I haven't been avoiding Lems though I've been off the internet more than usual. I've been working. (Yay!) More hours because school is out for a few weeks. I am SO not in the mood for political stupidity, not even to point and mock when I see it. For some reason that just really doesn't seem fun right now.
What I have been doing is making costume jewelry with natural minerals and stone beads. Several people said I should put them for sale (I don't actually *wear* very much jewelry) which I think is sort of silly because making it is super easy and why not just make your own, right? But I did it. I made an Etsy store called "CuteByCoo" and put a bunch of stuff up.
I will say this though. My photography truly sucks. Also, doing the store thing is WAY less fun than putting necklaces together.
I think that tomorrow I'm going to put up the remainder of the little seed packets I made last summer. (I put a post up here.) I told my Mom I'd made them and individually colored each one and that the seeds were from my garden (they were Christmas gifts) and she was surprised. She hadn't looked that close and just thought I'd found some cute seed packets on the internet.
Shipping makes it all too expensive, though. But whatever. Go look up my store and let me know if I can do something better.
What I DO need, though, is more songs on my playlist. I've been doing my little craft thing and playing the same songs over and over and over and over. I think that the last thing I added was two songs from Men At Work. I like weird stuff. If everyone could recommend ONE song, what you recommend? I promise to at least check it out on You Tube!
Stop guilt-tripping people Chick. The Internet chatter is down as a whole. That's my sense of it. People will come back when I find more interesting targets for them to aim at... sort of speak.
So cool, Synova. What kind of music keeps you going as you craft? My mellow list includes "Unchained Melody." How about Taylor Swift's "Shake It Off" for up tempo energy? I find myself listening to Pandora for fresh tunes.
Nice jewelry. They're all necklaces. Have you tried earrings? Pins? Rings and bracelets? My suggestion is branch out for broader appeal. (It's only a guess)
As to photography, yours does NOT suck.
But I do have ideas. You are photographing against natural elements to emphasize their natural element origin and that is a good idea but it does present its own photographic problems that must be resolved to separate the item from the origin, and it always does get down to lighting so to change anything you must experiment with lighting.
I'm adding ordinary shop lights with 40 W fluorescents. Plus a hodgepodge of other regular kitchen light sources. I tell the camera what K# to shoot based on the K# that I kept adjusting to in Photoshop. That is, I kept moving a slider in Photoshop to correct the white balance, then noted the number I moved the slider to. Then adjusted the number in the camera. You cannot do this with a phone camera. (My blackberry takes surprisingly good photos.)
If the source rock you want for background has translucency then I'd experiment with back lighting.
Actually, I'd experiment with everything I can think of, back, side and frontal assist lighting.
Do you have a white cutting board? It makes and excellent infinity-like background.
My favorite of yours is where the background rock does not fill the frame. lt's a bit like Michaelangelo's unfinished works where the figure seems to be coming out of the rock. It's possible to make the jewelry appear to come right out of the rock like a snake crawling out.
(I saw a photograph of a photographer, a woman on a ladder. Along with the resulting photograph. She has the most beautiful model imaginable wearing the most beautiful fashion imaginable with the most incredible jewelry imaginable and she is using the Nikon's flagship camera -- a camera that is incapable of taking a bad photo -- and with an unnecessary array of expensive filtered lighting, and she managed the most ordinary prosaic pedestrian photograph on Earth. I wondered why she didn't make the jewelry appear to arise from its natural elements using the woman's body as natural landscape. Or a portion of her body and a portion of her fashion clothing, as if it were a curvilinear landscape, a photo begging for more information. Honestly, it was all there for something extraordinary and she took a completely unimaginative shot. She climbed a ladder to get the distance and elevation that she didn't need, and that any regular lens could get. She could have taken the exact same shot with a point and shoot or with phone-camera and without any photographic fuss at all. I was disgusted. )
Flat black is also a very good background for some things.
Also, have you tried forms to suggest how the necklaces look when worn?
I'd consider copying what they do on the sales channels, minus the rotating tray.
I think some stones look best with light passing through them. If you want to stick with rock background you might be able to get light to bounce off the background and go through your jewelry.
I'd try to get light to creep around edges. I'd see what the stones do by shifting around light sources. I found the shop lights with clamps work for me in my little kitchen.
I'd experiment with closeups so the necklace disappears from focus into the rock.
I'd consider the necklaces a dangerous snake, one photographed in nature.
To get sparkles in photographs, possibly make them wet with water, maybe with oil. I don't know, I'd experiment all over the place with light, trying to get it to wrap around and trying to get glints off edges. Different lenses and different depths of field (walls of focus) produce different shapes of bokeh, the out of focus lens-glints. I imagine sparkles are attractive with jewelry. Bokeh in the background and glints in the foreground.
You have a controlled space, as I do with my little kitchen, so my suggestion is experiment the hell out of that space with different sources of light, back, sideways, overhead, and front, until you start seeing things that please yourself.
Also, Chip, I'm going to have to read your photo discussion a couple of times through and think about what I can do, particularly for light. I appreciate that you took so much time to write that up.
15 comments:
I guess lots of people resolved to swear off Lem's.
I like the animation. It's fun. :)
I haven't been avoiding Lems though I've been off the internet more than usual. I've been working. (Yay!) More hours because school is out for a few weeks. I am SO not in the mood for political stupidity, not even to point and mock when I see it. For some reason that just really doesn't seem fun right now.
