Although I was very happy with the way the giftwrap these pictures feature turned out, my image editing skills at the time were hampered—partially by missing tools, but mostly, let us be honest, by ignorance. But now I have uniformed transform, and a desire to show these earlier pieces to set up for one later this week:)

Three gifts wrapped in henna inspired brown paper; wire edged ribbon; raffia; bows; curling ribbon. Photographed 29nov2017. This image is cropped only.

The image above was me taking a rare opportunity to go with chiaroscuro with, I feel, reasonable success. However, it's not the most informative of photos, and this is where I ran into trouble, trying to get that one tall gift in the frame without an annoying corner missing the deck background.^[1]

Also 29nov17, but now shot in cloudy conditions. LumixDMC-LX100 1/1000s iso 800(!) f/2.6, ev -0.3

Besides fixing the background I'm just a bit better with adjusting the colour balance, and I'm continuing to play with that softlight mode as well. It should be noted that the henna designs for tall gift to the right are black dye, not actual henna paste.

Another view, with a slightly different composition. Though the colour is better, there's not, unfortunately, much I can do with the blown highlights. C'est la vie.

Hard to believe that it's been three years since I've done any serious henna, or dyeing, though the iconography on these gifts certainly appeared in many of the doodles I made over the summer; I'm pleased to be able finally feature these older pieces.

Unless otherwise noted, text, image and objects depicted therein copyright 1996--present sylvus tarn.