Looking for some advice

[Gary]

Please look at the pictures I posted in the gallary
Image1
Image 2

I shaped the bowl so that it followed the shape of the original burl. It's 11.5 inches in diameter; sanded to 600 grit, applied 4 coats of deft lacquer then burnished the surface with some of the wood shavings from the turning.

The bowl looks quit nice sitting on the kitchen table, but it really looks cruddy in the picture.

It was photographed with a Canon 4.0 mega pixel camera. The picture was taken outdoors, in moderate shade, no flash.

 

[john lucas]

Gary Shooting outdoors is usually OK but there can be problems with harsh highlights and sometimes harsh shadows if you shoot in bright sunlight. If you shoot in open shade you can elimate those problems but you will have color proplems. If it's the open shade from the house the color will go blue if it's open shade under a tree the color will go green.
Your camera may have a white balance setting for cloudy day or open shade such as the North side of the house. It probably doesn't have a setting for the green under a tree but try the auto setting and see.
The main problem seems to be focus and/or depth of field. On the first photo it appears to be out of focus or possibly very slight camera shake. Shift the camera around and see if you can get better focus. If it has manual focus use that. If you have a tripod use that to steady the camera and that will help reduce camera shake.
The second photo appears to be an extremely shallow depth of field. If you can't select the f stop to give you more depth of field try raising the ISO setting. This will often give a higher f stop.
Last but not least. The blue background is reflecting onto the wood changing the overall color. If you use a neutral background the wood will look warmer and more natural.

 

[DeanGThomas]

John's right, Gary. Neutral backgrounds are the way to go if you're hoping for pictures that are not biased by reflected light. Green trees reflect green into your piece. The one piece that seemed to photograph really well was the mulberry or osage orange piece.

Also note that some cameras see things differently than others. ALL cameras see things differently than the human eye. That is the curse of color publications everywhere.

In the old days when film was used, you chose your film by your subjects. Kodak had two primary products for professional shooters. One was red heavy, the other leaned toward blues. Some of the Asian films leaned toward yellows. I don't remember what Agfa's bent was, but I know it had one!

Part of that had to do with flesh tones, which is the most important thing, after all. Reproducing a good flesh tone will fool the eye into accepting everything else.

If you're going to do a lot of shooting, you might want to set up a little photo booth where you have a nice neutral "floor" and neutral, matte-finished walls so your flash can bounce around to its heart's content and not bias your pieces. We're in the process of designing one and building it for our chapter. "The better to shoot you better, my dear..."

You might want to invest in what's called an 18% gray card. You can shoot that and make adjustments in your pictures to ensure that the card matches the original. Then make the same adjustments in your actual pictures to get as good a match as practical from the shots. Seems like a long way around, though. The little Canon SureShots seem to do as good a job as any for a pretty small price and small package. Will probably be my next camera.

FWIW, YMMV.

 

[Bill Boehme]

It appears that you used a photo editing program (like Photoshop) to extract the bowl from its background and then put a solid blue background layer in the picture. That is a major part of the problem -- too much photo editing. Here is what I think that you can do to improve the picture:

1. Composition -- neither looking straight down into the top of the bowl or straight into the bottom are "normal" ways of viewing the bowl. That sort of view kills depth perception and I wouldn't have known what I was looking at if you had not stated that it was a bowl. Set the bowl right-side-up and hold the camera level.
2. Color -- the day-glo blue background grabs all of the viewer's attention and one hardly even notices the bowl sitting there. Pick a neutral gray background or a darker complementary color -- and make certain that the background color is flat -- avoid glossy or satiny backgrounds.
3. Setting -- either a colored background or a very simple uncluttered "natural" setting.
4. Lighting -- never use "on-camera" flash. It will result in a sharp thin shadow on one edge of the picture. Instead, use "natural" outdoor lighting, but not direct sunlight. If you have photofloods and diffusers, that is wonderful, but for the rest of us, a removable flash with bounce card is adequate. Look at shadows -- you need them -- they give depth perception ands sets the mood of the picture. Take a light reading up close, set it, and then back off to the normal shooting distance.
5. Don't use JPEG compression to excess when reducing file size or it will ruin the picture quality and sharpness. Instead, crop the image and resize using bicubic resampling.
6. Use good lighting color temperature and brightness in order to avoid the need for correcting the image in software, which will degrade the image quality.

Bill

 

[Gary]

Thank you all.
all hit the nail failure square (almost on the head)

The camera is a canon sure-shot 520

the picture was taken on my deck under an awning giving a fair amount of shade; no direct sunlight, no flash.

