I Travel In Strange Circles – Gogadoll 09

One of our family’s hobby is to collect the exquisite Asian Ball Jointed Dolls (BJD). Their sizes range from 5cm (!) to up to 3 feet high, with the most common and popular ones somewhat smaller, between 13cm to 20cm high. They are made with resin and with proper “face-up,” eyes and accessories, they can look as glamorous and beautiful as anything.

This past weekend was the Gogadoll convention, and I set up a portable photo studio in the vendor’s hall. The economy being what it is, the number of attendances was lighter than last year, but we had a good time.

BJD photography is interesting. It can be a pain to set up the shot, as while the dolls have quite a bit of articulations in their joints, they are not like human’s. However, once it is set up, you have all the time in the world to adjust for lighting and shooting angle. With these dolls, just by changing their cloths, or the angle of their head, or the camera angle etc. that you can bring out different aspects of their personality.

The choice of DoF control is also interesting as you are shooting close to macro photography. So sometimes you want a narrow DoF, as in some portrait shots, but sometimes you want as much DoF as you can get, to get multiple dolls in focus.

There is one aspect of this photo that I don’t like, but without being able to actually change the doll part for a quick shoot like this, there’s not a whole lot I can do. I think it works well enough though.