Posts Tagged ‘photography’

More from our two-day stay – and again, playing around with lighting, cropping, and other assorted photo thingies (too technical to mention)….

Storm the day before, so at low tide the beach was LOADED – took this for my other Mom, Betty – she of the tidepooling book!

Next day – the gulls had scavenged whatever food there was left!

My early morning companions for beach-walking –

See what cropping does for this one –

View from our porch – Like the various textures in this one above –

This is a series – was playing with light for a possible “plein air” fabric painting…..

Manages to clone out the plastic cup, cropped it with some lightening – now I feel it’s a good picture.  

Next year……

The town of Vergennes was settled around the French and Indian War, very big up here in the Vermont/New York area. The downtown has begun to revitalize, although some of the outer businesses haven’t been able to make a go of it. We hadn’t done much exploring within Vergennes, as it was always on the way to somewhere else. This time we took the turn for Vergennes Falls and were delightfully surprised at what we found – gorgeous falls, running wildly from the rain, and some great picnicking to return to next summer. Lots of photo ops, and a chance for me to experiment yet again. The sun wasn’t perfect,m so you can see how I played around with that. Definitely a place to come when the sun is exactly right – start keeping that in mind when we set out to explore.

Definitely benefits from cropping  and sharpening – this is the middle of the three falls:

Much better with the light – Close-up, just some cropping –

Almost impossible to get all three falls in, given my little phone camera –

The original – you know I love bark –

With cropping – light issues –

Black and white, as part of an online challenge – I will continue to work with some black and white – really love the effect.

Not really able to take much of a long vacation this year – getting ready for surgery, finances, hurricanes cancelling Delaware – lots happening, so we did manage to get a few wonderful short rides around Vermont, exploring a lot of new off-the-main-road places. I am using my camera phone and hubby uses his little point-and-shoot. A new DSLR is on the agenda for next year, but in the meantime I am understanding the difference between digital zoom and optical zoom – explains why my “close-ups” hardly ever are in focus. I also am concentrating on more interesting framing of my pictures. I find I take more pictures, and usually have one or two good ones out of each batch.

This trip was a Sunday drive down around the the town of Georgia, perched right on the eastern shore of Lake Champlain. Normally we take the road from north to south, but this time we went south to east – like it was a completely different area! Sometimes it pays to look backwards at where you’ve been Discovered this beautiful boat access that we wouldn’t have seen otherwise. Plus, we’d had so much warm weather for October that autumn was pretty sketchy for New England – then suddenly the leaves turned – almost over night. We hit a couple of good spots for leaf-peeping.

This top one benefited from cropping. I was moderately successful at removing electrical wires.

This next series was looking north on St. Alban’s Bay – you can see how the cropping helped with more interest.

I fell in love with turning to the left to see what was there – light wasn’t perfect, but I think there’s a lot of interest in the photo.

Better with the cropping.

Some lighting contrast.

I love it in black and white!

Facing the bay, northwest. Light was not great, but I was playing.

A gorgeous Vermont autumn day!

Our photography has definitely improved over the years, but we still have issues. I reconnected with a friend from 25 years ago, and he came to photograph our pieces in the library show we had this past August. OMG – they are amazing. Bill Kneen, a Richmond, Vermont photographer, does pretty amazing work. (email me for his information) We’re going to use him for our major pieces. So here goes –  a really good look at a few:

Wetlands 1 – the color is so true, and the texture really shows through.

Wetlands 1

This is green cotton lame, and it’s been really hard to get the sheen that Bill achieved.

Endangered: Rainforest

Glorious true colors! So excited that this shows so well.

Rough Waters

This piece was really hard for us to photograph – looked washed out and not really a good sense of the desert – now it is!

Sonoran Desert

Bamboo Jungle – again, very true colors – you can see the dimension in the leaves.

Bamboo Jungle

THANKS, BILL!!!!

Vermont Open Studios, 2016

When we did Vermont Open Studios last May with artist Mary Hill, one of the great things about sharing the space was all the time we had to talk about our various art and marketing attempts. Mary had some GREAT ideas for us concerning packaging. We continue to process everything we thought about, with some definite changes in what we are doing. Thanks to Rachel of The Textile and Fiber Art List, we have also been improving photography – both how we shoot items and how we present the finished product.

First, the photography. Our pictures have a “muddy” cast to them, and we are basically rephotographing everything we have. The place we are living now doesn’t allow for much flexibility for setting up good lighting. Hubby experimented with a lot of options – including moving to a rolled fabric presentation rather than each piece in a haphazard manner. Give an overall idea as opposed to every thing about each piece. In this manner we can still send the packages flat and save customers money (on international orders – domestic shipping is free). Some “before and after” ideas –

Getting the overall set-up of the product looking good –

Lighting and color still issues….but against the white background looking better. Also, we discovered that we needed to save pictures at a larger size in order to get more detail in the pictures. Next is better with a good cropping and some adjustments in Photoshop to correct the lighting.

