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Earlier version of this article have appeared several times. We're reprinting it here because we get so many photographs that we just can't use in the Handbook or on the web site, and because we frequently get requests for this article on the Internet. I hope that this article will help some of you take better photographs that will sell more of your patterns. See Also: Photographer's Checklist |
Selling your dolls or patterns is easiest when the buyer can look at the doll in person. Unfortunately, neither you nor your dolls can be everywhere at once. A good photograph is the next best thing to being there—particularly if it runs in a magazine for free.
We get many photographs of beautiful dolls that we just can't use in Let's Talk About Dollmaking On-Line Magazine or on the web site. Like most other magazines, the pictures we choose to print are those that are the best photographs—not necessarily the pictures of the best dolls.
This non-technical article will help you solve or avoid five common problems with doll photographs. By just using a checklist of five simple items, you can immediately improve not only your doll photographs, but many of your family pictures as well.
Even if you're not interested in taking better photographs yourself, the information in this article will help you deal with other photographers when you need beautiful slides for admission to a show or color advertising, or when you need spectacular black and white "glossies" for free newspaper or magazine publicity.
You don't need a fancy camera or expensive film to take good pictures. You need to select the correct film for the way the pictures will be used and you need to know how to use the camera you have to the best advantage.
Most of us use our cameras to take color pictures or prints. It is easier for us to have something that we can hold in our hand and look at and show to others without geting out a slide projector and setting up a screen. Juried shows (where a group of judges decides who can and can't participate) and color magazines usually want slides. For show juries, the slides are projected so that all of the judges can see what is being discussed. That way when one of the judges makes a comment about your work, the other judges can see the slide while the comment is being made. Color magazines prefer slides because they can be a more accurate representation of your work than prints.
Aside from whether you want the convenience of showing a print without a projector, or have need for many people to see it at the same time, the most important difference between a print and a slide is that the slide is processed once while a print is processed twice. This has two consequences:
A slide is as accurate as it can be, given your camera equipment and skill. There is no opportunity to mess it up during processing. There is also no opportunity to fix it up during processing.
A print is processed once as a negative (which is pretty standard), and once as a print. When the print is made from the negative, the skill of the finishing lab can make the print either better or worse. Most printmaking is done by automatic machines that seek an "average." If you are doing something wrong, or your camera equipment is poor, the "average" results may be an improvement. If you are a good photographer, and your camera equipment is working well, the "average" results will make your pictures look worse.
In short, it is easier to get good prints than it is to get good slides. You need a better camera and more skill to get good slides.
It is also easy to become a better photographer. Then you may have to talk to the people who process your film and ask them to print it "right" instead of printing it "average."
Newspapers, and magazines that print in black and white, prefer "8 by 10 glossies." These are black and white prints that have been enlarged to 8-inches by 10-inches and have a glossy finish. Any problems with contrast are immediately obvious in a black and white print. The glossy surface retains sharpness in the details.
Textured surfaces cause the detail to be lost when the picture is copied for making a printing plate. If you use color prints for newspapers or magazines that will print in black and white, be sure to avoid the "textured" finish. (The "normal" finish is slightly matte and will be okay.)
Because color has become so popular, it is very difficult to find a processing service for black and white prints. When you do find one, it will usually be a custom service intended for professionals, and will usually be much more expensive than color printing. If you know an amateur photographer who does his or her own black and white processing, try to have them do your black and white work. It's actually very easy and inexpensive on an amateur basis.
If you have found an amateur photographer to do your black and white print processing, see if you can get them to take your black and white publicity pictures too—they may have a better camera than you do, and they may be better at taking pictures. (After all, you're better at making dolls.)
Unless you are an expert, and have a good camera, the easiest film to use indoors is Kodak® Gold 400 color print film. For outdoors, use Kodak Gold 100 color print film. This is a print film so that some of the problems you might have with your camera or technique can be fixed in the film processing lab. The 100 speed film is well suited to the amount of light outdoors. The 400 speed film is four times as sensitive and is well suited to indoor use with a flash. It may be too sensitive to use outdoors. (The 100 speed film will make your flash batteries run down four times as fast if you use it indoors.) There are other brands and types of film that are just as good, but for simplicity, you can't go wrong with the Kodak Gold 100 and 400.
One more important thing about film—any kind of film: it doesn't keep well in heat or after it has been exposed. This means three things:
Don't store your film or leave your camera in a hot place like a closed car. Excess heat will cause colors to be funny.
Buy your film fresh before you are going to use it— don't keep it around for a long time and expect it to still give good performance.
Process your film soon after you use it. Don't leave it in the camera waiting to use up the rest of the roll—film deterioriates. If necessary, waste the rest of the roll. (You don't have to rush right out to the processor though, a couple of weeks won't hurt.) You won't be charged as much for processing if you don't use up the whole roll.
