5000K

At this time of year I feel I really struggle to take good photographs of my felt. Even waiting until the weekend doesn't really give much improvement. So I was interested when a link to photographing textiles was shared with me.

After reading this I began to start to understand the problem. White balance. The solution was to take control of the lighting by illuminating your pieces with 5000K lights bulbs. So I thought I'd give it a go.

First test , illuminated with natural light on a grey February day.

Retaken under the 5000K bulbs

You will have to take my word for it that these colours are more like reality.

So I also took some photos of my ongoing experiments to make bubbles in laminated fabric.

These piece both use silk , and test interfacing , plastic, iron on fabric print, PVA glue and fabric glue.

One silk and one cotton , mixed successes which is good as it allows for some more experimentation.

 

 

 

Posted with Blogsy

Reflections on a reflection

I am discovering how tricky reflections are, as I reflect on the complexities of photographing a reflection.

I have decided to use a reflection of a tree in a small stream as the inspiration for my felt panel.

I came across this reflection on a cold but bright April morning, and was entranced. I snapped away , but with my limited photography skills and equipment I could not capture both the image and its reflection in the same photograph. This was easily achieved by some kind of vertical panoramic melding technique by the photographer .

Reflecting on these images the next day , I decided I needed to return to take some close ups if I was going to develop this as a felt idea. Good idea , but now on reflection not nearly enough.

What has become apparent to me is that a tree reflection in water critically depends on where you stand when you look at it , or actually when you in this case take a photograph . Although I think I knew this in my head , I did not behave systematically enough , during my entrancement and now have lots of fantastic photographs , that don't line up .

This is all made a bit more complicated by the fact that the numbers of branches in the tree is more than in its reflection. Analysing this it is , I believe it is a combination of the narrowness of the stream, the width of the tree and the viewing angle. All this has slowly become apparent to me as I try to sketch and paint the image. How have a managed to make it so complicated before I have even thought about how to felt the image.

To illustrate my point here is the reflection and the tree separately at slightly different angles.

And finally a pastel interpretation if the whole piece

Now to convert all these wild ideas to a felted panel from European wool!

Posted with Blogsy

Photography or Physics

As a child I was exposed to the mysteries of photography through my father , who was a keen amateur .Carefully setting his exposure and his F stops and then developing his own photographs in our blacked out kitchen. This was the bit I enjoyed most as in the dark , the prints emerged. It was very complicated and exciting. Thanks to the developments in electronics, I have since become a point and shoot photographer. Today my husband is heavily into his photography , but now not only do I have the F stops to contend with there is also a million adjustments possible via the computer .

I was quite content with my old camera except for one thing , it really ate batteries. So when I wanted to use it I was forever running down the road to buy batteries , as I couldn't usually wait for the recharger to work. I was a serous risk to the environment. I therefore requested a new camera for my birthday. Thinking again simple point and shoot. This was not possible . There was a perfectly serviceable , high spec Lumix going spare. It just wasn't quite up to the photographer's standards and I was his excuse for a new one!!. So I am having a trial of it and I cautiously asked for some advice on photographing my felts.

I wanted a normal picture on a nice background , some photos of the detail and a photo showing what the piece would look like framed. Simple ?. Well we got the light right and decided automatic plus a bit a computer adjustment of brightness and contrast was all the was required. Thank goodness, we didn't need to go through the F stop theory again . We did have to get out the super deluxe tripod , but that's easy to work.

Then we came to photos of the framed pictures. A big problem of squareness emerged. No matter how carefully we set up the angles between the sophisticated tripod and the picture hanging temporaliy at a crazy low height on the wall, the frames all looked cockeyed. No solution was possible. Until we had a brain wave , forget the wall and all those complicated vertical hanging mechanisms. Just lay the framed picture on the floor , and pretend its the wall. I think it's a paralax probelm. Physics not photography. And the solution requires no photography knowledge at all.

So here a selection ofmy attemptand the question is wall or floor?