Definitely getting there –

Uh-Huh…..

Definitely brighter –

Close-up shot for the Twitter picture, which I am slowly getting back to using…..

This is just for our Charm Pack 2 – ten pieces of hand-marbled pima cotton, assorted patterns and colors, 10 x 10 inches each. Slowly working on others. The pieces need to be appealing, hence all the work on presentation in the pictures. The mailing is easier than a rolled item, which costs more to ship and doesn’t give customers a good look at the fabrics.

This looks better in person when displaying for a show – but not for online sales.

Much more ahead for us as we continue adding new items…let me know your thoughts and how you solved packaging problems.

A pretty unproductive week this week in terms of blogging, what with fighting a mild case of the flu. I’m even behind seeing what’s going on the net. But I did find some cool ones…..

50 Places You Can’t Reach Without Climbing – and wow, are these ever gorgeous!!

Again, some helpful hints from 365 Project: 5 Classic Composition Tips To Improve Your Photography.

From Dumb Little Man comes 5 Ways to Overcome Mental Blocks.…timely for me this week! Some good stuff here!

Very disturbing, but necessary to watch – the perils – and death – in plastic……

A collection of video on the meteorite from Russia:

You may have already seen this video of an iceberg calving – this is the LARGEST ever. Nature is absolutely amazing!!

Guess the Spot – how well do you know landmarks? A fun quiz.

Love this commercial for the Lottery, and I am such a dog lover!

Love this next – you have to be very good to make yourself look very bad! An ode to gymnastics……

And finally – this has been making the rounds for a while, but the message is a good one.

Well, over the last two weeks, as I have been getting more heavily into marketing, I’;ve discovered a BUNCH of great new blogs. So here goes:

More Design Please – great ideas! I’m seeing some great ideas – would love to do some serious purchasing…..Love these lasercut lamps!

 Another blog called Observatory Mansions – an ongoing discovery of all that is visual yet more than just visual (from the site) –

Ball Droppings – hours of fun, and be sure to have the sound on! The picture does not do it justice!

Mood music at your fingertips….StereoMood – just a small piece of moods!

From StumbleUpon I found this interesting article  Amazingly Creative Drawing vs. Photography. My art taecher friends tell me this is similar to a drawing exercise they have students do in finishing a photography. In a class with Lyric Kinard, we needed to extend the color on a postcard – very interesting attention to details!

Loads of tutorials and DIY projects at Craft Gossip:

Another cool DIY blog – 20 Awesome Do It Yourself Projects

25 Spectacular Movies You Probably Haven’t Seen – I think I’ve seen two on this list, but the Netflix queue is going to be filling up. Interesting plots……The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is one I’ve seen – A.MA.ZING. movie…..

Some pretty amazing paper sculpture – here’s Calvin’s Behance site.

While Banned Books Week has ended, I’m getting caught up with Letters of Note, and this is a marvelous letter by Pat Conroy concerning the banning of two of his books. Well stated, quite eloquent. If you don’t like a book, then don’t read it, but stay away from telling me what I can read myself.

Have a great week – let me know cool stuff that you find on line!

I LOVE LOVE LOVE surfing the web – so many resources, and just down-right interesting things to see!

Some more amazing eye candy from Joan Leschenault and the Perth quilt show in West Australia. I really like look at FMQ designs in quilts.

Want some things and don’t know how to make them happen? Maria Brophy shares this inspiring look at positivity. Hawaii, here we come!

Look at the studies in triangles from this week’s JPG Magazine.

Light Traingle Swimmers by Claire Smith

From The Best Article Every Day comes a really creative use of stock images to tell a story. Every single frame is different, and yet there is a cohesive story. Very clever!

For you origami afficianados, here’s a post from origamijoel with the work of another origami artist, Eric Joisel. Isn’t it amazing what can be done with a single sheet of paper?

There is a really fascinating documentary called “Between the Folds” that is well worth the watch.

40 Famous Photographs – some you’ll recognize, some will be new, but they all tell a  story.

 Another entry from 365 Magazine – love the lines on this one!

Under the Westside Highway by Michael Elliot

I tried to find credit for this next, “The Beauty of the Night,” but can’t find anything through Google. This is a gorgeous set of photographs in a powerpoint. When you click the black and white, it slowly turns to color. Gorgeous!

This is really cool – the Sydney Opera House as an art installation. Lighting the Sails by Urban Screen. Incredible idea! Take the time to view the video.

If you’re doing some form of artist trading cards – or would like to – here’s a free online publications that just might help you: ArtTrader Magazine. They look really interesting, and you can download past issues.

What did you find on the web this week?

Lots of catching up to do on blogs, having been gone for 5 days – some really interesting stuff this week.

From JPG Magazine, the best of the color red. Their photo challenges are not to be missed for the outstanding photography.

Hanging Bell - Qing Yang

From our friends the federal government comes a list of interesting blogs:

Picture This: Library of Congress Prints & Photos

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