24 November 2006 by pat.

A variation on a theme.This weekend I want to find a globe on a stand in one of the antique/junk/collectibles shops in my neighbourhood. To take still-life pictures, you’ve gotta have props (some might call it junque, but beauty is in the eye of the photographer )I need to do some serious editing on this: the more I look at it, the more I realize that the gold on the mask and the mottled green of the background fabric are too similar with the lighting in this image. So I want to mask out all the objects, and darken the fabric.I can do that: I’ve done more intricate masking jobs for competitions over on Worth1000. It will just take a little time, that’s all. Time, and some good jazz music, and a glass of pinot grigio from the Venezia region, just to put me in the mood….pat.

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21 November 2006 by pat.

Here’s one.I borrowed a couple of violins from co-workers, and pulled together some still life images using them, some masks I got in Venice, some sheet music I printed off the web, and other bits and pieces of things I’ve got around home.I still need to finish going through my Peggy’s Cove pictures and choosing the best of those, and making a CD for retailers, but sometimes you’ve just gotta take pictures…

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20 November 2006 by pat.

New camera. 10+ Megapixel Rebel. Same lenses, but over 10 megapixels instead of just over six.Took over 50 photos this weekend, mostly of musical instruments and Venetian masks and glass. Still have to sort through them and figure out which I like and which I don’t. These images will be part of my new library/livingroom series of stil lifes (as opposed to the food images, which were kitchen/diningroom).Meantimes, here’s my new headshot. I photographed into a mirror, and then flipped the image. It’s not as easy as I thought it would be:First, check for your image to be reflected in the camera lens. Then, look at the aperture. I think. Difficult figuring that one out. Seems that it might be the midpoint that must be focussed on: i.e., the mirror. Must play around with this some more.

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2 November 2006 by pat.

So first, let’s look at the original photograph of the David Austin “Abraham Darby” rose:

As you can see, the open blossom is quite pinkish, and the two closed blossoms are yellower: more of a peach colour.

Black’s Photography offers the ability to upload a picture to their website (.jpg and maybe some other formats: it barfed on .tiff, which is my favorite format, due to being lossless). They offer a number of ways to use the picture: as a photo, on a mug, or a mouse pad, or a tee-shirt… or woven on a Jacquard loom. That sounded interesting to me, and I also like the idea that computer punch cards were based on the punch cards used by jacquard looms, and now the jacquard looms are creating digital images… round and round we go…

So I copied the picture up. And checked it out on the blanket/tapestry, and thought it looked pretty good! 3 weeks until delivery. I kept my fingers crossed, hoping it would arrive before the technical update session, when I was talking about digital photography for gardeners.

Alas, no such luck. The tech. update happened on Saturday; I got a call on Tuesday or Wednesday (I forget which: it was the last week of a software update), and wasn’t able to pick it up until Friday.

I think it turned out quite well, although the open rose isn’t quite as pink, and the buds aren’t quite as peachy. The color range is limited, after all: these are woven yarns.

It looks better from afar than from 12″ away: gets almost a high-pass-filter kind of look when examined up close.

I think the next time I do this (and I most likely will) I’ll choose something with more flowers, in bright contrasting colors, and smaller. A rose is truly overwhelming when it’s about 36 inches across. It would be better to reproduce an image at close to a 1:1 scale, instead of doing a huge macro like this.

I also positioned the large rose really close to the top edge of the blanket: it would be a good idea to leave some background to frame the image, I’d say about a 6″ margin all the way around.

Live and learn!

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