New Earrings - two perspectives
Posted by Leah on Jun 23, 2008
I’m having fun with photography lately. I made some new earrings, and I think at this point I’ve spent more time photographing them than I did making them! That’s probably because I’m better at making jewelry than I am at photography, but still - I’ve taken a lot of shots of these, with various props, different angles and lighting, etc. These two are my favorites.
I’m calling the earrings “Random Knots” because the fine silver dangles were made by knotting wire in a very freeform way. They dangle from argentium silver circles that I fused and hammered. The circles and the earwires feel very precise and structured to me, while the knots are much more random. I like the contrast between those two elements - I think I’ll be playing with that contrast some more in my metalwork.
Image editing
Posted by Leah on Jun 19, 2008
This is what happens when I try to fix a photo that had bad lighting. Also why I try really hard to get good photos i the first place - when I try to fix bad photos, I end up with interesting effects, like this, but not necessarily great product photos.
I actually think this looks kind of cool, but you can’t tell that the circles are hammered, or that the earrings are silver…
Another idea for motivation
Posted by Leah on Feb 18, 2008
I learned this week that one way to get even less done than when tired out from pregnancy is to catch a cold on top of it. Yuck! I’m starting to feel better and catch up on housework, but it was a rough week. I haven’t felt creative at all - the only things I’ve “made” this week are tea and soup.
Today I started getting some energy back, and was looking at photos on flickr.com and came up with an idea for quick inspiration. Browse some of the groups on flickr. If you aren’t familiar with flickr, it’s a photo site where members can store and share their images, and there are groups where people contribute photos of just about anything. I found groups of photos of Death Valley, flowers, extreme macro photography, crafts, etc. There is even a group for pictures of fog and rain - something I’m very familiar with, living near San Francisco.
It was pretty cloudy this morning, so I grabbed my camera and took this picture:
I’m still getting used to my new camera, so this kind of mini creative activity is perfect - it only takes a few seconds to snap an image or two, and it gets me thinking creatively again. I plan on browsing more flickr groups to get ideas of things to photograph, just for fun, and to build a collection of images that I can use for jewelry inspiration.
New Camera
Posted by Leah on Jan 14, 2008
My old digital camera (a Sony Cybershot that I had for almost 4 years) broke, and since I’m running a business that operates partly online, I really needed to replace it quickly. I liked the old one a lot - it was easy to use, and took pretty good pictures of my jewelry, as well as my husband’s artwork, and was a great point-and-shoot for vacations, holidays, and pics of my pregnant belly over the last seven months.
Well - I replaced it with a Nikon D40, and I have to say, I never knew taking pictures could be this easy. It is a DSLR, so it has all kinds of manual controls that I could use if I knew more about photography, but what I love about it is that, set to automatic, and with the lens set to autofocus, it does a really good job on its own. I haven’t had time to really play with it and see what it can do, but here are a few jewelry pictures I shot over the weekend.
This one is a resin pendant I made a while ago. Resin can be tough to photograph, because it is so shiny there tends to be glare. For this shot, I just put the pendant on a background outside & snapped a few shots. I think it looks pretty good.
This is a close-up of an earring I made recently. I have always had trouble getting decent pictures of earrings for some reason, but I think this one isn’t bad. I think better lighting would have improved the shot, but it’s better than most of my previous attempts using the old camera.
I didn’t edit these at all, except to crop out the excess background. Oh yeah - both pieces are for sale in my etsy store.
Here’s a link to the camera on Amazon: Nikon D40 6.1MP Digital SLR Camera Kit with 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G ED II AF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor Lens
Make a Scene Photography
Posted by Leah on Jun 11, 2007
This beautiful box was on display at the South Bay Soiree. Anni of Make a Scene Photography mounts her photographs on wood boxes like the one shown here. I think they would make great jewelry boxes! She also makes small books, and of course sells photographic prints. I believe she’s available for event photography too.
I tried to get a good shot of her table, but she was by a window which made all the pictures look dark. I did get this shot that shows a little bit more of the variety in her photographic work though:
