Photography Trying to take better pictures

I think you should check out the Photography Tips subforum http://www.denofangels.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?27-Photography-Tips
There's a lot of awesome info in there.

But as far as basics, she just looks kind of sprawled out there. She isn't posed very much, and is also not looking at/towards the camera. Then your background's not really much of anything, just the black cloth (which is dirty/has fuzzies on it).

The first thing I'd say is come up with a nice place to take photos; in a garden, or just somewhere you think looks nice. Then make the doll interact with the surroundings a little. This will make it more interesting to look at.
Once you have a nice place to take photos, then you can look more at angles and poses that look nice, as well as cropping and aftereffects.

 

As far as this photo goes:

Lighting: The light seems too harsh, and as such it reflects on her hair. Try to soften it using something semi transparent or bounce the light using a white sheet of paper.

Background: I agree with AirimirOfGondor. You need something more suited to her kimono. A nice garden, perhaps a lake, maybe even just a tree would work. Something with texture to match the kimono.

Composition: You should have her looking up and perhaps towards the top left corner. That would make her seem more in thought if that was what you were aiming for.

Do you have an idea of what you want to capture? Happiness, sadness, thoughts, contemplation?

 

The lighting, definitely. If you have better lighting, the colors will seem more individual and you won't need a flash (which it looks like you used.)
Definitely use a backdrop of some sort
Also, the eyes look pretty unnatural. Maybe angle them slightly to one direction - straight ahead looks awkward.

 

what strikes me here is the poor lighting and positioning of the camera vs the eyes. it makes her appear vacant, lifeless - it's not compelling.

as a rule, try to never ever use flash unless you have one of those fancy 'natural flash' expensive lenses or a special light kit. flash washes out the "life" of a photo, although you can edit some of that back in if you know how.

second, her eyes in relation to the camera angle are too 'rigid', there is no 'life' again because there is no connection between the doll and viewer. i'm going to use some examples from flickr (NONE are my own unless marked as by ___rei) to show you what i mean about camera angles...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ollipoppies/7713286776/in/photostream - this photo is similar to yours, with a dark background, but note how the lighting is softer and shadows play on the doll to give it depth. the doll is also looking at the camera and posed very naturally, she is 'connecting' with the viewer.

the doll doesn't always have to look at the camera, of course, which is where more natural posing comes in.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/waha-tan/7713804584/ - here we can't even see her face except a vague profile, but with natural lighting (no flash) and a nice natural pose, the picture still feels full of life.

i personally don't agree with other posters re: backgrounds. it is fine to have a black background like in the 1st picture i linked as long as you utilize it correctly. of course, a themed background can be great too - consider an oriental BG for your doll as that is her clothing style.

my final tip would be learn to photoshop your photos (or any other editing program, i am only familiar with Adobe). it can make a real difference.

 

alright, and to doublepost, since i was bored i did a 10 minute "quickie" edit of your picture. this was all done in photoshop. i realize you want photography tips but i just want to show you how different photoshop can make your picture look, i personally "fix" a lot of my pictures using that program.

also, this is my own style of editing and i understand you may dislike it, please just take it as baseline example.

Before & After





btw - i cropped the picture more because i think that having the hand on the left not fully in view looks awkward, the picture is not framed correctly.
i also blurred some stray strands of hair on your doll. long hair wigs are notoriously tangly and hard to manage, and stray hairs are always getting in the way of good photos for me personally. you can either be more vigilant about this or spend more time smoothing and cutting stray hairs (i use a tiny pair of scissors often to trim them off the wig)

this was a quickie edit so i made mistakes myself - for instance, i'd try and tone my edit to be slightly less pinkish if i redid it just now. if i was doing a 30+ min edit i would use the blur and airbrush on every stray hair left as well as spending more times adding shadow and light to give depth.