Avantguard Dolls in Monica Merrill Outfits and Photographic Ruminations

My favorite Avantguard doll is wearing Monica's "Take a Letter" outfit in this photo. It fits very well. The earrings that come with this outfit are black beads. I like diamonds better. Ahem.

I love this doll and that makes me chuckle because looking at her pleases me! 

What I'm not sure about is the shadow on her face created by the light on the right side of the figure. It does repeat itself on her chest but something is off. I think I could have done without the second light on the right and j ust pumped up the power of the other strobe.  I'm shooting with one strobe reflected off an umbrella and one directly diffused strobe which I placed approximately 90° apart from eachother. I have the umbrella higher. I love using high contrast when shooting this doll. I definitely need to work harder when shooting white...it's just not as good as I envision.

In this next photo, I did eliminate the second light. The background is grayer (I could have lit that separately) and the extreme contrast is softened. Her face looks better without the distinct shadow. The big area under her face of faux fur is blown out and takes away from her face. This image could have used some pixel pushing for sure.

The shoes seen in the photo are Goldmine's own.

These last 2 images are of "Attention" Avantguard and were shot with a point and shoot using window light and fill flash from the camera.
The outfit is from a dressed Monica Merrill doll as is "Taking a Letter" and is called "Jonquil Sass." Again, the fit is excellent including the shoes. It's such an adorable outfit. The wig is from another AG doll.

It's painfully apparent to me that my point and shoot is vastly inferior to my studio, tripod-mounted camera. But I'd be taking a lot less pictures if I had to take everything into my studio to shoot. Yes, I know that the last picture above is out of focus but I wanted to let y'all see the entire outfit with shoes.