In spite of the fact that we speak of dolls as having "skin," they don't. They are really made of cloth or porcelain or polyform or plastic or wax or some other material. Making the distinction is important for only one reason —these materials do not reflect light the same way that real skin does—therefore, they don't photograph the same way that real skin does. In particular, dolls with light-colored "skin" reflect much more light than light-colored people and dolls with dark-colored "skin" reflect much less light than dark-colored people.
Also, if you look carefully in a photograph, real people have lighter and darker areas of skin. Dolls have much more uniform "skin" tones — it makes them harder to see in photographs.
Two of the most common things that go wrong with doll photographs (and sometimes with people photographs) are washed out faces on light colored dolls and blacked out faces on dark colored dolls. Both of these things can be fixed during processing of prints.
As I mentioned earlier, most prints are made by automatic machines that attempt to make the print come out "average." This has a specific meaning:
The light and dark parts of the picture are adjusted so that it will be of average brightness. If there is lots of dark and only a little bit of light, everything will be made lighter so that the picture averages out to a medium brightness. If there is only a little dark and a lot of light, everything will be darkened so that the picture averages out to a medium brightness.
The colors are adjusted so that the picture is an average gray overall. The blue and the yellow are balanced out so that they add up to gray. The red and the blue-green are averaged out so that they add up to gray. The green and the magenta (red-blue) are averaged out so that they add up to gray.
In short, everything is adjusted so that most people's messed up snapshots will wind up looking better.
But, if you happen to know what you are doing, or if you happen to have photographed your doll against a solid color background, or if you happen to be photographing a face that reflects light differently than real skin (like a doll), this averaging just messes up your picture.
There is something you can do. If the faces are too light or too dark, the detail is probably still there on your negative, but the machine averaging has just taken it away. Send the film back to the processor to be reprinted with the faces lighter or darker. Note: this will lighten or darken the rest of the picture—you may lose the costume to gain the face.
If you shot your doll against a colored background and the colors seem strange, the culprit may be machine averaging again—this time averaging of colors instead of dark and light. Send the film back to the processor to be reprinted with the color corrected. Include a note telling them what color the background is supposed to be. (Note: if you ruined the film color by storing the film in a hot place, it's not fair to send it back to the processor, and it won't do any good, anyway. This kind of problem is called "color crossover" and can't be fixed—something else will just be the wrong color.)
You should not be charged for corrections to processing—if they are mistakes by the processor.
The hardest part of photography is learning to really see what is right in front of you. The biggest improvement that you can make in your photography comes from learning to see the finished picture in the viewfinder before you push the shutter button. It doesn't cost anything and you can do it by the numbers until you learn to do it automatically.
Here are five common things that can go wrong with pictures of your dolls, and how to avoid the problem by looking before you press the button.
Composition & Perspective
Your photograph is intended to show your doll to its best advantage. This means that your doll should be the main subject of your photograph. It should be seen from the correct angle and should take up most of the picture.
Begin by deciding from what angle to take the photograph. For a baby doll or a toddler that is looking up, you can take the picture from above. That is where you would see it from if it were a real person. You would usually see an adult from eye level, so that is where you should photograph an adult doll—from its own eye level.
When you talk to another adult, you usually stand between two and twelve feet away from them. Put another way, at the closest, you are one-third of the person's height away, and at the farthest you are twice the person's height away from them. When you take a picture of an adult doll, you should try to keep these same ratios in mind. The distance between the camera and the subject controls the perspective. If you position the camera between one and two times the height of the doll away, the picture will look more three dimensional and real. It may not be possible to stay within these distances. Some cameras won't focus when they are that close to the subject.
If you have a zoom lens on your camera, you can decide where to take the picture from first, and then use the zoom lens to change the image size to fill the frame. If you do not have a zoom lens on your camera, you must decide where to shoot from based on how well the doll fills the picture. In both cases, be careful not to get closer to the doll than the lens can focus.
The doll should fill about two-thirds of the picture. If you are taking a picture of the whole doll, there should be some space both above the head and below the feet. If you are taking a shot of the head and shoulders only, there should be plenty of space above the head.
Check the Background
Before you take the picture, look at the areas around and behind the doll. When you look at the doll in person, your eye will pick out the doll and ignore the background. In a flat photograph, the doll and the background both appear the same distance away—your eye doesn't get the usual clues to help it pick out the doll. As a result, the background may be much more prominent in a photo than it is in real life— unless you do something to help the background disappear.
Remember, your picture is supposed to be of the doll, not of the background around it. The wrong background can cause many kinds of problems:
The background should be as plain and simple as possible. Clutter makes it difficult to see the doll.
Only one or two dolls should be in a single picture unless the purpose of the picture is to show the relationship of the dolls in a group. If there are too many dolls in the same picture, all of them will become unimportant and only the grouping will stand out.
Group shots are only suitable for a family of dolls, for a dramatic scene or diarama, or when the same basic doll is shown with a variety of costumes.
If the background is not plain enough, it may contain something more interesting than the doll.
