Moody Jax Photoshoot (Taeyang Natsume)

It's been a long while since I updated here, but I have been taking photos of my dolls again, and wanted to continue to document my progress. I actually found it very helpful to look back on what I had done before, and having this blog up to date has proven to be quite handy.

Today I returned to Pinterest for some posing ideas (see my post here, where I originally had this idea). This time I searched for "photography poses men" in the hopes of finding some evocative poses for Jax, my Taeyang Natsume.

This was the first pose to catch my eye:

Pinned from Vogue UK

...and this is what I came up with:

Brooding Jax

I wanted Jax to be leaning quite far forward for this shot, but I was limited not only by the articulation of his body, but also by his fitted leather jacket and 2 players of cotton beneath it.  For the  tighter shot below I shone a flashlight on Jax's hair and allowed it catch his right eye a bit.  His downward-cast face and the fact that he is looking out of the frame of the photo give him a brooding, withdrawn, melancholy mood.




My second posing "Pinspiration" came from this pin:

...and here is my photo:

Emerging from the shadows

Jax looks a little less sad in this photo, but still rather... wistful?  This was a pretty straightforward pose.  I leaned his left side against the wooden crate I had as a prop and stood him straight with relaxed arms.  I always check his writsts and elbows to make sure they are looking natural before I stake my shot.

My final pose came from this Pin:

Because Taeyang can't rotate their heads up and down, I had to modify this pose so his body and face were pointing the same direction, but I tried to replicate his positioning the best I could.  I really like how this one came out.  I think it feels quite intimate, due to the close crop (I crop all my photos in camera, not in post-processing) and direct eye contact.

While I had him shirtless and in bed (lol!), I tried a few body-centric shots just off the top of my head, and I like how they turned out.  I had trouble deciding between keeping these their natural colour or changing them to black and white.  I ended up leaving them natural because it made them feel warmer, which I think helps elicit the sadness I wanted for this photoshoot.



All the photos above were taken with a 50mm lens, shot with an aperture of 4.5, shutter speed of 1/50, and ISO of 200.  They were minimally processed in iPhoto only to correct for white balance (due to the yellow walls in my room).  I had the overhead lights turned off (there are no windows in my room) and used only the small lights in my "photo studio" to light all the shots from this session.

BTS: Moody Jax Photoshoot

Clothes:

Stock outfit items, Ken doll jeans.