So the next piece I made (as I recall, and photographic evidence seems to support my chronology) after the pastel bead embroidery was this black, white, grey and cream piece which remains a favorite.
Which is probably why I kept re-shooting it, intending to get a post about it up. In fact, I ended up photographing it on 4 separate occasions, with 4 different cameras. N.b.: click on any image to see it full size —back when I downsized the images to 512 pixels wide myself with gimp, they looked pretty good; alas, one the prices I've paid for automation is a loss in quality.
nikon 8400 iso50, f7.8, 1/8sec shot 07oct2008. Embroidery measures roughly 3.5 inches in diameter, the largest bead (the star) is just over 25mm (1 inch).
MATERIALS: The piece includes snowflake, picasso, and woodland jasper; tree (dendritic) agate; hematite; blackonyx; vintage glass, czech pressed glass, artist made hollow beads —there's a pixie dust one centered on the hole of the big snowflake star—, bone, including bone die (as well as a glass one), sterling silver, and of course many seed beads. It's stitched onto white denim.
The first, oldest image, in which the wrinkle from the embroidery hoop still clearly shows, was carefully photographed with my nikon 8400. The picture is crisp and sharp.
Olympus 620, with the zuiko 50mm macro iso200, 1/20sec f7.1, shot 16may2012.
In 2012 I reshot the embroidery with my olympus. This should be by far the strongest image, but there's obviously some camera shake. Whoops!
Samsung galaxy S4, f2.2, iso 100, shot 09apr2014.
For a phone, this is really pretty decent: the black seed beads are nice and sharp, but there's some softening on the white side.
SonyRX100, iso125, 1/125, f4.5, shot 30apr2014.
Unlike the the studio images shot with the nikon or the oly, this was simply photographed outside near a window on a cloudy day, and is also nice and crisp, though not quite as good as the 8400. But it was a lot less work to set up and shoot. Also, my goodness, the background fabric is getting filthy...
The moral? Good technique trumps equipment—the Olympus should have been the strongest image, but obviously I was lazy, and so it's the worst. Also, if I'd figured out tagging sooner, I could have saved myself some work, as the first image I shot is the best, despite being 4–6 years older than the others.
Note: finally framed this, in september 2015.
Unless otherwise noted, text, image and objects depicted therein copyright 1996--present sylvus tarn.
