photography | Page 2

FO Friday: Kari’s Blanket

A little late for FO Friday, but here’s the finished baby blanket in all its glory:

I’m really, really happy with the way this turned out! Also, I’m delighted afresh with my new camera. These pictures were taken on the bed in my apartment, with limited light, but I don’t think you could ever tell.

I’m happy with the way the back looks post-blocking, too. It’s kind of a neat design in its own right:

The specs:

Pattern: My own. I’ll work on releasing this one (self-publish via Ravelry) as soon as the two Knit Picks sweaters are done. Hopefully within the next few weeks.

Yarn: Knit Picks Simply Cotton. The mama-to-be this is intended for wants organic clothes for baby, so this was perfect. Love the depth of the color, and it got even softer and smooshier with blocking.

Notes: I’m holding onto this FO until next month, when I’m throwing my bestie a baby shower. I can’t wait to give it to her…

This may be a contender for best picture I've ever taken.

My recent SEX

Er, Stash Enhancement eXpedition, that is, he he (always liked that acronym).

I was staying in Mountain View, CA for a few days, so after a quick Ravelry search, I set out to visit the most interesting-looking yarn store in the area: Green Planet Yarn! They’re in this fabulous building:

Picture shamelessly stolen from their website, as I forgot my camera…

They have a great selection, laid out in a very appealing way. My only quibble was that they hardly had any Madelinetosh, but the nice lady at the front desk told me they were expecting a big shipment in a few days.

I ended up buying a sweater’s-worth of scrumptious yarn, Stonehedge Fiber Mill Shepherd’s Wool (Rav link) in Plum. It’s for a new design that’s been simmering in my head for a while and is bursting to get out!

Plummy goodness

And can I just say how happy I am to have a camera that can take pictures AT NIGHT? I have a homemade lightbox, but my old point-and-shoot couldn’t handle night pictures anyway. It makes me happy :-)

The camera did have a little trouble with my other purchase, two skeins of Malabrigo Silky Merino (Rav link) in Ravelry Red (appropriate, no?), but I’ve heard red yarns are notoriously tricky to photograph during the daytime, much less at night.

It's a little redder than this in person.

All in all, it was a very satisfying trip :-)

TILT: New Camera!

Things I love today: pictures taken with my brand-spankin-new DSLR camera!

Malabrigo Rios in Indecita

I sold off some yarn I wasn’t going to use, and hubby and I dug deep for the rest of the $. I am SO IN LOVE with this camera. We went for a walk in our neighborhood yesterday, and I literally stopped every ten seconds to take a new picture. I am now officially the most annoying person to take a walk with ever.

The camera body is a Canon Rebel T3. We could have spent $100-$200 more to get the version that’s a little newer–but the major difference seemed to be the number of megapixels, and for my purposes, 12.1 is quite enough, thank you very much.

Malabrigo Twist in Grapes

The 18-55mm lens that came with the camera is amazing, much better than I thought it was going to be, actually. We also ordered a 50mm f/1.8 lens, which is what I used to take these yarn pictures. It does an amazing short depth of field, as you can see:

Madelinetosh Tosh Vintage in Betty Draper's Blues

Tosh Vintage in Betty Draper's Blues and Antler

Madelinetosh TML in Citrus

Okay, I may have gone a little nuts with the yarn photography…

We’re going to take the camera out to the beach on Thursday and do a photoshoot for a few of my new designs. I can’t wait to see what they look like!

TILT: Photoshop Actions!

Thing I Love Today: Downloadable Photoshop Actions!

How did I not even know this tool existed? You can download (free, mostly!) sequences of layers and filters that automatically apply themselves to photos… and they come out AWESOME. I can do basic stuff in Photoshop (lighten, darken, blur backgrounds, change saturation, that kind of thing), but these tricks are way beyond me. Being able to drastically alter the mood of a photo by clicking one button is huge.

I’ve been messing with the photos of my new sweater (see last post for details on the sweater). Here are some examples, using my favorite set of actions so far, the Timecapsule Set by Nelly Nero (I found the download here):

Original photo

with Warm Up action

with Summer of '69 action

with City Chic action – I have never looked cooler in my life

Of course, I immediately want to go through my entire photo collection and futz with every one, haha. Such is the danger of learning new Photoshop tricks. But I think the challenge will be to keep the effects subtle. The timing on figuring this out is really good, though… I will be releasing a new hat and mitten set in about a week that has a very vintage-y feel, so some of the actions are going to work really well for those photos!

Stay tuned…

I’ll tell you what I want, what I really really want…

(And yes, I’m perfectly aware that title dates me.)

I’ve decided I really want a digital SLR camera. I’ve been doing all my pattern and project photography with a fairly nice Sony point-and-shoot. It has very limited manual settings, though, so I have to be super-careful about lighting.

Bright, sunny days are nice and all, but when you have them 99% of the time, photography can be a nightmare. I’ve taken a bunch of my pattern pictures at the beach (as you might notice), because it’s one of the only places in the greater LA area that usually has cloud cover.

Why am I so happy in this picture? Because it's the first time I had seen clouds in three months.

Another issue is that contrary to popular opinion, there are places in LA that are far from the beach. I happen to live in one of them. It takes about forty-five minutes to get there when there’s no traffic (which is never). If I have three or four samples to photograph, the trip is worth it, but otherwise it’s a giant pain in the behind.

Over Christmas, I ~~stupidly~~ intelligently decided to try out my mother-in-law’s Canon Rebel T3.

I am deeply, madly in love with this camera. Using just the kit lens, I wandered around their house and yard taking pictures of everything, and THEY ALL CAME OUT GREAT.

Proof I’m not lying:

Are these not the tastiest-looking jellybeans you’ve ever seen?

This next picture is, I think, the best one I’ve ever taken. And it’s of CILANTRO.

Can you imagine what this camera could do with, say, a Madelinetosh sweater?

So the bottom line is, I want a DSLR. Desperately. But it’s not in the budget right now, so I’ll have to be content with my ~~POS~~ P&S until I make enough money by selling my designs to purchase one.

And if anyone has recommendations for entry-level DSLRs or places to buy them, I’d love to hear about it!