The combination of the background and the doll can be distracting. For example, if there is a flower in a vase behind the doll, and the vase is hidden by the doll's body, the flower may look like it is growing out of the doll's head. (My favorite example is a doll in a flower print dress photographed in a garden. I can't see anything except the doll's head.)
All of these problems will be visible in the view finder of your camera. Look through the view finder with your other eye closed and see if there is anything distracting above the doll, to the left of the doll, and to the right of the doll. If necessary, move the doll or change the background.
If you're photographing your own dolls, it's easy to move the doll or change the background. But, if you're at a doll show, or even a friend's house, you can't just go moving things around. In that case, look through the view finder and then try moving over to one side or the other before you take the picture. Do whatever you can to make the picture better. As you can see, in Let's Talk we frequently trim away the background from the pictures of dolls we take at trade shows and show only the doll instead of the whole picture.
Shadows
If you are taking pictures indoors, you will most likely be using a flash. Usually, your flash will be built into your camera or will attach to the top or side of your camera. The flash is a very bright light that is on for only a short time while the picture is being taken. Bright lights make dark shadows. Because the flash is on for a very short time, it is difficult to tell where the shadow will fall.
Because the flash is a little bit to one side of the lens, and a little bit above the lens, we can predict that the shadow will fall a little bit to the other side of the doll and will be down a little bit. The front-view and top-view diagrams below show where the shadow will fall.
One way to control the shadow is to move the doll farther away from the background. In fact, if you move the doll far enough away from the background, the shadow will fall entirely on the floor. This is shown in the front-view and top-view diagrams below.
Now the only problem that remains is that unsightly line where the wall meets the floor. A professional photographer would use "seamless paper" (a wide, heavy paper) to create a special, rounded effect to hide the sharp corner where the wall and floor come together. You can get the same effect by using an ironed table cloth or a piece of fabric pinned to the wall and spread on to the table where you are photographing your doll. The front-view and side-view diagrams below show you how to put the cloth up.
There are three things to watch out for when using a table cloth or piece of fabric as a background:
Use a solid color, not a print or pattern.
Make sure that no creases or wrinkles show in the picture.
Make sure that you are close enough so that the edge of the cloth doesn't show in the picture.
The best colors for the cloth are medium blue, medium tan, and white. Remember that the cloth is farther away from the flash than the doll is, and therefore gets less light from the flash than the doll does. The cloth will appear darker than its usual color. You may have to experiment a bit before you get exactly the effect that you want.
Contrast
When the doll and its background contrast with each other, it's easy to see where the doll ends and the background begins. If the doll and the background were the same color, it would be difficult to distinguish between them.
There are two kinds of contrast that help your eye see the difference between the doll and the background: color contrast and brightness contrast.
Color contrast means using different colors for the doll and for the background. For example, a light-skinned doll in an orange dress against a blue background is very easy to see. If the same doll were wearing a dark blue dress against a dark blue background, the dress would seem to disappear in the same-color background. The head would seem to be floating in space. In this case, orange and blue have color contrast and pink and blue have color contrast, while dark blue and dark blue do not.
Brightness contrast is just as easy to understand, but much harder to see. Colors that are different may have the same brightness or gray value. For example, a light blue dress against a dark blue background has brightness contrast (but not color contrast). A dark red dress against a dark green background has color contrast, but not brightness contrast. Because this combination of two different dark colors does not have brightness contrast, it is much harder for our eyes to see. And of course, if the picture is printed in black and white, the problem gets much worse. My favorite is the picture of the pink doll in the navy blue dress against the black background. Trying to print this in a black and white magazine results in a ghostly floating head and hands.
To make your doll easier to see, use both color contrast and brightness contrast. Make the doll and costume a different color than the background, and make one light and the other dark.
Focus.
Nobody likes a fuzzy looking picture. To show your doll off to its best advantage, your pictures must be in sharp focus. Don't assume that an autofocusing camera will always work correctly. If you are too close to the doll, the camera won't focus. Check the booklet that came with your camera to determine the closest that the camera can focus. Also keep in mind that the little autofocus box in the view finder must be pointed at the doll and not the background since it is the doll you want in focus and not the background.
If you have a manually focusing camera, be sure that you know how to operate it properly. There will usually be some kind of focusing aid such as a split-image. Learn what the focusing aid is and how to use it.
Indoors, use a flash. Without a flash, an automatic camera will keep its shutter open longer to get more light, and the camera may shake.
One of the nicest things about the 35 mm color film that most cameras use is that you can get it in short rolls. Buy two or three 12 exposure rolls and do some experimenting. Make notes as you take the pictures. When you get results that you like, look at the notes to see how you did it. It won't take you long to become a much better photographer.
A Polaroid® or Minolta® instant film camera is even better for experimenting. Be sure to use a fresh film pack. Polaroid film doesn't keep well once it's in the camera. The Minolta InstantPRO® camera has a nice close-up attachment and uses Polaroid's latest Spectra® high definition instant film.
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Copyright © Jim and Gloria Winer. |