Changing your mind because of owner pictures?

This has happened to me a lot!

My grail was a Delf Angel Elf Soo, and the Luts picture was gorgeous, but the only owner pictures I found were lackluster and I wondered if I'd actually like the sculpt when I found her! Then I was in the CP Delf thread on DoA and saw so many different face ups and wigs on her and had renewed faith that I'd love her. At first I hated the Souldoll Yeon Bee, but after I saw some owner photos, she went from being an "uh-uh, never" to an "omg I need her." And I really hated Dollfie Dreams at first, but I've seen some beautiful repaints that make me want one. And sometimes just a change of eyes and wig makes a doll completely different, and either you have to have it or you can't stand it.

Another consideration is that if I'm interested in a doll, and I can't find an owner photo anywhere, I get nervous. If I'm the only person that likes this sculpt, maybe it's really ugly in real life!

 

I definitely have done this. When I am interested in a doll I often check Flicker to see as many pictures of that sculpt as I can. Especially profile pics. I have decided I like some sculpts more from doing that and other times have decided I really do not want that sculpt.

 

When I'm thinking of buying a doll I absolutely insist on looking at as many owner pictures as I can, company stock photos can be very nice but more often than not they don't show blank or with different expression. I always want to see how different a sculpt can look by a simple change of face/wigs/clothes/etc, it helps me to see if a doll can look one way or another, not just one or two types of face-ups with similar expression in professionally lighted studios.

I know it certainly helped me decide on a recent purchase I made, I wasn't so sure when I saw the stock photos (beautiful as they were) so I looked-up more owner pictures and saw that the sculpt I was considering actually would work well for the character I had in-mind.

 

Oh yes, this happens to me a lot. I like to see owner pics before I definitely decide to get or not to get a doll. Owner pics can make me like a doll I previously didn't, as well as make me realize the doll doesn't actually fit into my doll family like I had thought. Company pics are sometimes too stylized to clearly see the doll for what it actually is.

 

For me, I love the doll when I see them, but the more and more I see people posting a picture or I see more ways of customization, sometimes I tend to get bored with what I see? I don't know, the more people have the doll, the more bored I get.

 

This just happened to me- I passed on DD Kirika and then when I started seeing the owner pics I knew I had to have her in my collection! I think it's because the promo pictures really didn't strike me as anything special. Likewise I was once really set to own a Jun Tachibana SDGr and once I had her I didn't care for her as much? Dolls are so impressive in their dynamic ability to change character and appearance in photographs.

 

Definitely! I almost reconsidered my Impldoll Avery because owner pictures made their odd profile even more obvious, but I decided I liked them enough that didn't really matter to me...No one really takes pictures of say, Dollfie Dreams from the side either, so I figured I was safe.
On the other hand, I started wanting one sculpt (that I've since ordered) even more after seeing owner photos of it with a faceup and lighting that emphasized the sculpt's tear troughs - I really love how tear troughs look, but you don't see them that often on dolls, so I was like :0!

 

Considering that I just got back into the hobby I don't really have much experience, but this just happened to me two weeks ago when I was thinking of buying a Lati White. But after looking through all the owner photos on Flickr, it seems like Lati White is totally not a doll I would want to get (the wigs all seemed off) and I ended up buying another Lati Yellow (because Luna is so cute!)

 

I feel like a lot of the time I end up being amazed by a sculpt I already thought I knew thanks to great photos and face ups! But there was a few certain pictures that ended up making me buy the dim head Laia that I now fell in love with.

 

OMG YES! I really liked how the Supia Haeun looked on the Supia site. She looked really cute and stuff, but I saw an owner change her faceup and made her look not what I imagined. And another owner take a photo of her with the company faceup but it not being what I wanted. However, at the end I did buy her since she was my first love. I'm currently waiting for her to come home! And this probably happens bcs of camera quality and diff faceups.

 

This has definitely happened to me! I was completely smitten with a certain limited doll that I thought I'd never find, but soon learnt out from a friend there was actually one up for resale. However, in my search for more photos to try and decide if I really did like it enough to drop so much on it in one go, I was disappointed to find that at many angles it wasn't nearly as attractive. Instead, I wound up falling in love with a different doll that I had previously thought just 'looked nice', but seeing more and more photos convinced me they were actually perfect, and I'm set on waiting it out for another of that sculpt to be released to be my first doll.

 

I came very close to not getting the doll I have now because of a photo of her that I saw. The person who owned her had her in a purple wig and faceup which I did not like at all, making her look like a completely different doll than the one I now own. However, I decided to go through with the purchase anyway and ended up being quite happy with it. Even dolls that are the same sculpt can end up looking dramatically different from each other depending on what you do with them.

 

I like to look at user photos so I can figure out if it's just the faceup that I like or if I like the sculpts underneath as well. There are also companies that don't take pictures of the sculpts without a faceup.

 

It goes either way with me. Some dolls I love the companies photos but when I see owner photos that are casual I loose some interest. But then other times the company photos do nothing for me but when I see owner images it's amazing! In the end I try to look at only blanks so I get a better idea of the surface. It's amazing how much color can give or take away their life.

 

I always tend to like owner photos better than the company photos, but I think unboxing videos are the best for me. Companies will obviously take 'glamour shots'', and even owner photos use the best ones and may even digitally enhance them. When you see an unboxing video you're seeing the 'raw' doll more easily (of course it depends on the video quality too). I've added a few dolls to my wishlist because I think the way they looked in unboxing vids was consistent with the official photos.

Owner photos I like best for showing what the sculpt is capable of. Seeing what people have done with the DollFamily A head is really encouraging for me, since it'll be my first faceup, and none of the official photos of it really appealed to me at all.

 

It really depends - if the company has good photography and a wide variety of pictures, showing the face (preferably both blank and with face-up), body, and posing, I usually don't feel as much need to look at owner pictures. But if the photography is shoddy and/or there are only a few pictures, I'll search for owner pics. Usually if I like a sculpt enough to google it, owner pictures won't turn me off of it.
This is a kinda boring and common examples, but I thought most ResinSoul dolls were ugly as heck from the company photos, but now seeing people's lovely RS dollies has made me really like some of the sculpts. Also, most of the old Volks and CP sculpts look awful in older company photos to me, but then I see owner pictures and they are some of the most gorgeous dolls I've ever seen, lol.

 

I always make my final decision based on owner pictures! I want to see at least two pictures of the doll with non-default faceups because I probably won't pay for the factory faceup. Because of that, I want to know what sort of potential the doll has! Plus, a company is always trying to take the best photos of their doll, but the owner is taking it without considering what might look 'really good' or 'really bad;' they just want to show off their creation.