What face or body proportions make for a photogenic doll?

When it comes to art and photography, there is no such rules set for photogenic look. The top model is just extreme stylization and has nothing to do with BJD.
It’s about what you want to make the doll into and if you want to make good picture, learn photography tricks to make the doll beautiful.
I took several photography classes at my uni (am currently working on getting my BA) and I learned one key thing about photography. It’s not the camera that makes good picture, it’s you as the photographer that does. You just got to find your niche in taking picture and make it. It’s art form.
Top model and expensive camera whatnots, are rubbish.
Just get a doll you want the most, make it yours and have fun taking pictures. ^_^

 

I have to admit I don't entirely agree with Cloudsorano's post.
Saying "it's not the camera, it's the photographer behind it" is such an easy way to dismiss the whole thing and people are always eager to agree. Yes, we amateurs all want to believe that, because forking over so much money for equipment is painful and it's nicer to believe that working hard is all that is needed.
It also makes one feel better about not looking into equipment, not knowing what all the technical stuff is about and whatnot. Who cares! It's me who does it, the camera is just my humble tool, it's all in my hand.
However, I always feel like there's a * missing at the end and some fineprint at the bottom.
The key thought is not "can it be done" but "how easy/fast can it be done". I can paint with stiff, low quality brushes that leave hairs on my canvas, but it's easier when they are taking the color nicely, move smoothly and behave just the way I want them too. Doesn't mean they automatically bump me up to pro level but the path to it will be a little less rocky

Thing is, yes, it's mostly about your skill, experience, having an eye for what looks good. Add some technical knowledge, knowing how to handle your equipment, the right equipment, some knowledge in editing and you are more or less set.
What this "it's all about the photographer" idea is missing though is that there are certain "qualities" that make it a loooot easier for a beginner (!) to achieve a nice result quickly. I'm not even talking about the camera here, even if in the right hands it is of course insanely easier to achieve what you want with proper equipment vs. some dinky old phone cam. It can be as simple as the setting (a sunset above the ocean is always a nice motive) and go as far as specific faces/models, both dolls and human.

I'm switching to dolls now.
Some features in a face make it a lot easier to achieve a good result. Depth is such a thing. Flat faces, probably with a flat face-up on top, are difficult to photograph from anything but the front.
It's something that I've regularly seen criticised about earlier Smartdoll (rival product of Volks Dollfie Dreams) heads, they look gorgeous from the front but as soon as you turn them a little to the side you realize they lack a defined profile and the features seem to just sit on top of the face.
In reality it doesn't bother one much, you usually look at your doll from the front anyway, but it can be annoying when taking pictures and limiting.

With my dolls I definitely have ones that are gorgeous in real, meh on pictures and vice versa (and some that are both, always meh or always gorgeous). Some are insanely easy to photograph, others are always a hassle to get them to look right.
The ones that are the easiest usually tend to have deep, well defined features (like my Granado Uranus or Iplehouse Arvid) with a somewhat pleasing facial symmetry. When the eyes for example are too far apart it looks odd from the front and in 3/4 the other eye disappears too quickly.
You can cheat on some depth through detailed blushing, pretty much like one can with make-up, it's easier when the face already gives you a base to work with though. Light can help too but when the face is too flat there's nothing to cast a shadow with either.
With bodies it's usually "volume" and "curve". For example, from the front upper arms might look fine, turn them a little to the side and you realize they are just flat sticks and look nothing like a real arm.
It's a little difficult to explain and rarely an issue because usually dolls are dressed anyway.

In short: yes, there is such a thing (in my opinion), if it bothers you highly depends though.
Generally skilled sculpting and a touch of realism makes it the easiest to achieve a nice result, quickly and without lots of tricks.


(PS: Saying "top model and expensive camera whatnots, are rubbish" is unnecessarily rude
It doesn't matter if you are in the "only top notch equipment makes for a good picture" or "suck the pros, it's all about the artist!" group, both have equally silly ideas on how it's "done right". It's an extreme attitude on both ends that misses the point.
Those are skilled photographers who know how to handle their equipment, the stressful environment and so on. Equipment that was developed through years and allows for fantastic results in the hand of the right person. You may say what you want about the show and business, but let's not talk badly about the photographers. There's a lot of really great, carefully crafted fashion photography out there besides "model standing in front of white studio setting".)

