Taking tutorial photos

Diane at the Soda Lime Times recently asked if I would like to do a tutorial on making these heart pendants to be published in the February issue of her popular digital magazine. She'd seen the Christmas ornaments I was making and thought they'd make nice pendants. Of course I was honored to be asked and gave an enthusiastic thumbs up.

But making something I felt was worthy of publication, then writing the tut and taking photos took me just a wee bit longer than I'd expected. I take photos for my tuts myself, which means camera in one hand and hot bead in the other. It also means I've gotta be quick. And the chances of bead fail are high because the poor thing is spending a lot of time out of the flame, and the sludge is cooling and being heated way too often.

I was not pleased with the first heart I made- the lobes were not pronounced enough, just not really what I wanted to show off. So I gave it another go and was quite pleased with the resulting bead. I began work on writing the instructions up and sent the photos for the headpin off to Diane so she could take a gander at how things were progressing. Unfortunately, the photos were blurry and couldn't be used. Why didn't I notice that? How annoying, not to mention embarrassing!

So it was back to the drawing board. The Flow has a lot of great tips for writing tutorials and taking photos, so I took another look there. Diane suggested I try laying the bead down on a marver while taking photos. Was I shaking the camera or the bead or both? Who can tell? When I looked at the settings for some of those photos, I saw they were taken at crazy slow shutter speeds, which made me realize that my new studio space is very poorly lit. So I brought in all the light I could find, laid down my white paper for a nice uncluttered background and played with my camera settings until I got a reasonable shutter speed- between 1/60 and 1/125th of a second- much better! Then, when I was actually taking photos of all the steps, I leaned the mandrel against something to stabilize it and took several pics of each step. When the background was darker, I found I had to go down a step or two on the exposure compensation to keep the shutter speed faster.

Results? Good! The photos were no longer blurry and the tut was ready for publication! The February issue of the Soda Lime Times is out today- lots of lovely eye candy and som fun tuts too!

Focus on Life Week 46- Reflections

Oh my, it's been a long time since I've posted a photo. New place, new life, new work to be done- it all adds up. I wanted to be sure and tell y'all about a book I just read: Eight Girls Taking Pictures by Whitney Otto. I don't usually recommend books, but this one was wonderful and very inspirational- it's historical fiction with an emphasis on the lives of women throughout the 20th century.
On to this week's prompt- I love to look at things in mirrors. I'm having a hard time choosing from the photos I took last night- the three part mirror in my bathroom is so much fun to play with! I've always been intrigued by the idea of multiple mirror reflections. Here's a little something that explains a bit about it and shows some cool examples.

 I also like to put some of my beads on mirrors- like these marching hedgehogs. I know, I'm supposed to be reflecting on my life- instead I'm reflecting on mirrors! Check out the blog links at the bottom of the page to see what others are reflecting on.

Focus on Life Week 32, From Where I Stand

This week the prompt from Sally at focus on life was 'from where I stand' so, as you can imagine, Fats Domino singing 'I'm Walkin' was one of my theme songs. Had to just take this literally and show you some of the places my feet took me this week.

 OH, and I found some new shoes- cheap! And the question is- socks or no socks? I was informed that they looked wrong with the socks. Just old fashioned, I guess!

I'm sending you to Islandgirl's Insights to see where others are standing this week!

Focus on life week 26 ?????

 Well, this being week 26, we're just about to embark on the second half of the Focus on Life Challenge. Most every week, Sally's blog sends me out and about on a walk to see what I can find- that's one thing I love about this project - getting out of the house, thinking about something I wouldn't normally be thinking about on my weekly 'Sally Walk', camera in hand.

A couple of weeks ago I started noticing some of the little plants that grow up between the cracks in the sidewalk. Ever since I saw the book Wild Green Things in the City, I've been enchanted with these little wonders. Kind of make me think of my own life, forever pushing my way past this and that obstacle and (hopefully) coming out on top. 

When I went on my walk today, the first thing I saw was this lovely feather out on the sidewalk. Thought I'd photoshop it up a bit- I loved the week we all altered our photos- what fun that was. Something I really want to continue investigating.

Thanks Sally, for all the great ideas, and for getting me a little ways further outside my box. Looking forward to the next 26 weeks! Come see what everyone else is thinking about this week at Sally's blog!

Foodie- Focus on Life Week 22

“In France, cooking is a serious art form and a national sport.”
― Julia Child


Well, I don't have a lot to say about the Focus on Life prompt this week- foodie. I started this journey with the blackberries in my back yard, made my favorite tahini- oat cookies, took a little unplanned walk by a food pantry, found a foodie mural and even had a bit of pizza and pepperoncini.Want to see more fun food? Start at Sally's blog!