Bill hit the nail squarely on the head; the photo's were edited; I selected the bowl and cut it from the original photo and pasted it into a 'new' file. then created a blue layer and put the bowl on top of the layer -- this got rid of the 'local' background.

attached is one of the photo's "au'naturl"

 

[Jim Bremer]

Three steps to improvement

1. Your images are a little out of focus.

2. While the bright blue background contrasts the piece, a more subtle, earthier blue would compliment the natural beauty in the wood. The background would work better if it had a gradation. Darker at the top, lighter at the base. That will give it depth.

3. Bad cropping. Leave a little space around the piece.

Keep working at it. It make all the difference when showing your work in this format.

 

[Hugh]

Gary,
Awhile back - 6 months to a year - someone on this forum gave some info about a gray to black vinyl background for taking pictures. I believe the cost was $30. I purchased one and found it great for taking pictures of my bowls. I got better results with it than I did with a plain gray background. You may want to search the forum and try to find the site. If you can not locate it - let me know and I will look up where I bought it. The related web site had all kinds of stuff for background material.
Hugh

 

[DeanGThomas]

AHA, Photoshopping, eh?

Couple of things that will help you a LOT in PS.]

First one is the SHARPEN filter. JPGs and most digitals need some help in this area. I find that you can sometimes do the sharpen filter twice on each picture without causing problems. Also be sure that you keep the resolution high enough.

Second trick is the adjustment found by doing a CTRL-M. Change just the midtone by about 10-15% and you'll likely see a huge difference in your pix. I took your pic, sharpened a part of it twice, changed the midtone by 10%. See if you like the difference.

Think that might help??

 

[Bill Boehme]

Dean,
Your bucket must have a hole in it -- the pictures were gone -- leaked out. I also did some playing with one of the pictures and tried the sharp fillter in order to improve the sharpness of the rim of the bowl, but it is easy to overuse the sharp filter and result in unnatural looking graininess in the picture -- it is best to find the minimum amount of sharpening to give good results and then back off by about 25%. Instead, I used the clone tool to sharpen the edges and then adjusted the gamma to enhance the contrast. The color balance was a bit off, but without a reference, I just warmed it up a bit. Next, I put in a neutral gray background, added a bit of shadow to give some depth perception and then did some color dodging on the bowl to further improve depth perception. Finally, I reduced the glare a bit by again using the clone tool.

The final result probably doesn't resemble the actual bowl very much anymore, but it illustrates the point of lighting and background. One final thing is that a bowl should always be sitting upright and not standing on edge like a platter.

Bill

 

[john lucas]

You can get the faded backgrounds from www.porters.com. They scratch really easily so be careful as you use them. They do look nice.
I like to change images from jpeg to tiff to work on them. Tiff doesn't compress the files as you work on them. Then I change them back to JPEG before I size them for the web. My school camera is high enough in resolution that I don't have to do that. There's plenty of megapixels to waste.
I have plans for a photo booth that uses cheap quartz lights for the lighting. This way you can shoot inside but it does take a fair amount of space. If anyone wants a copy e-mail me at johnclucas@charter.net

 

[DeanGThomas]

Hole in Bucket repaired

Ah, technology and different variations on PHP forums. Everyone's got a new way to do things... Sigh.

We need to hear from Gary. The idea is to represent the focal point of the pictures--the turned object--well. I took my cue from the blue terry cloth towel. It was not far off color. To warm that up would have played havoc with it.

Gary, buddy, where in NE Ohio are you and what do you think of our attempts to represent your bowl sight unseen???

 

[John Nicholas]

First one is the SHARPEN filter.

Better than the "Sharpen" filter is the "Unsharp Mask" filter. Growing up I learned developing pictures from my father with his 4x5 Speed Graphic and lots of patience. We use a mask to gain sharpness. "Unsharp Mask" is based on this process.

John

 

[Gary]

Gary, buddy, where in NE Ohio are you and what do you think of our attempts to represent your bowl sight unseen???

I appreciate everyones efforrt and the time they spent trying to help. Much food for thought has been given. The image editor I am using is the 'GIMP'; unfortnately I do not understand much about it. Old age is getting the best of my memory and the ability to learn new things. I spent the afternoon with "grokking the gimp" (user manual for the software); a lot of what was read here is discussed in the Gimp Manual-- unfortunately from reading it to doing it, my memory failes. I'm going to have to print that manual and "do it while I read it.

Where in NE Ohio --- Madison Village
about 4 or 5 miles south of lake Erie
and 35 - 40 miles west of
Pennsylvania