Whether you want make some extra money by selling completed reborn dolls over the Internet or just simply want to catalogue your work, one of the things that you will need to know is how to take really good pictures of the reborn dolls that you intend to sell. Most of the time, the reason why many doll makers who try to sell reborn dolls in online auction sites or by creating a website over the Internet are not successful is because of the pictures of the reborn dolls that they are selling is of poor quality. Finished reborn dolls can easily cost hundreds of dollars, and because of that, doll collectors who are looking for high quality reborn baby dolls to add to their collection would want to make sure that they are getting their money's worth. Besides, with all that time and effort spent in making a reborn doll, it simply does not do it any justice to take poor quality pictures of it.
So here are just some tips on how you can take great pictures of your finished reborn dolls.
Tip #1: Use a Tripod
The very first thing that you need to do in order to take high quality pictures of your completed reborn baby dolls is to invest on your equipment. Apart from getting a good quality digital camera to take the pictures with, you will also need to get a tripod to hold the camera on while you are taking your pictures. No matter how steady your hands may be, there is always the possibility that your pictures may become blurry, diminishing its quality. Putting your digital camera on a tripod not only ensures that you get crisp pictures whatever angle you choose to take. You can easily purchase a cheap tripod in your local photography supply store.
Tip #2: Take Pictures in a Well-Lit Room
Another thing to take into consideration is the lighting in the room when taking pictures. Day light is, by far, the best kind of lighting to use. Dim rooms can affect the quality of the pictures by causing some of the fine details of your reborn doll like the veining details and skin mottling not to be clearly seen. If the room is a bit dim, you may need to use some extra lighting for this. If you can afford it, it is a good idea to invest on a light umbrella that you can buy in your local photography supply store. This is the one that professional photographers would use in photo studios to light up the subject to minimize the appearance of any shadows and bring in just the right amount of lighting to the subject.
If you are working on a tight budget, you can purchase a lightbulb that is specially designed for movie or photography at your local supply shop for less than $10 per piece. Make sure to install this in a metal lamp stand since this can be extremely hot and can become a hazard if it is installed in a plastic lamp stand or one that has some fabric material on it.
When using this particular lightbulb, the trick here is not to point it directly to the reborn doll. Not only would this light be too harsh on the doll causing really bad quality pictures to be taken. The heat radiating from the lightbulb is way too hot for the delicate vinyl reborn doll parts, and that could actually damage your reborn baby doll, which is the last thing that you would ever want. The way to do this is to cause the light to bounce on a white surface like a white cartolina or illustration board that is placed at the back of the reborn doll and then allowed to bounce back to the reborn doll's front through the use of another white cardboard or illustration board.
Tip #3: Use Varied Backgrounds
Many of the different reborn doll pictures that you will see will have the reborn doll positioned in a cot or around soft pillows. While there is nothing wrong with using these backgrounds, it is a good idea to also use different kinds of backgrounds and settings to cause your reborn baby doll's picture to stand out from the rest. Since reborn dolls are made to look like real babies, it is a good idea to look through different pictures of how real babies are posed and photographed to get some inspiration for this.
Tip #4: Take Different Angles
Don't just settle for one angle. Provide your potential buyers a number of angles of the reborn doll that you are selling so that they would have a better look at them. Take closeups of your reborn doll highlighting the fine details that you have placed like the hair, eyelashes, skin mottling and the like.
So there you have it. Of course, practice does make things perfect. But taking these tips into consideration when you take the pictures of your reborn dolls can greatly improve the quality in no time at all. Good luck!