 

Spoiler: tangent about photography skill vs gear

I know this isn't exactly what you asked, OP, but I wanted to address that @Ara and @Cloudsorano both have valid points, but the overarching concept neither quite touches on is the fact that there are really two layers to photography--the artistic and the technical.

The artistic is the composition: how you pose your subject, how you frame the scene, whether you're too close or too far or tilted at a weird angle, the kind of lighting you use, that sort of thing. These artistic skills CAN'T be compensated for with good gear, and even the most crisp and vivid image quality won't save you if what you're photographing is boring, poorly arranged, or distorted from always shooting at a too-close top-down angle. You can practice your composition with even the cheapest point-and-shoot or a phone camera and take decent photos.

HOWEVER, once you've mastered the artistic skills, high-quality gear will take your photography to a whole other level. You'll be able to take sharper, brighter, clearer photos with better tone and value ranges, proper flash lighting, better macro lenses, etc. People who say "the camera doesn't matter at all" usually A) don't have the artistic sense to make a good composition with any camera, and/or B) they don't have the technical know-how to work a more complex camera, so in either case the better gear actually does make no difference for them.

Now about dolls, something to consider is that flat, very stylized, or asymmetrical features will be negatively exaggerated in photo. I think anime dolls in general are very hard to photograph well, because of the unnatural combination of 2D and 3D features. The cheaper dolls like ResinSoul often take more skill to photograph because they tend to have more symmetry issues, uneven eye wells which makes eyes hard to properly position and can create gaps, and their sculpts have less detail when viewed up close compared to, say, Iplehouse or Fairyland. It's not just about the cost, though, as plenty of expensive companies make sculpts with weird proportions; for example, a lot of early Volks sculpts are well-made and very collectable but have very flat and distorted features. Also, bodies that have more fluid, flexible posing ability will take less work to make them look natural.

I 100% believe that it's perfectly possible to photograph absolutely any doll and make it look lovely, it just takes more skill and knowledge to arrange them in a way that brings out their good side.

 

Regardless of the camera/lenses quality, some dolls have bad angles. I consider Dollshe Saint to be one of the most beautiful molds, but he has one bad angle in photos, if you take his profile and look up just a little he is simply horrible. Whereas I still haven't found a bad angle for my Bermann who is simply gorgeous in every shot. You have to train your eye to catch the best angles and also importantly learn to properly light your subject. Study your favorite photos out there and try and figure out why they are so good, how is the lighting, posing and composition. Any doll can look beautiful if you put in a little effort.

 

Heres my weighing in as being unbiased, and slowly learning the best way to photograph my dolls:

I am by no means a photographer, but I feel dolls are so much more difficult to get 'right'. I take pictures of my family allll of the time, and though not all pics are perfect, live subjects tend to be easier than the resin ones.

Then to top of it off, not all of my dolls are as photogenic as others. Faceup/makeup has a lot to do with it, number 1. My oldest doll will be out for faceup and I can 100% say he is my least favorite to take pictures of. His faceup is faded and flat, and when taking pics, doesn't give much definition and he literally just looks like a doll. To be fair, i love him and all, but pictures just don't to him justice. and it's not on his sculpt, it's literally just the tones of his makeup.

You probably don't want to go over the top either, but A good faceup, some decent lighting, and playing with lenses, poses, etc will make a world a difference.

Use a background that works for you too. If fabric, nothing with wrinkles. If outside, try something less busy at first until you're comfortable being able to focus on just your doll.

It's true that 'beauty is in the eye of the beholder', so I don't think its personally on the doll itself, but waht the person does with it and the pictures tha tmake them just come to life. I have a few doll profiles up and though I love Kouji, Hiro, Sora, Rheas pictures I took-- Novas is off, blurry, the coloring is bad. Sages is unfocused, Amis focuses more on her body than her face... All of which are beautiful dolls that are very similar.

 

Fantastic thread! This has given me tons of food for thought as I have been struggling with bjd photography.

 

A lot of it is in the eye of the beholder, I think. For example the style of Doll Chateau bjds are not my cup of tea, and I wouldn't call them photogenic regardless of the angle. They do have very unusual proportions - and some people absolutely adore that. The great thing about bjds is that they don't have to be constrained to a set human form. The variation between two random sculpts is most likely greater than two random people off the street.

