Tips and How-I-Did-Its
Contents:
Taking Daughter of the Nile's Picture (Added 04/25/01)
Cutting Simply Gene's Hair (Added 05/29/01)
Discoveries for Gene (Added 07/16/01)
"Daughter of the Nile" Photo Session of late April, 2001
Several of the "Safari" and "Daughter of the Nile" pictures I took used this book, "The Atlas of Legendary Places" by James Harpur and Jennifer Westwood (pages 94-95 shown here), a book with many beautiful pictures, as the background. I initially had great trouble using pictures from books as backgrounds, because generally, the pictures are far too small to use as backgrounds, the pages flip around (if I had four hands, it might have been easier; I can't hold the book and Gene!), the book slips down, and is too low to the ground to begin with. But I've gotten better at it, as time has gone on. For some of the shots, such as this one:
...I brilliantly (LOL) thought of holding the pages in place by using Chip-Clips©. It worked really well, and I no longer felt the want of four hands or helpers. I put the book on a shoebox, and merely sat Gene down on the box. I had to be careful how I took the picture, because if I wasn't careful, it was painfully obviously that she is just a doll with limited mobility. Here, in the picture above, I flatter myself that it almost looks like she is standing up. Unfortunately, doing it this way I was obliged to take shots that were waist-up, at least (most of them were headshots). In order to photograph the rest of the (beautiful) dress, I had to devise another method. What you see behind the book in the first picture is actually the foot of my bed and that black thing draped across the back is a black skirt. I used the black skirt (with another one on the floor) for some photographs, such as this one:
I was quite pleased with the results. For some "drapy" pictures, such as this one:
...I used the lining of an old costume dress (I didn't actually cut the dress apart, I just lifted up the lace overlay) as my backdrop, and I used my bathrobe as the 'carpet.' I wanted to create an airy look, because I think the "Daughter of the Nile" dress is such a beautiful, floaty outfit. Here, however, I put Gene's overdress on the floor, as you can see. I liked this effect, too, but the problem was that the dress lining was very wrinkled (and you can see this in the picture), and my bathrobe is made of a very strange, 'square-y' fabric, like some kind of towel. To correct this, I took my photos to MGI Photo Suite III©, and altered practically any of the pictures that I intended to use on my site (the pictures seen above have not been changed in any way). In addition to "softening" the pictures in an effort to hide the wrinkles, I also brightened or darkened certain pictures and used the "moonlight" effect. Very fun!
For all of these pictures I used a desk lamp. It really helps to have a direct light source. For the black background pictures, and the white background pictures, I just put the lamp on a chair, so I sort of had an overhead lighting source, but for the ones in front of a photograph, I had the light much closer, and I changed the direction of the light when I wanted to. You can see the light reflecting off the photo in the book a little (top picture). That was one thing I had to be careful off, because the light not only reflected off of any photo backdrops I used, but also off of Gene's eye make-up.
Disclaimer (i.e. Excuse): I have had very little experience with photography, other than what I have experimented with using my cam-corder (and that's another story -- none of these pictures were taken with a regular camera, but rather with a non-digital cam-corder -- I'll explain it all later). So, if these ways of doing things sound a little strange to 'normal' photographers, please don't blame me! Actually, I've found I've had a lot of fun with this, and now I'm trying to find a way to get myself a 'real' digital camera. ;-)
Go on to the next "Tip" page: Cutting Simply Gene's Hair
Go on to the next "Tip" page: Discoveries for Gene