Taking old photos and editing them. Sometimes going through my old photos lets me see the way I took them in a different light. I almost always choose a different photo to edit from what I had edited immediately after the shoot. I guess my preference changes?

Things that could have been done better:
1. Nat's face positioned so the shadows are in a more defined fashion (like Dennis's)
2. Dennis right arm repositioned to be more relaxed
3. Tilt the camera for better composition (rule of thirds maybe)

I still quite like the photo, to be honest. Haha.

Also, have some photos of Cypher:




You can probably tell it's just my laptop behind (and my earphones, and my phone...whoops). The thing with LTFs is that they're small and they encourage my laziness. Haha. But then again, I've not taken much photos of Elly... Ahh well. I can blame many factors but to be honest I'm not particularly in dolly mood recently, since there's so much to see in Korea when I'm free, besides just playing with my dolls. I still like to pat Elly on the head though, sometimes. X3

Visiting Ninestyle Cafe | 04.10.14

I realise I forgot to post this, haha. I went to Ninestyle cafe last week to get Elly her wig and clothes since I wasn't too happy with the default from the SDGr. Lovely Dress ver. of Tae. The black wig was just too ...uptight/good girly for her? Yeah. She's a fun loving kind of girl, a bit more carefree and spontaneous so the colour was really not right.

Anyway, I got the address beforehand and used a combination of GPS and Naver maps (sort of like a Korean version of Google maps) to get the location. It's in Hongdae, which is a more hip/happening place (so is Volks, by the way. Volks is in the active region though, while Ninestyle is not in as busy an area), but the cafe is located in a quieter area. It's almost residential/what I would see near school. Yeah. The cafe is on the 3rd floor and as with Volks, I was looking upwards for any signboards to show me I was in the right place, lol.



Found it.



This is the shop that's beside the building Ninestyle cafe is located. I mean, there wasn't much landmarks or anything special around, save for signboards.

There isn't a lift either, but the only stairs I found looked a bit...private? Like it doesn't look like the public should be venturing in anytime. But it's open so I went up. Passed by what looks like a tailoring shop's working room (thought I might be in the wrong place), but continued up the stairs and finally I saw this sign.


It all feels a bit...random? Haha. I mean, it is a small shop, so I guess the location and all isn't the best.

The door to the shop :) Also. The toilet is right beside the entrance...


I didn't take any interior shots but I saw some when googling for ninestyle cafe before going, and it pretty much looks the same. There's a cafe part of it, and a shop part. The cafe part was packed - no empty tables for me, cos I went at about 3pm, and I guess the doll owners who want to have meetups there are there early. There's display booths for people to take photos of their dolls in, but the general feel of it is kind of like how the doll meets in Singapore are (except ours are at non-doll cafes, so sometimes we kind of just invade the cafe for too long >_<)

The shop part of it was pretty wonderful. There's dolls from different companies on display. I saw BeWithYou dolls (Age27 Wood) on the cafe counter (He's so huge in real life, I totally can't imagine it. And soooo gorgeous. The body and the face and gah, really nicely sculpted. His feet are gigantic, by the way), and the doll models on the ninestyle page (The dollshe, sch A and Yeonho are the ones I remember), and the clothes are organised by sections with the dolls placed around as display (I think some in the display glass case might be for sale?). They sell wigs from Formydoll, Wig Wing, and they also have stuff from Sadol (and a little bit from Anotherspace), so it's not all Ninestyle items, like I thought. Oh, and they sell makoeyes and Enchanted doll urethane eyes at the counter too. Supplies as well (strings, s hook etc).

One thing that took me a while to figure out was the price tags. At first I thought they didn't have a price tag, but later I realised that the sticker with the long string of numbers under the barcode has the price (take the last 5 digits of the barcode number, I think). Yeah. That part wasn't too user friendly. But once I got that out of the way, I spent way too long in the shop trying to stretch my limited budget. Got stuff for Elly and I wanted to get some yosd jeans for Cypher but nope, didn't have enough money for that. I totally skipped out the SD13 and SD17/70cm boys section because I didn't want to see what I didn't have enough money to buy, haha. It's much harder to resist when the goods are in front of you compared to when it's an online shopping cart.

Anyway, for anyone who might want to know, I got a 5% discount on my total because I paid in cash (vs paying with a card, I guess?), so that was an unexpected surprise :D The lady behind the counter (there's only 1 person manning the whole shop) wasn't really able to speak English well, but she's friendly and she asked where I'm from etc. Haha. She gave me a pair of doll panties as gift after I paid (well, she walked over to the shop area and gestured to the small items, saying "gift" and asking me to choose 1, haha). Yeah. Overall, a nice experience though I totally skipped out on the cafe portion of it (too engrossed with the shop).

 Maybe next time I'll bring Elly out or something and sit around in the cafe, but I don't really want to battle with the subway crowd to Hongdae with a doll in my bag. The passengers have a habit of just pushing you out of their way if they're trying to move from carriage to carriage... I'll see how.

