decide if you prefer daylight (white) or regular bulbs (yellow)

(Side note from Sherri on Kelvin's - those of us who are not familiar with them may need additional information on Kelvin's.  So I am going to include a great link to help explain it a little more
http://www.lightenergysource.com/kelvintemp.htm)

-Place the light sources correctly

You will need at least 3 light sources. Place two in front of the doll  (one to either side) and one to the rear on the top. Place these above and angled in towards the doll. This way you will have good lighting all around, making sure the subject is well-illuminated while reducing the appearance of strongly contrasting shadows that a single light source introduces. (see PIC E)

-Flash

Do not use the flash. The flash is made for taking general pics by illuminating subjects that are placed far away from you. While photographing the doll, you will be very close to her and flash will just make the light too intense and will wash out the colors and your pic will just look bleached.

Camera settings

I strongly recommend the use of a tripod. It will stabilize your camera, so your pic won’t be blurry.

I sometimes put my camera on AUTO, but most of the times you’ll have better results if you switch to MANUAL , there you can change the settings.

-ISO setting:

the Higher the ISO is, the lighter your picture is, but it will also become  grainy.

Make test with your camera to find correct settings. If you have a simple compact camera, I would say don’t go higher then ISO200

-WB (white balance) setting:

there you can tell your camera what kind of light sources you use. Check the little icons like a sun, cloud , bulb, tungsten, etc. (If you are using daylight bulbs, select the sun icon.)

If your camera is more sophisticated, you might want to use these useful settings:

Shutter speed and Aperture. You should see a little button on your camera with a +/- icon.
Press it and you will see something like 1/30 (Shutter speed) and F3.0 (Aperture)

-Shutter speed setting:

If you set it high, it will allow your camera to take pics of moving objects. Like your doll’s hair moving in the wind. But this will make your picture darker because there is less light allowed to go inside the camera.

-Aperture setting:

Aperture setting controls the depth of field of your picture, or in other words how the background of your picture will be sharp or blur.

Not all the camera allows the user to control the aperture setting. If in the setting of your camera you can change a parameter called F (...) then you can control the aperture settings.

If you want to have a sharp face but with a blurry background (see Pic Ap1) (meaning a small depth of field), then you have to put a F as small as possible ( e.g. F2.8 ,depending of your camera). On the other hand, if you want to have all the picture sharp (see Pic Ap2) (meaning a large depth of filed) then you have to put F (e.g. 8.0) as large as possible.

Important to know is that choosing a large F will reduce the light that enters in your camera and can imply darker pictures. In order to compensate this effect you have to reduce the shutter speed.    

Photos editing tips

I use Photoshop, but if you don’t have it, most photo editing programs have similar features. You can try to use the one that came with your camera, if there was one.

Now that you uploaded your picture on your computer, open it with Photoshop

First make sure to duplicate your background so that you can go back to your original picture if you are not happy with the result. (see PIC F) Even better for the beginners: duplicate your original image and keep the original untouched. (To do this, go in the Image menu and click on Duplicate)

You might want to reframe your pic. Use the Crop tool. If you want to keep the proportions of your original picture, select the whole picture with your tool. Press SHIFT while you are moving the corners of your selection. When your are happy with it, click on on the V in the tool bar or just double-click inside your picture. (see PIC G)

If there is still some annoying silly-single-hair around the doll, click on the Clone Stamp tool. (see PIC H) Select which brush you want (strong or blurry, I recommend blurry) and its thickness in the toolbar menu. Place your cursor just next to the hair (up or down) and press ALT + click. Now you just have to move ON the hair you want to see disappear. The Clone Stamp tool will duplicate the area that is just near (up or down depending where you first ALT clicked)  the hair.

Now you can correct the levels.(see PIC I ) This will allow you to reinforce the blacks and the whites and the shadows of your picture, giving it more contrast.

Make sure to stay reasonable in your adjustments. You don’t want harsh colors .

If you think the colors of your picture are too flashy, go to the Image menu / adjustments / Hue Saturation. You can correct the saturation by moving the cursor.

You can now resize you pic. Go in the Image menu, click on Image size.

For posting the pics on doll forums or online, I usually set the height at 9 or 10 inch,

and the resolution at 72 pixels/inch . Make sure the Constrain Proportions bow is checked.

And Voila!, your pic is all done. You can now share it;-)