Girl on the Hood

Girl on the Hood
Originally uploaded by horsenbuggy

This is not my Day 4 photo. This is another line of photos that I'm playing around with. This project doesn't have a time component. It's just one that inspires me. I love the concept of satire. But how do you do satire in a photo? This is my answer. I will shoot toys/action figures/dolls in life-like settings.

This is my take on those cheesy shots of scantily clad women draped over the hood of a car - think White Snake video. However, this shot is not perfect. It turns out that Barbie is not as easy to pose as I'd hoped. She doesn't bend in enough places and this particular doll doesn't even twist at the waist. Anyway, I should not have left her right leg sticking up like that. It's not sexy. Someone on Flickr commented that this looks macabre. He's right. Instead of looking like she's intentionally laying across the hood, she looks like she got thrown there after an accident. So, I will recreate this shot when I set up a better lighting area - doll studio.

Also, if anyone has access to used dolls, clothes or accessories, I would love to have them. I particularly need dudes. I'm learning more than I ever wanted to know about scale modeling. Barbie dolls are at 1/6 scale, called "sixthscale" or "playscale", because they are almost 12 inches tall, or 1/6 the size of a real human.

I ran into scale problems with another toy shot I did a few weeks ago. I needed a male and female toy for the shot. I bought them at the dollar store, but all of the male "action figures" were 2 - 3 inches shorter than the female dolls. I made it work through camera angles, but I was basically limited to only one pose.

Anyway, I have two Barbies right now - the other twists at the waist. But these are the only clothes I have. I can't really imagine me shooting her in formal attire. So I need to scour garage sales and thrift stores to find clothes. I want to shoot sexy Barbie photos, not nudes. Although, if I can replicate a bear skin rug...