What I have been doing is making costume jewelry with natural minerals and stone beads. Several people said I should put them for sale (I don't actually *wear* very much jewelry) which I think is sort of silly because making it is super easy and why not just make your own, right? But I did it. I made an Etsy store called "CuteByCoo" and put a bunch of stuff up.
I will say this though. My photography truly sucks. Also, doing the store thing is WAY less fun than putting necklaces together.
I think that tomorrow I'm going to put up the remainder of the little seed packets I made last summer. (I put a post up here.) I told my Mom I'd made them and individually colored each one and that the seeds were from my garden (they were Christmas gifts) and she was surprised. She hadn't looked that close and just thought I'd found some cute seed packets on the internet.
Shipping makes it all too expensive, though. But whatever. Go look up my store and let me know if I can do something better.
What I DO need, though, is more songs on my playlist. I've been doing my little craft thing and playing the same songs over and over and over and over. I think that the last thing I added was two songs from Men At Work. I like weird stuff. If everyone could recommend ONE song, what you recommend? I promise to at least check it out on You Tube!
Stop guilt-tripping people Chick. The Internet chatter is down as a whole. That's my sense of it. People will come back when I find more interesting targets for them to aim at... sort of speak.
OTOH it could be Rh's prediction coming to pass.
What prediction?
That Get Smart will win the Oscar?
People are just busy.
The timing of the holidays just lent itself to vacations this year.
Or they are dead like Mario Cuomo.
I made an Etsy store called "CuteByCoo" and put a bunch of stuff up.
That is cool, synova!
So cool, Synova. What kind of music keeps you going as you craft? My mellow list includes "Unchained Melody." How about Taylor Swift's "Shake It Off" for up tempo energy? I find myself listening to Pandora for fresh tunes.
On song - I can't get this song out of my head...
so catchy.
Synova.
Nice jewelry. They're all necklaces. Have you tried earrings? Pins? Rings and bracelets? My suggestion is branch out for broader appeal. (It's only a guess)
As to photography, yours does NOT suck.
But I do have ideas. You are photographing against natural elements to emphasize their natural element origin and that is a good idea but it does present its own photographic problems that must be resolved to separate the item from the origin, and it always does get down to lighting so to change anything you must experiment with lighting.
I'm adding ordinary shop lights with 40 W fluorescents. Plus a hodgepodge of other regular kitchen light sources. I tell the camera what K# to shoot based on the K# that I kept adjusting to in Photoshop. That is, I kept moving a slider in Photoshop to correct the white balance, then noted the number I moved the slider to. Then adjusted the number in the camera. You cannot do this with a phone camera. (My blackberry takes surprisingly good photos.)
If the source rock you want for background has translucency then I'd experiment with back lighting.
Actually, I'd experiment with everything I can think of, back, side and frontal assist lighting.
Do you have a white cutting board? It makes and excellent infinity-like background.
My favorite of yours is where the background rock does not fill the frame. lt's a bit like Michaelangelo's unfinished works where the figure seems to be coming out of the rock. It's possible to make the jewelry appear to come right out of the rock like a snake crawling out.
What, too long again? Damnit.
(I saw a photograph of a photographer, a woman on a ladder. Along with the resulting photograph. She has the most beautiful model imaginable wearing the most beautiful fashion imaginable with the most incredible jewelry imaginable and she is using the Nikon's flagship camera -- a camera that is incapable of taking a bad photo -- and with an unnecessary array of expensive filtered lighting, and she managed the most ordinary prosaic pedestrian photograph on Earth. I wondered why she didn't make the jewelry appear to arise from its natural elements using the woman's body as natural landscape. Or a portion of her body and a portion of her fashion clothing, as if it were a curvilinear landscape, a photo begging for more information. Honestly, it was all there for something extraordinary and she took a completely unimaginative shot.
She climbed a ladder to get the distance and elevation that she didn't need, and that any regular lens could get. She could have taken the exact same shot with a point and shoot or with phone-camera and without any photographic fuss at all. I was disgusted. )
Flat black is also a very good background for some things.
Also, have you tried forms to suggest how the necklaces look when worn?
I'd consider copying what they do on the sales channels, minus the rotating tray.
I think some stones look best with light passing through them. If you want to stick with rock background you might be able to get light to bounce off the background and go through your jewelry.
I'd try to get light to creep around edges. I'd see what the stones do by shifting around light sources. I found the shop lights with clamps work for me in my little kitchen.
I'd experiment with closeups so the necklace disappears from focus into the rock.
I'd consider the necklaces a dangerous snake, one photographed in nature.
To get sparkles in photographs, possibly make them wet with water, maybe with oil. I don't know, I'd experiment all over the place with light, trying to get it to wrap around and trying to get glints off edges. Different lenses and different depths of field (walls of focus) produce different shapes of bokeh, the out of focus lens-glints. I imagine sparkles are attractive with jewelry. Bokeh in the background and glints in the foreground.
You have a controlled space, as I do with my little kitchen, so my suggestion is experiment the hell out of that space with different sources of light, back, sideways, overhead, and front, until you start seeing things that please yourself.
That's all I got.
And I love your necklaces. I'd wear 'em.
Thanks for the song recommendations.
Also, Chip, I'm going to have to read your photo discussion a couple of times through and think about what I can do, particularly for light. I appreciate that you took so much time to write that up.
:)
Also, many of the necklaces also had bracelets and earrings as a set.
Post a Comment