Anyway, have a photo of Elly with her new wig and clothes (I know the photo doesn't show much of the clothes though, ahhhh)

Visiting Volks Korea!

Actually it's more of a box opening than photos of the Volks Korea shop because we're not supposed to take photos inside, so even though I managed to take some shots before a shop assistant came by to inform me that no photos are allowed, I'm not going to be posting those photos. Anyway, the funny thing is I've actually walked past this area a few times while doing site analysis, because for some reason my site for architecture studio this semester is in Hongdae.

So here's the outside. The advertisement is pretty high up, and I didn't see it at all the last few times I've walked past. I'm still kind of in disbelief about that, considering that I went to search how the outside of Volks Korea look like so I would know it when I see it (which didn't work, haha).



Outside the shop, on the stairs (Volks is on the 3rd floor).




Yup, no other photos inside the shop.

Let me just say that I spent my afternoon just browsing inside the shop, and it was just so nice to see everything in person. I'm so used to online shopping for dolls that seeing everything in real life in a physical shop is a bit of a dream come true/surreal, outside of doll conventions (I've only been to the local ones in Singapore which isn't big enough to have doll companies come down, so we just have local owners selling things :) ). And Volks. I think I have a recent obsession with Volks, and seeing their dolls and items in real life didn't help that obsession, haha.

They have a whole shelf for FCS-heads, bodies, hand and feet parts. The heads are blank and you can really see the difference in head size and features etc. Unfortunately even though I'll be in Korea until the end of December with an address in the univeristy hostel, I can't order any FCS D: The shop assistants told me it'll take 2-3 months for an FCS so they can't let me order. AHHHHH Welllll D:

I then proceeded to shop for clothes and shoes, because Volks shoes are so damn detailed. And I stood there for really long, deciding what to get with the budget I set myself (I wanted to drop by ninestyle cafe as well, but I didn't have enough money after going to Volks, haha. I brought Cypher out for the ninestyle cafe but didn't really take him out in the end, because I ended up not going). Then before I left, I saw the poster they had for the current releases, and omg, Lovely Dress ver. SDGr Tae!

The shop assistant offered to show me the doll (all the shop assistants are damn nice. They came by to talk to me, and even though their English is limited, they do speak rather well compared to my studio mates, haha. And they are really friendly. I talked to another shop assistant about my dolls for a while, and showed her some photos, even though I only have 1 Volks doll, so my photos weren't usually of Volks dolls. I don't know, Volks and their effy rules about Volks only, so I didn't want to be rude but she was totally okay with photos, as long as I didn't take Cypher out.) So yeah, she showed me the box, the certificates and clothes etc. And then she took out the doll, and let me hold her (Just a note, I had to wear gloves to handle the dolls, as do the assistants. Just to be clean about it, I guess. I mean, I understand the idea of it but meh, when it's my own dolls. Okay, moving on...). Once I held the doll, I was pretty much sold. I mean, I've liked Tae and I want a girly girl doll (oh, my tomboy and boho girls. Haha.). Long story short, I caved and bought the SDGr Tae. :D

After that I went back to find my friends and we went to Namsan Tower (yesh, me with my doll...), and I was really tired, so excuse the box opening photos.

The bag of clothes I got at first, and my Tae :D


The clothes. For the boys, really. I think I'll go to ninestyle cafe for the clothes. And maybe the wig for her (I'll think of a name for her soon!)










I skipped taking a lot of photos of the different parts because I just wanted to get to the doll XD


Such a pretty face!


Her faceup looks better in person. I've never really been a big fan of Volks faceups (they're a bit soft for my taste. And I don't mean the colours, but the way they do the eyebrows etc, their eyebrows, for example, aren't the crisp kind I prefer. Too much soft blending for my taste), but she'll have to keep this for a while until I get back to Singapore where all my faceup materials are. Her eyes are hot-glued in, which I've not went to unglue either. But overall the soft dreamy feel seems quite close to whatever character she'll be, so we'll see how that goes :)


And her with the default outfit and wig (not everything cos I was lazy). I don't think she suits black, huh. I like the photo above better (the one without a wig) because she has more potential, haha. But I'm going to slowly think about it.


Also, now that I've officially taken my impulse buying to a new level, I'm most likely going to sell my LLT Roderich head. He's still without a character, and I feel like I'll rather sell him and use that money for other dolls. But it'll have to wait until I get back to Singapore because he's back home, haha. I'm sorely lacking my doll stuff here, seriously. Almost like starting from square 1. I mean, Cypher has his clothes and all, but he's a LTF. Tae is a SD sized girl. Of which I don't have much stuff for, to begin with, even at home, and of which I have NOTHING here for her.

Dreaming Ell and Vampire Ell looks much better than the regular Ell. Teeth :D Gosh, no I have enough floating heads arghhhhh :/

I realise I forgot to post the photos here when I posted it to tumblr, haha.

Anyway, I've been in Korea for about 2 weeks (or is it 3?) and the only doll I have with me now is Cypher. I've not really been taking photos of him, because I don't really want to bring him outside my room...and he's in the same outfit anyway, haha.