 

Another point I'd like to add, and the one thing that I think makes the biggest difference and is completely separate from body posing or face sculpt or faceup or background:

GET THE EYE POSITIONING RIGHT

This is the single biggest photo-killer I consistently see. Eyes that are focused on nothing or poorly aligned are an INSTANT giveaway that you're looking at a dead lump of plastic with no illusion of life.

Look carefully at real people's eyes in photos. The exact positioning depends on a doll's eyewell shape and eye size, but on average for a natural, neutral gaze, the pupil should be close to the upper eyelid, the bottom edge of the iris should be just barely touching the lower eyelid, and the eyes should be very slightly cross-eyed. You should NOT arrange the eyes so each eyeball is in the dead center of its respective eye opening; this is exactly what creates the infamous "dead doll stare".

A tiny, probably hard-to-see diagram, because I'm very passionate about this subject:

..________.......________..
/../.A.\..\...../../.A.\..\
\..\.v./../.....\..\.V./../
^^dead center = dead eyes^^

..________.........________............________.........________..
/...(..0.).\...../.(.0..)...\......../...(..0.).\...../...(..0.).\
\....****../.....\..****..../........\....****../.....\....****../
^^up and towards middle= looking at you^^ (or) ^^up and both to one side = expressive^^

 

The same goes with anyone who draws ^^ Literally eye positioning is crucial. I'd like to add that if you don't think your dolls eyes are fitting right---- LOWDOMES. They're alife savor. The high domes are great in capturing light, but Captured in glass does great work in low domes that hold light and photograph beautifully!
I always feel like hand blushing helps too? It just gives more life to the photograph. Especially with hands near the face. to have fla thands resting against a blushed face tends to look awkward

 

My 5 cents as a former press photographer and cine camera operator today.

Real live:
Photogenic has nothing to do with how handsome one is. If we talk about female models, the female is way more photographed as the male, the industry often set the tone in what is considered handsome and with that photogenic. Mostly the adult industry. And "adult book prettyness" is tall, slim, not to much muscles and big boobs. The bigger, the better. But before the era of photography, in the era of the great masters on canvas, painters like Rembrandt and Rubens, more rounded women were appreciated. Today they would call that simply "fat". But todays models back then would called "unhealthy skinny". So the taste change from era to era. Today a rounder shaped woman would not been seen as photogenic, back in those years the same woman would be THE model. Especially Peter Paul Rubens became famous with his female model paintings.

That said, i have seen pictures of an amateur photographer who specialized in erotic (don't mistake this with porn please, they are way different things) and semi- or soft erotic pictures of rounder build females. In the professional photography and painters as wel as sculptors called: Rubens woman. His pictures were beyond believe. This while the rounder shaped woman, or Rubens woman, today is not considered photogenic.

But i can go beyond this, i know a photographer who does the same with physical disabled woman. Sure not photogenic, isn't it? But his pictures are of an level that must been seen to believe. He photograph the ladies in a way that this is not, or hardly visible. But sometimes also when a complete missing leg or arm is visible, but the dress, pose and light is of such a high level that at first it is not even noticed. All of his amateur models started out with tons of doubts, but after seeing the pictures they walked out with tons more confidence.

So what is photogenic?

In professional photography and cinema, a model, male or female is considered photogenic by his or her interaction with the photographer and his camera. If the chemistry between model and photographer is right, everyone can be photogenic. Except when you feel uncomfortable in front of a camera and don't want to be photographed anyway. Then one is not photogenic and never will be. But it is clear that being camera shy or have camera fear has nothing to do with the looks.

In short: one is photogenic if he or she naturally feel how it is done and interact naturally with the photographer.
Remark: an experianced photogenic model does not need any directions form the photographer, it goes all natural.

Dolls:
Dolls look life like, but the are technically a heap of plastic, lifeless and dead. So they cant be photogenic or they are all photogenic. That depend on ones point of view. So doll photography when it comes to posing and light it is similar to model photography, portrait photography, fashion photography etc. This because most of them, even elves, are in fact scale or semi-scale models of humans. But in handling, set up the props, pose the doll, it comes down industrial or product photography. So the photographer can decide if the doll is photogenic or not.

Items to study in books or on the internet:
* portrait photography
* model photography which can be in the directions of erotic, nude, fashion, candid
* product photography
* table top photography (which is a part of stop motion cinema and also deal about how to set up props and natural doll poses)

(make it 500 cents)