Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Photographing fabrics.........
I took advantage of the coupon sale at Batiks Plus a couple weeks ago. These 3 fabrics look fabulous together. However when I tried to photograph them to show you, I can't get true color. The honeysuckle is truer color in this picture. This one was taken under the daylight fluorescent bulbs in my studio.

The violets are truer in this second picture. This one was taken under a lamp with a regular light bulb.
This is why you don't really see the true beauty of a lot of quilts in pictures. Purples photograph as blues a lot of the time.



My class went well yesterday and I had my camera with me but I totally forgot to take pictures. I guess I need to get it out and have it sitting on the table to remind me.

Laura, you asked me a question in the comments yesterday but you are a no reply comment blogger. If you enable your email in Edit Profile I would be able to email you back.

14 comments:

Vicki W said...

That's why I always use a gray card or a larg peice of medium gray cotton fabric as a background. I crop it out later but the camera wants something in the photo to be gray so I try to give it the gray and I find that I get much truer colors.

Penny said...

I am glad it is not only me who has trouble taking picutres and to have the lighting so that the colours come through accurately. Thanks Vicki, I never knew that about the grey. I will definitely try that.
I love your batiks. It is fun to have a treat every once in awhile.

Nina Marie said...

I photograph my quilts (if possible) outside on a cloudy day - and yessss I've even done this in the middle of a snowy Lake Erie winter. That said - I wonder if you used "true light" or natural light bulbs if it would work better.

Quiltdivajulie said...

I, too, prefer to take my quilts outside for photo shoots; but when DH set up our light poles for indoor (controlled) photo shoots of his wood turnings (and my quilts), we used the information from this outstanding website:

http://www.hollyknott.com/stq/lighting.htm

Those trumpet light bulbs make a LOT of difference!

KateKwiltz said...

I hate incandescent lighting, it's the bane of my photography existence. However, I LOVE your batiks -- I have a pile similar to the second grouping just waiting for its turn on the to-do list. I'm anxious to see what you do with them!

Jean said...

Interesting tip about the grey, I will try it too, as my pics never turn out how I want them to.

I love your batiks, you were probably running out since you have been using so many lately, right? (remember I have seen pix of your stacks...lol)

Anonymous said...

You are so right about the photos of fabric - so tricky!

I love, love, love your crooked cobblestones quilt on the right side of your page! Do you have a pattern for it, or additional photos in your blog archives?

simplygeometric@hotmail.com

Cathi said...

I've learned that I have to use DH's camera to take pictures of fabrics or blocks that have a purple fabric in them -- otherwise the purples turn out blue. I did a bit of research and learned that it has something to do with the chips in the cameras.
Those batiks looks fabulous -- I love the bottom one -- what a great "neutral"!

Kerri Murphy said...

I love you quilts, colors and style. You have totally inspired me and I have started experimenting with "sane" quilting. Thanks for all your generosity with your blog. I look at it everyday.

Kerri Murphy
http://crazystitcher.blogspot.com/

Beena said...

I have quilts with shades of violet that have photographed on the bluer side. One quilt in particular, I remember, I brought into Photoshop to correct the problem for a pattern cover. When you are dealing with print work, the situation becomes even more delicate as to how an individual printing device interprets the colors. Or what colors are within printing range, without being "out of gamut".
When you are dealing with web work, even if you tweak these color problems until the cows come home, if a person's monitor isn't correctly calibrated, they will never get the accurate sense of the colors no matter what you did on your end.

So it really IS true that a photo may not do a quilt justice.

Lynda said...

And I thought it was my camera's fault! Really interesting to see the difference between the two photos.

Anonymous said...

I, too, know how hard it is to get true color in photos. I loved seeing this post, it was interesting to see the difference in how they photographed in different lighting scenarios! Above all, I just enjoyed the lovely batiks! They never fail, do they??? I started out liking traditional fabrics, then after quilting many of Quiltdivajulie's quilts, I fell in love with batiks! I have yet to see one batik that did nothing for me, I DO gravitate to the brights, but they all are fab!

Wanda said...

Glad your class was good! And very nice fabric!

karen said...

Interesting! I was having that problem with the purples reading as blue last week at the Vermont Quilt Festival. Drove me nuts!