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What if There's No Choice?

3/28/2015

4 Comments

 
What if you are somewhere and you want to take a doll photo and you have no choice but to shoot into the sun?  Go ahead and take it anyway, just be careful not to shoot directly into the sun (as in having the sun in your picture) because the sun is not good for your camera sensor.  It won't be a very good photo, because the doll(s) will be little more than dark silhouettes, but if you are shooting with an SLR with RAW capabilities, the image can be fixed in Photoshop. However if you just have a point-and-shoot or phone to take pictures with, the photo won't turn out very well. But maybe it's still better than nothing.

I was at the lake recently and the lake is to the south of me, so I had no choice but to shoot into the sun. Here's the photo as taken..
Picture
With a little Photoshop work involving Layers, I managed to turn it into this.....
Picture
Same with this scene taken in Waterton Lakes a few years ago - I had no choice but to shoot almost directly into the sun......
Picture
This photo isn't quite as bad as the one with the penguins because it was taken much further back, but I did improve it in Photoshop..
Picture
Unfortunately teaching someone how to do this kind of photo manipulation in Photoshop is beyond the scope of my Tutorial.  

*The key thing to remember is that when there's no choice but to take photos with the sun overhead or behind the doll, that taking photos further back and including more of the scene, will give better results than trying to shoot close-up portraits.
4 Comments
jSarie link
3/30/2015 02:09:39 am

It's inspiring to see that there are work-arounds for less-than-ideal lighting like this.

I'm always looking for reasons to do more experimenting in Photoshop, so thanks for the tip!

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Martha
3/30/2015 06:24:52 am

If you shoot in RAW, there's often a way to fix things, and I'm not really very knowledgeable about PhotoShop - just a few simple things to make my pictures better.

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Jane
3/30/2015 05:36:42 am

I love the places you take the dolls to. Your forward planning for these expeditions is what I am amazed at.....it must be done months in advance!


And thank you for the reminder that I need to learn how to use photo editing software!

Reply
Martha
3/30/2015 06:29:05 am

Yes, I do plan way in advance - at least if we are going somewhere we've been before. The I look through old trip photos to see if there's anyplace that would work for dolls.

I'm not much into technology and don't really know that much in Photoshop, so it helps if someone shows me how to do something. The photos in this post were both fixed with 'layers'; first making the dolls look right in the first photo, then layering another image over top which has the background correct. Then using the brush tool, exposing the correct dolls underneath.

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    Martha Boers is an award-winning Canadian doll maker and costumer specializing in fantasy and historical-style costumes.
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