Besides making things or bargain shopping for your dolls, there’s a lot of things that you can do without really doing a lot at all – taking photos. There are so many photography challenges available online and some of them require a significant amount of commitment (like doing 365 Days Blythe or 2010 A Doll Every Day) or just once a week or even once a month. Whatever the level of commitment that you want to put towards taking photos of your doll, you can probably find it online.

I take part in a 365 project with my first Blythe, Sophie (Cappuccino Chat). It’s been both rewarding and kind of annoying, all at the same time. On one hand, I’ve taking some fantastic photos (for me, not by everyone else’s standards) and on the other hand, I’ve fallen behind a few time and had to play catch-up in order to remain ‘on time’ with where I was. In hindsight, I wish I’d gone with a challenge that required less of a commitment from me. I’ve gone days where Sophie’s wearing the same outfit for over a week and I just don’t have the kind of wardrobe that really seems to be needed for this kind of thing (which, in a way, is ironic given that I can rotate the same few outfits over and over again and not have an issue with it).

There’s a lot to learn about photography for everyone, you don’t need a fancy schmancy camera to take part in any of the photography challenges. No one requires you to have a DSLR that costs more than a car. I take part in 365 with a Sony Cybershot (small, compact point-and-shoot camera that really hates accurately picking up the colour purple) and there are others take photos with their cell phone cameras! The photo challenges available are really about what you want to make out of it.

If you want to take photos of your doll every single day, there’s a group for that. If you only want to do it once a week, there’s a group for that as well. If you’re finicky and only want to take a picture once a month, there are others like that as well. Whatever your camera equipment and the time that you have to dedicated towards taking photos of your Blythe, there’s a group for that, and there’s a lot of fun to be had as well!

Some Flickr photo challenge groups for Blythe (and other dolls) are:

• 365 Days Blythe – daily commitment
• 2010 A Doll Every Day! – daily commitment
• 52 Weeks of Blythe 2010 – weekly commitment
• A Doll A Month – monthly commitment
• Blythe Photo Challenge – monthly commitment