Kai in the Snow

It's the 4th anniversary of Kai's arrival. To celebrate, he got to spend some time in the fresh virgin snow in our back garden - the first "doll in snow" pics I've taken since we moved to the new house about 18 months ago. So of course, he had to make a snow angel. :)

Perseus: Caught in the Light

 

 

After a hiatus from the hobby for about a year, it seems Perseus is the doll to draw me back in again.  His new face-up has inspired me to take photos of him; it feels like I've fallen in love with him all over again. Like the rest of my little resin tribe, he is now an example of the best of my work after 7 years of pracice, rather than being one of my first.

Awaiting His Fate

Experimenting with lighting effects using an LED torch and blacklight. A sheet of black polar fleece makes an effective backdrop.












No Shiwoos were harmed in the making of this photoshoot. ;-)

Hardware snobbery

I've had my first ever submission rejection from a group on deviantART; it's a bit of a surprise, having been on dA for over 6 years now. The grounds for rejection?

The photo was taken on my Blackberry.

That was it. Because I didn't take it on a "proper camera", it was deemed a "snapshot" - artistic merit such as composition etc was not considered at all.

Interrestingly, the other photo submitted at the same time was accepted - despite the fact it was taken on a camera with lower specs than the camera on my Blackberry (2.1MP vs 3.2MP). On technical merit, it was inferior to the photo that was rejected.

It's like having a painting be rejected because it was painted using synthetic brushes instead of sable ones. It's basically hardware snobbery, pure and simple. It's missing the point.

Photography isn't about who has the more expensive kit. It's about knowing what to do with it. That $10K of equipment in your hand is worthless if you don't have the artistic talent to compose the perfect image.

From now on all photos I upload to dA will have the EXIF data stripped out. The quality of my work will speak for itself.


The worst thing about this? It's not something I can "improve" upon, skillwise; the only way in the moderators' eyes I could improve the supposed quality of my work would be solely through spending a large amount of cash. Which upon reflection speaks far more about their close-mindedness than about my skills and talent. Rejection still hurts though. :-/

Christine amongst the Camellias

Christine is a modded Cerberus Project Dreaming Lishe.
Face-up, aesthetics and dress all by me.

Kai & I

Kai, the first BJD I ever saw and the one that got me into the hobby in the first place, posing on my shoulder. You can't quite see it in this photo, but he and I have matching manicures. :-)

Kai is a Cerberus Project El and stands 60cm tall. His clothing, jewellery and face-up are all by me.

This photo was taken for the Den of Angels 100 Photography Prompts Challenge: Prompt #1 - Self-Portrait With Doll.

Gabrielle at Christmas

Gabrielle wishes you all a very Merry Christmas on behalf of all here at Arkadian Dreams. :-)

Vita Ersatz: Underwear Ads

Matresca in an Arkadian Dreams corset

Vita Ersatz; Shadow-dwellers

Two older ones of Perseus I'm fond of and a new one of my smallest shadow-dweller. :-)

In the Garden III: Luspira

In the Garden II: Taliesin

In the Garden I: The Twins