I don't have a real recipe for those cookies, but here's the list of ingredients. These cookies really remind me of halva. We used to make something very similar when I worked at a natural foods bakery. I always made these and ruggelah. You could tell who the baker of the day was by looking to see what was available! None of this- tahini-oat cookies on Mondays business, it was pretty well catch as catch can!  One day I will try these with 1/2 tahini and 1/2 almond butter. I can practically taste them already!

 Here's the list of ingredients for about 12-15 cookies: 

1/3 cup tahini 

1/2 cup honey, 

1 t. salt, 

1/2 cup finely chopped nuts or sunflower seeds

1 1/3 cups oats

Mix up the wet stuff, add the dry stuff.

Add an extra T. or so of tahini if it seems too dry.

Put on greased baking sheet and bake at 350 degrees (or a little less) until the bottom gets a little bit brown 

( I didn't pay attention to how long- 12-18 minutes????)

Let cool. Put in the freezer for 5 minutes if they're stuck to the pan and they should come right off. Eat!

Looking Up! Focus on Life Week 20

My backyard

Well it's time to look skyward! I really wanted to see a hot air balloon, or get a shot of one of the multitudes of helicopters that fly over my house, or maybe just some of those mammatus clouds we saw a couple of weeks ago. And then I thought perhaps there would be some animal shaped clouds flying over. I did see a lot of birds, for sure! We spend a lot of time looking down and around. Looking up was a bit of fun!

“Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.”
― Leonardo da Vinci

Ghost plane

A very vocal starling

A gingko tree- so lovely!

See what everyone else was looking up at here!

Abstract Photos- Focus on Life Week 18

'You like it, that's all, whether it's a landscape or abstract. You like it. It hits you. You don't have to read it. The work of art-sculpture or painting-forces your eye.'  Clement Greenberg 

 Sally's prompt for the focus on life challenge this week is Abstract! Woohoo! I had no clue when I read that word what I would be doing. Sally had some suggestions and told us about making a light trail in our photos. Fun stuff, so that is the first thing I tried. But then she suggested that we distort our photos for more abstract designs- I think I could play around in photoshop all day trying out different things!. So this first photo is a distorted light trail taken right off my front porch.

But my own epiphany came when I took my camera out on my weekly Focus on Life Walk- I took a LOT of pictures, and when I was almost home I stopped to shoot into the window of the local bike shop. Ummm... have you ever tried to shoot a picture through a window? Well, there is a little something called a reflection. The window is right on a busy street, so there were cars going by and folks walking by too. These pictures seem pretty abstract to me! Even though I know what these are photos of, I have a hard time figuring them out. Yes, it's been photoshopped...

The local hair salon was even cooler! 

Another abstract trick?  Simply laying a photo on its side can do wonders to make it all quite confusing! Start here for more abstract fun.

Taking Photos- New Backgrounds, New Ideas

Ever since my scanner broke a couple of years ago and I had to start learning to take  my online photos using a camera, I have struggled with what looks good. Generally I take a photo on a white background, and then photoshop it until it looks better. That takes a lot of finagling- I have to sharpen it (my photos always look a little blurry to me), cut it to the right size and shape for my online shop- I use 300 dpi, and cut it to 3x3 inches, though that doesn't work with everything, and then I have to lighten, brighten and adjust the color to make it look right- especially the stupid white background. It's really more energy than I want to put into each picture I take. The white background is a real bear, and black just doesn't seem to work at all for me. Maybe because I don't have any kind of official setup to use, like a light tent or proper lighting.

Oh, that's another thing- taking the photo itself- I use a rather high powered halogen lamp, lighten the exposure by a couple of clicks and shoot a closeup without a flash. My old garage-sale camera actually worked better as the flash wasn't so harsh, so I could actually use it. The flash on my present camera is covered with a little piece of paper as it washes everything out, no matter how far away it is. The scanner was really easier, and I might even go back to that if I could!

So get to the point already!!! Well, I have, by necessity, taken to using different backrounds with my photos, and I am kind of liking them. The autumn leaf background is cool- no messing with trying to get it just right- I can just concentrate on the item I am trying to feature- I like that a lot! And the newest map background, though I still often correct the 'level' to make it whiter, is kind of fun, and it is not very noticeable if it's not all bright white. And it has the advantage that I might just see a word I like and use it to name the piece. Woohoo- a twofer!

I'll be keeping my eyes peeled for more fun backgrounds in the future.