Here's a photo of the corridor of my dorm. It's really just a straight corridor with rooms on the side.



Inside my room...which is messy (but I like seeing dolls in context, so yeah, I guess, haha)


And a more normalish shot.


I've been checking out the location of doll cafes in Korea, but I've not gotten the time to go visit them (it's like an hour and a half ride on the subway, and I need to take a shuttle bus to the subway station, so travelling would be 2 hours D:), but I'm definitely going to at least 1 shop. There's nine9style, Volks Korea, Freedom Teller all in the same area near my site for school (Hongdae), and Iplehouse is in Yangjae, which I think I can take a bus to. But it's still far :( We'll see how that goes! Meanwhile I'm just trying out the different food in Korea. Haha.

The fact that I had to crop the photo to a ratio that isn't what my camera takes makes me vaguely uncomfortable, but it does remove extra things from the photo which was annoying. I really like this shot for some reason.

I think there's something nice about seeing some sort of context in photos, even doll photos. Clearly we aren't all living in the same kind of places, and the "messy background" in some cases are less of messy and more of a certain rootedness to the photo. I might be rambling/romanticisng this slightly, of course, but when done well, I like photos (with or without dolls) with some kind of context that shows the kind of place/environment people live in. I mean, there's only so much dolls in plain backgrounds or with temperate plants in background shots. And nice as they are, I don't live in a place where I have temperate plants/nice looking forests (the forests here, if they're even big enough to be called forests, are pretty scary and wet and overgrown, as tropical forests tend to be, with a huge amount of dull green leaves), and I used to think, ohh, that means I can't take photos like that. That is true, but I still have other stuff, the small skating area behind my flat, the houses that are distinct to Singapore (rows and rows of flats in a certain style)... sometimes I forget that whatever I have and is around is is exactly that, and I shouldn't always try to clean everything up to a nice neat context. I hope that made some sort of sense.

I'm not really good at taking photos with these contexts, but sometimes I think it's nice to. I might do it sometime...

Photos I took in the house yesterday and today. I've been pretty much stuck with my doll photography for a while, and not terribly motivated to do anything about it. Yesterday I was taking Tiyana out to change (well, to swap Freddie's head out), and decided to photograph her with the Resin-Aperture challenge for this month (low angled shots). I usually take my photos from whereever I am, which is usually seated on the ground, with my camera propped on my knees to better stabilise my hands, and leave my dolls standing (Pretty much works for everyone except Cypher cos he's a LTF). Low angle isn't my best angle to take photos because I use a 50mm lens in my house, so I tend to end up in a really awkward position and I can't take photos. Still, I tried for the challenge, and I'm glad I did. It may not have worked out the best in terms of low-angled photograph, but I definitely like the photo that turned out better.



And the one I took today of Zeke happened to be somewhat of a low angled shot too. I think I'm just trying to actively *not* take portrait shots for these 2 sessions because I want to do something different. Like, I actually got different bodies for all my dolls for their characters and it's not going to matter if all I take are portrait shots, cos no one but me would see their full body, you know?


And well, Tiyana's photo is kind of okay, I like the photo, characterwise I'm just like "yeah, it's okay". It might have to do with the fact that I'm thinking if I should redo her faceup, but I kind of like how I did this one, even though it's old and done with watercolour pencils instead of watercolour paints which is what I use now. So yeah, not too sure about that, we'll see what happens after I'm done with the coming semester of school.

But Zeke's photo, I just love it so much. There's a lot of things I love about this doll that's kind of just accidental things, by which I mean, things I wasn't actively looking at when I bought him. For example, his nose wasn't the main feature for why I bought his head (the lips were) and now it's really growing on me. And even though he has a default faceups (I generally don't like/keep my dolls with default faceups, but Zeke and Cypher both have default faceups, cos I like them), it is somehow just right for the character, even the tones of the blushing. I half wonder if it's a case of liking something more just because I own it now. Haha. But that's not the point - it doesn't matter why as long as I like it.

I also really like the solid feel of his body, even though the body was bought on impulse, on a new company I knew little about. And somehow it suits him, although sometimes I think his wrists are soooo thin, but he's pretty much in sweatshirts or oversized longsleeved tops anyway, so it doesn't matter. The Little Monica hands he's wearing (because the original Akagi ones were odd and had long nails) also look really nice on him (save for the thin wrists, but they do fit), and he actually wears the hands better than Hew who's on a LM body and also uses the same sized LM hands. I just feel like they suit Zeke better. Maybe I'm biased?

And Zeke has a SD17 length-ish torso but SD13 length-ish legs. He sits taller than most of my other dolls, even some who are taller than him because of that long torso. It's a bit accidental, since that wasn't my concerns when buying, but I just kind of like it. Make him different from the rest :) Oh, and I like that his legs lock when sitting. Yeah...

It's been a pretty rambly post, but I just felt like sharing what I like about Zeke because that photo shows so many of the details I like about him as a doll. And a bit of getting over (maybe) just taking portrait shots of my dolls.