Tag Archives: colour

My Wife the Textile Artist.

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My wife Jane is a textile artist and goes by the name of “The Riverside Crafter”, she just loves anything to do with needle craft and especially patchwork, Applique and embroidery. She recently asked me to photograph some of her most recent work which is destined to become cushions – of course, I was more than happy to oblige and had good fun doing it.

I think that her work is rather good and in the spirit of sharing I am going to show you (we have given all of the works names!):-

This is Hector – a dog appliqued onto blue fabric.

This is Rosie.

This is Ermintrude – a cow appliqued onto brown felt and named after the cow from the ‘Magic Roundabout’.

This is an example of English Paper Piece – Jane is particularly proud of this one as she learned this art from her late grand mother.

Jane’s version of a hare staring up at the moon – dyed cloth appliqued onto denim layers.

Flora is an appliqued textile cow onto a felt background.

The cow compositions are loosely based on Scottish Highland Cattle; you can see the influences with the tartan and the large horns.

If you enjoyed seeing Jane’s work, pop along to her fledgling blog at:-

https://theriversidecrafter.wordpress.com/

 

You can make these artworks into things through my Fine Art America link under my title banner.

Rim-lit Bottle and Glass.

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There are many subjects that I want to tackle at some point and this is one of them:-

Wine bottle and glass in low light.
Low key photograph of a wine bottle and glass.
Wine glass and bottle in low light.
Ornate wine glass.

A rim-lit bottle and glass – but I wasn’t sure of the best way of achieving it. I was flicking through this book looking for inspiration (not necessarily looking to fulfil this ambition):-

Photos that sell Lee frost.

when I came across the answer, or at least one answer (page 176), I decided to get to work. Lee Frost recommends a large backlight with a strip of black material covering the middle; I used a bit of black card instead as my black material was too heavy but I think that I achieved a pleasing result – here is my set up:-

_DSC3416 small

I have blinds in my studio and so I pulled them all down. Lee describes using “a couple of bottles of decent full-bodied plonk (knowing the contents would have to be consumed afterwards)”, I cheated; I used blackcurrant squash, and a cheap one at that! I didn’t drink the squash afterwards – it only has to look the part right?

I did take a light reading but this was only a ball-park figure as the light meter will give me a mid-tone (18% grey for those who need more detail) but I knew that I was dealing with extremes of the spectrum and not mid ranges – I tried various exposures around me metered reading until I was happy. Aperture was set at f16 so that I had sufficient depth of field and adjusted the strength of the octibox and flash head to get my exposure. I then tried a selection of compositions – the ones that I have shown are the ones that I was happiest with.

Post processing consisted of fiddling with contrast, saturation and exposure in Lightroom – I like to selectively sharpen my images so that large swathes of one colour, in this case black, don’t end up generating digital noise. I also made sure that I had absolute black when appropriate, for the same reason. I output my files from Lightroom as TIFFS in case I want to edit further in Photoshop.

I decided to try then as monochome images too; again I was pleased with the results:-

Wine bottle and glass in low light – monochrome with a slight yellowed tone.
Low key photograph of a wine bottle and glass in high key monochrome.
Wine glass and bottle in low light – monochrome with cool blue tones.
Ornate wine glass – in monochrome.

I created monochrome images in Nik Silver Efex pro. I gave each a different treatment; one has a sepia effect, anther a cool blue tone whilst the other two are black and white.

It is not that easy to see the subtle changes in treatment here but they can be seen in greater detail in my My 500px Fine Art Gallery here (the colour versions are there too).

Eymet market.

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Eymet market. by paul2210
Eymet market., a photo by paul2210 on Flickr.

Sticking with the French theme. This photograph was made in Eymet; a village near Bergerac in the South-West of France. Eymet is a wonderful place and the market regularly features. Eymet is a mecca for ex-patriot Britains who flock to the south-west of France to retire or to start a second career. If you are ever in the area, check out the markets in Eymet for lots of colour and local atmosphere – as well as a bargain.

Natzwiller

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Natzwiller by paul2210
Natzwiller, a photo by paul2210 on Flickr.

I love France and have been to the North – Brittany, Normandy and Picardie, the south west – Aquitqaine Cotes de Duras near Bordeaux, the south-east – Provence and finally, the east – Alsace. This photograph was made in Alsace at a place called Natzwiller. The name sounds German and for a time, I think it was. Despite it’s obvious beauty, as illustrated by this photo, Natzwiller was the scene of the only Concentration camps on French soil – named Natzwiller – the nearest village but it is more accurately described as Le Struthof. The concentration camp is a few kilometres from this point – I found that hard to reconcile the contrast of the horrors of Le Struthof with this beautiful vision.