Photography Build the Skills: a Doll Photo a Week

Great first entry! The color of his wig with his sweater looks very nice together. I thought I'd ask first, but are you also interested in suggestions for helping to improve?

 

I noticed the picture has quite a bit of noise/grain. Now, if that's what you wanted then ignore me and carry on. If not then it might be because you didn't have enough light.

Most phone camera's with their smaller sensors aren't great in low light settings. If there's not enough light then the phone will raise the ISO to increase light capture, but this also tends to have the added effect of increasing noise/grain in a photo. To combat this, if possible you can add additional lighting either through natural window or door light. Or artificial lighting with things like lamps. Here's a thread talking about lamps and lighting attachments people have used for photography, /threads/lamps-for-indoor-photos.841234/.

You may also look into if your phone has a manual setting that allows you to manually set things like ISO, shutter speed, and white balance.

Anyway, I look forward to see what you take next. I've never thought of using a random word generator for photo's, but that's a really cool idea, that I might have to use myself when stumped for inspiration.

 

This looks like a great idea to improve your photography skills and learn new things. I wish you good luck on this endeavour and I'll cheer for you but don't end up pressuring yourself too much if you happen to skip some cause, as you said, life happens.
If you don't mind it, I may do it myself as well. Every year I find myself wishing I had taken more pictures and I think this is the perfect year to finally change that.

 

His expression looks very thoughtful. I especially like how the highlighted part of the eyelashes and the shiny parts of the scar show up against the darker tones of his face. And the texture of the sweater contrasting with the smoothness of the resin is also really nice : D

For a suggestion: If you have a second lamp or light that you can move around, that lamp could be placed in front of and on the other side of the doll from wherever the first light is in the space. Having two light sources can show some contours of the doll's face and possibly add some highlights to the doll's eyes to make them really stand out.

Thanks for sharing this and hope your project is really fun : )

 

This is a great idea! I will cheer you on!

 

Oh, what a fun idea! I'd also love to play along, if you're alright with that. Maybe I'd get more photos taken if I had a more concrete goal then "man, I should take some nice photos of these guys sometime, huh".

 

Good luck. I try to post a doll image to my Flickr page every day though
I don't try to capture one every day. I try to get into the studio every week
and when I do I take several image so that I can post them over a few days.

Phone cameras usually have very short focal length lenses which invite you
to get the device too close to the subject and cause distorted perspective.
Notice how much larger the near hand is than the far hand. If your phone has
a longer lens use it. Perspective is determined by the camera distance. Using
a longer focal length lens invites you to move the capture device further
from the subject so less distortion.

This image is basically a portrait so you have a bit too much negative space
at the top. Your tendency will be to center things remember your rule of thirds
from your photography class and think about putting the eyes 1/3 down from
the top of the image...

Again, best of luck. I see this is in photography so I'll be following it.
Thanks for sharing your words. I may see what I can do with them myself.

 

I don't find this thread in the photography forum.
If you can't move this thread to that forum would you please
start a new "Photo a week" thread in Photography forum??

 

You really don't need a longer lens. You only need to move back a bit.
You may then need to crop a bit. This one looks better from a perspective
standpoint.
I still want to do "Entertainer" from last week list but here is "Merchant"
from last week.

The Merchant by Tom Beach, on Flickr

 

Nice second week! I like the prompt you went with. Nova definitely looks like they're done with that cat. lol

For things you can use for diffusion, and that you may already have on hand is a white bed sheet or thin white fabric. Hang the sheet up between your subject and the light source. The added bonus is that because sheets are fairly large especially compared to dolls it'll make your light source that much bigger, which will make the light source much softer.

 

Yes, I like that. To me the blanket in the foreground distracts a bit.
If you blur it a bit and darken it a bit is it less distracting. Yes, small
changes can make large differences.

OK, I see that. "Barman" is somewhat similar....

Barman by Tom Beach, on Flickr