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Favorite Photo Spots Around the House?

Mar 20, 2023

    1. What are your favorite spots to take dollie photos around the house? And why do you like those places?

      Particularly spots that work for photos without additional props or doll-specific backdrops.

      Personally, I don't have anything (yet!) to make scenes for my dolls so I'm trying to figure out where the lighting is good, where the background doesn't look too out of scale, and that fit my dolls' backstories/personality/what have you.

      Please share any photos from your favorite spots!
       
      • x 2
    2. My wife and I have a diorama for our dolls in our guest bathroom.
      We had home depot cut a sheet of plywood to fit over our tub.
      I get 5' ' x 3' backdrops from Kate Backdrop. The 5x3 size is $24.
      I hang them from a shower curtain rod on the back wall. The lighting
      isn't perfect but it's acceptable. We have backgrounds for all 4 seasons.
      This is the effect....

      [​IMG]Girls of spring by Tom Beach, on Flickr

      This one was taken in our yard. Something else you ought to consider.


      [​IMG]Exploring by Tom Beach, on Flickr
       
      • x 6
    3. Mine is my garden! I love taking photos in my garden coz I love flowers XD
       
      • x 2
    4. My boyfriend bought a full set of Harvard 5 foot shelf books a while back for $10 and has them displayed together on a shelf in the living room. All the spines match so it looks nice. I use it as a backdrop probably too much. His office is also filled with books, so sometimes I sneak in when he's not home and take photos of my dolls there. The only issue there is the lighting is awful!
       
      • x 2
    5. I have a nice brick wall inset with dark wooden shelves, it's a bit of a mess with storage right now, but I plan on taking some photos there!
       
      • x 2
    6. To be honest, this is one of my biggest struggles with doll photos. There aren't many good places in my house to take pictures, at least not when you can see the background clearly... which is why I always photograph portraits with an extremely shallow depth of field LOL. For example:

      [​IMG]

      Since the background is blurry, hopefully nobody pays any attention to it. But he's sitting on my kitchen table :lol: Photographing this way makes many more areas of the house useful because it doesn't matter what's in the background :evilplot:
       
      • x 10
    7. I used to have 9 rooms set up in shelving, 1/3 scale dioramas. Those were the best! Then...long story, but we planned to sell the house so I tore them all out to make a "normal" bedroom and we ended up not moving. So I lost those and fell like my doll pix are pretty boring now. Out by my big tree, against my cabinet (wood) and the bathroom mirrors have been my most creative spots since losing my dioramas. They don't seem very interesting at all in comparison...
       
      • x 2
    8. I tend to just snap pictures wherever I happen to be.

      My husband and I are both collectors of various things so there's nowhere in the house with a handy bit of blank wall to photogeraph a dol in fornt of (unless I stand them on the stairs) - that's too precious a comodity for display and storage.

      I mostly either put them on the table in the livingroom (as that's the room with most of the dolls displayed in it anyway)...
      [​IMG]
      ....or whatever flat survace is convenient when I need a picture (the spare room bed if I've just changed the doll as that's where the clothing is stored.
      [​IMG]

      I have one place that can be set up as a room-box or set for pictures, but it seldom happens as it's usually full of all the doll furniture that's got on other place to be stored, so needs emptying out before it can be set up for pictures, but I've done it once or twice:
      [​IMG]
      It's basically the space at the bottom of a shelving unit in the spare bedroom where I left out the bottom shelf.

      Sometimes I just take the photo wherever the doll happens to be on display:
      [​IMG]

      Or on any relatively uncluttered surface in my sewing room when I'm trying new clothes on them:
      [​IMG]

      EDITED TO ADD: On the rare occasion I'm with-it enough to bother, I hang a spare pece fo cloth over the background clutter to provife some sort of backdrop:
      [​IMG]
      (I think this was draped over a radiator under the window in the livingroom, but it could just as easily be one fo the bedrooms, the previous owner of the house used the same horrible carpet throughout)

      Teddy
       
      #8 Teddy, Mar 21, 2023
      Last edited: Mar 21, 2023
      • x 4
    9. Aside from my dioramas, I tend to photograph my dolls against a span of blank wall in my hallway.

      [​IMG]
       
      • x 1
    10. The dining room or living room, they have the best light. I love to go outside but here the weather is either bad or there are man eating bugs so outdoor photography is very limited. I use scrapbook paper or blankets as a backdrop if the background of the room doesn’t suit the mood and my walls are a basic neutral so they work sometimes too. I eventually want to build a room box for the tinies but I work with what I have for now.

      Example of neutral wall color. If I need more color I get out the scrapbook paper or baby blanket but the wall works well for the sad beige look :lol:
      [​IMG]
       
      • x 2
    11. I typically take the pictures in my room because thats where I leave my dolls. I want to make a diorama for them someday but that will be a long while from now.
       
    12. I like everything, dolls, dioramas , furnitures. Congratulations!
       
    13. I am really looking forward to warmer weather so I can take my dolls out and get some photos.
       
    14. I don't make dioramas and only have a few props, but I also like to take full body pics of my 1/3 dolls. So I've found some good backdrops around my apartment to take wide angle shots. I'm fortunate that my place is pretty well lighted, the walls are white, and I have some nice furniture around.

