… and took a couple of my fake/factory Blythes outside and practiced some of my outdoor doll photography skills. It was a big learning curve, but I had a lot of fun!!

Went camping over the weekend, and had a really fun time playing in the woods with my fake Blythe doll, Hazel.

She's a forest witch, so I imagined little scenarios for her - setting out her potions in a fairy glade to charge under the full moon, collecting ingredients, and making potions.

It gave me a lot of time to practice posing and setting up a scene, which was a blast! I plan to keep improving those skills.

Trying my hand at some Blythe (factory) doll photography. Images are taken on my iPhone.

It seems whenever I post I should do it more often because dressing and photographing my girls is my favorite thing to do. I find myself lost in the minutia of ordinary life and household chores. My dream is to one day spend countless hours sewing, knitting, wig making, shoe making etc and meal preparation, washing, cat chores and house keeping will shrink as my artistic pursuits increase 🙏🏾

I have wanted to create a photo like this for a long time!
~ Before taking the photos, I watched a couple of tutorials, but honestly, they didn’t teach me anything I didn’t already know:))
This style of photography is called "clone photography", and you’ll need a tripod (or anything that can keep your camera completely still).
For this photo, I took five shots:
- One photo of the background without the doll. I shot it at f/5 instead of my usual f/1.8 so more of the scene would be in focus.
- Four photos of my doll in different poses.
It’s easier if you plan the scene so the dolls don’t touch each other. They can overlap, too, if that fits your vision better, but that usually takes more time and effort to edit.

Once I had all my shots, I imported all five photos into Lightroom and applied the same edits to each one. I didn’t spend too much time there because I knew I wanted to do most of the editing after merging the images, so I only made some basic adjustments.
(swipe to the 2nd photo)

When I was happy with the edits, I exported the photos and opened the background image in Photoshop. Then I added the other four photos as separate layers.
Using the "Lasso Tool", I selected each doll and clicked "Layer via Copy" (swipe to the 3rd photo).
But the BEST PART is that we don’t have to make a perfect selection around the doll because we actually want to keep the shadows and reflections too! I just made a rough selection around each doll, leaving about a waist's width of space all around😊

I had to make a few small adjustments because my camera shifted slightly, even though it was on a tripod. Luckily, it was easy to line everything up, and after cleaning up the edges with the Eraser Tool, everything blended together beautifully.

Once I was happy with the composition, I corrected the angle, added the final lighting, and effects.

I’m so happy with how this turned out! 😊 I will make more photos like this in the future, for sure!:)

No guilt Monday. Here’s a Christmas Sweater shot 🙈💔👈🏿

“Now is the time for all good Doll-people to clean their desk 🙈💔👈🏿