I've finally gotten to the place where I feel like I might not die if strangers see the results of my latest artistic outlet slash obsession. Simple then, next up take pictures, get 'em out there.....done and done. After painstakingly getting to the place where I felt that my ceramics were worthy of the public eye, photographing it then triggered yet one more wall. Let me just foreshadow this whole post by saying that I never seem to make anything easy on myself. When I find it hard to muster the strength to do something my favorite is to take any obstacle and turn it into a 40 ft wall. There would now be no way to show my art because I've never been successful at photographing it. I've photographed plenty of it over the years but it has been with awkward, unprofessional looking backdrops and bad lighting placed in all the wrong spots, not something even close to what I see out there in art land. I could get into all of the deep psychological intricacies of why I let this photography conundrum go on for years but it pretty much seemed like a hidden excuse not to share my art. Although it sounds like it may be heading in that direction, this is not intended to be a "what's wrong with Emily" post. It's actually an Emily breakthrough slash sort of mini-tutorial post.
I looked through my easily accessible photos to try to find one the dreadful photoshoots of my past artworks so we could all have a good laugh but I think they all went into that cute little trash can on my desktop almost immediately after being taken. The photo below is one I tried last night. Not the worst, definite improvement, but certainly not art world worthy.
(please forgive the ginormous photos, that is next on my list to figure out)
Then the big epiphany occurred! Maybe I could let myself look up information on the interwebs and teach myself how to take better shots??? This unfortunately is not a path I normally revert to, so where it came from must've been some divine intervention. Somewhere in my sick head I seem to think that if I have to seek out help with something it somehow deems me incompetent. (oh boy, maybe this is turning into a "what's wrong with Emily" post after all) I know, I know, I of all people don't even get it, but I seem to be programmed that way. Needless to say, apparently there are quite a few, like twenty thousand trillion, people on-line that want to give free, understandable advice on how to take the perfect shot of a ceramic vessel.
So I took the huge plunge, climbed the 40 ft wall and read a 5 minute tutorial on how to improve ceramic photography. Turns out that the two tiny tips that I was able to re-produce already made a world of difference.
I switched my lighting to being a small goose neck lamp directly over my vessel and used what they call a sweep. Yes, Im sure everyone else on the planet already knows what a sweep is and uses one when photographing their amazing art and everything else, but I was very elated to finally jump on the sweep train. (and for that one other person who may not know what one is, please see below)
This is likely the most ghetto recreation of a sweep that you will see but it totally worked regardless. From what I've gathered it should be a neutral colored seamless backdrop that can be manipulated into a sweeping curve from the top of your background to the front of your foreground. In my case....a raggedy old piece of grey paper foraged out of my crafting hoard. Notice the quality taping job....see nothing really matters, as long as you have the light and the sweep.
I'm really hoping that maybe, just maybe, there is one other person in this world that will find this post and never having heard about the sweep get as excited as I am.
I suppose another one of my holdups was that I thought all of the cool effects of fancy art photography were done by professional photographers with fancy equipment and fancy photshoppy software and therefore since I neither was nor had, I was out of luck. While they still have miles on me, I am pretty pleased with my first step results in this area.
Here are a few more shots with my new "set up". The first one is a better overview of how ghetto my set up really is :) And if you make it all the way through, the last one is what can happen when you try to take too many pics.....
I'm thinking this is a pretty good result so far, considering....
Just one of the many curiosities from around my home.
I collect cute miniature copper vessels
The woodsplitter that splits no wood. I just love weighty metal objects and the paint was so lovely I couldn't say no. It sits on top of my fabric cabinet.
One of my favorite treasures, a Best Foods mayonnaise jar with about an inch and a half of Mt St Helens Ash. I picked this up at an estate sale; not worth a dime...just cool.
A dilapidated old wind up cat my sweetheart brought me home from the flea market last Sunday.
A wonderful welded spider made by a local artisan. Forgive me for not remembering his name. His work is A+.
I love this little guy....
If you've made it this far...thanks for looking. After all, as my kitty likes to say....it's always best to investigate everything thoroughly. (cat for scale)