      These always end up in my indoor pics...

      [​IMG]

      This part of my apartment has the best lighting, so the couch often appears in the background.

      [​IMG]

      [​IMG]

      I like this chest of drawers, but I don't use it as much because lighting isn't the best.

      [​IMG]

      [​IMG]

      Anywhere I can get a white wall, really!

      [​IMG]
       
      #14 aihre, Mar 21, 2023
      Last edited: Jul 10, 2023
      • x 3
    15. I typically stand by the front window, where the natural light is good, and use one of my plants as a prop/backdrop.[​IMG]

      Or I use my stairs, a there’s less clutter and reasonably good light [​IMG]

      On an evening I normally sit them on my knees, use a lamp for lighting and whatever outfit I am wearing as the backdrop. [​IMG]
       
      • x 1
    16. I have a book shelf by my bedroom window where I take 99% of my doll pics.
       
    17. @TomB Because of winter i forgot that outside even like... existed. So thanks for the reminder that I have a yard I can soon start taking photos in! Your photo from your yard looks really good, nothing looks obviously out of scale and I love that.

      @nyaaain Yeah my bookshelf areas have pretty awful lighting too... but maybe at the right time of day it'd be workable... >.>

      @overlordu Gosh that is a gorgeous photo and a gorgeous doll. I could play around with blurring the background manually, unfortunately my only camera is a phone and I can't change the focal length.

      @CloakedSchemer It sounds like you really had the ideal set up, that really sucks you had to lose that :(
      I like the idea of doing something with a bathroom mirror though! That is pretty creative, I would have never thought to do that.

      @Teddy Your situation seems the closest to mine. I have a very "cluttered" house with all my knick knacks and collections. You've got some nice props and dollie-sized furniture though so even your pic with your doll just in her display spot looks almost like a roombox. I love the photo in the actual roombox, all those messy drawers feels very real!

      @saraquill @NineOneThree Idk why I never thought about taking pics in front of a blank wall... >.> what a simple and easy solution!

      @aihre I really like your photos! Even though most of the stuff the dolls are next to is obviously not in scale it still works somehow... The lighting is definitely fantastic, I think that's a big part of the reason your pics really work.

      @Esme1971 Ooooh I have a ton of plants that's a great idea! I also would have never thought of using myself as a backdrop, that's really clever.
       
    18. Thanks! Lighting is part of it, but I think composition and posing contributes a lot. I actually like having my dolls interact with my human-scaled world, but in a way that makes sense for their size, and is meaningful for what they're doing/how they're posing. So if they can lean against or hold any furniture within their reach, I try to pose them doing it, and naturally.

      Like in my post above, with my purple-haired doll - I tried to pose her the same way as a human would if they're fiddling with their shoes, but she's holding onto a drawer handle instead.

      Or if they can lean against furniture at the right height:

      [​IMG]

      [​IMG]

      [​IMG]

      It's a fun challenge for me, figuring out creative ways that my dolls can interact with my home. You may have more "set potential" in your house than you expect. I was pleasantly surprised to discover how many things in my home are good heights for my 57-65cm crew... I keep coming back to those spots. XD

      But if you're not into posing your dolls with the environment and just want a good indoors backdrop... I think it's a matter of finding a place that isn't too busy and/or can tastefully fade into the background. A plain wall, plants, a big cupboard ... camera settings can also help with that.

      I should add that all my doll photos are taken with a smartphone (Google Pixel 2). It has a nice portrait mode that helps give that blurry background look especially if you get the lens close to the doll and focus on their faces. But apart from using this portrait mode and keeping the lens focused on the face, I don't do any special with my photos. If you take pics with a phone, you could play with focus and modes to make the surroundings sink more into the background.
       
      #18 aihre, Mar 22, 2023
      Last edited: Mar 22, 2023
    19. I have no good spots for serious photo taking where I am right now... so I just try to find a blank wall with decent lighting when I want to get a shot of a new faceup/wig/outfit
       
    20. By my bed I have a folding card table for multipurpose use and I hung some colorful fabric curtains in the corner that I like for backdrop interest. I keep it kind of intentionally imperfect but not messy when I want to put a doll there for pictures. That area I use a lamp to light, so it's my night option.
      Other than that I pretty much use carefully arranged nooks in the yard where i'm gardening in containers. I love the container gardening for doll photos because there are lots of options for visual variety, like colors of pots and heights of them along with the plants.
      Normally I would have areas near-ish to windows where I would place something like a chest of drawers or table or anything like that, and just photograph my dolls sometimes in good filtered light with some colorful knickknacks around them to make it look spontaneous, but I don't have proper autonomy over my living situation these days.... And there is no space to work with in this way, nor enough light. It's truly horrible and if I think about it too much I feel very depressed. BUT, I think this just proves that where there is a will there is a way! I hope you get some good ideas that make you feel inspired! :D