Friday, June 19, 2015

Barbie Fashion Photography

One of Syd's grandmas gave her new Barbie dolls and clothes for her birthday--just take a moment and visualize my child's glee at that gift. Now multiply it by a power of ten, and you've got it about right.

Syd loves dressing up her Barbies, loves making clothes for them, loves having fashion shows for them in all their outfits, so I suggested fashion photography as something else that she might like. Would she like to try it?

She would.

We only did a couple of photos, because I wanted to look at them on the computer and see what I needed to change about the set-up before I let her loose to do all that she wanted, but here's what she shot:


Yeah, I think this activity is a winner.

I'll share a tute another time, when I set it up again for Syd to use, but the basic set-up is a big sheet of paper for the backdrop, something unobtrusive for the Barbie to lean against, and a REALLY low tripod already set up so that the kid doesn't have to do a lot of camera fiddling to get her perfect shot. I actually don't have a tripod that goes so low, so I used a couple of cinder blocks, which wasn't totally ideal since it wouldn't hold the camera at an angle, but it clearly worked. 

Next time, I can also guide Syd into thinking about poses, and the difference that it makes when your subject is looking at you vs. looking away. It'll be a nice little hands-on photography unit, don't you think?

And maybe I'll do this one, myself!

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