Thursday, March 3, 2011

Poser Kens and Knowing When to STOP Adjustments

This is Ken's 50th anniversary month so various Kens will appear here at PhillyCollector. In this photo, we have some of the poser Kens. There are others, of course, like Speed Racer, etc. but these are the guys I have now. In the first photo, I took the photo and only cropped the original. It looks fairly clear to me.


Then I thought, but doesn't the darkness of their pants run all together? Wouldn't it be nice to see the difference between their pants and the background? And that's when the trouble began. I started fiddling with the contrast in my Kodak software. Slam! That's when things went wrong ... That's when I got this bleary, dreary, washed out photo:


Moral of this post? In addition to allowing for plenty of light for your photographs, it's better to reduce or to avoid using the software adjustments. What looks "good" to weary eyes on the computer screen does not necessarily translate to a good photo online.

Aside: for some reason all my Black Kens are non-posers. So I could not include them in this photo. They will ALL appear in my Ken Birthday post.

5 comments:

Stardoll40 said...

Nice collection! Which one out of this bunch is your favorite?

D7ana said...

Oh ... not that's a hard question. Once I would have said Tango Ken, but I confess, they each strike a different, special chord. So I can't say ;-[

Which one would be your favorite?

AilanthusAltissima said...

How many kens do you have? (on second thought, maybe I shouldn't ask that question. When I first started collecting dolls as an adult, someone told me never to count them all).

Vanessa said...

Nice collection! Together the two pictures make the perfect picture. I like seeing the different pants colors.

D7ana said...

Hi Kim! I only have 24 Kens – that’s compared to 48 Barbies. See that's not so very many, ha ha. I’d like to gather them together for one Ken photograph, but my Mod Hair and Malibu Kens need deep-soapy baths before they can be photographed.

It's Mattel dolls in bulk and others in bulk where I should NOT count, lol.

Hi Vanessa! Yes, oddly enough the two photographs do "work", but I look forward to the day when I can set up lighting and capture the image I want in ONE photo ;-}