Improving Your Photos: Graduated ND Filters

What nobody ever tells you when you begin to post your beads or other crafts online is that you are going to have to become a photographer and a Photoshop or GIMP guru as well as a crafter, business person, marketer, and other related occupations. (No, I don't know how to do all that gracefully; if I did, this blog would be published regularly instead of in fits and starts.)

For the most part, my photography routine works well. Crop to size. Adjust color to as close to the bead as I can using levels. Resize to 1000 px square, and run unsharp mask. But sometimes that routine just doesn't work. Since I have been procrastinating doing some work for my day job, I have been searching out GIMP tutorials to share. One of the simplest is a lovely video tutorial on creating a graduated ND filter, which enriches the colors of your photo when they are washed out.

Here is my original picture. Not bad, but not great, either. Well, let me say that this isn't really the original--I've already cropped the picture to zoom in close. Otherwise, though, I haven't done anything to the image.

Next, I went ahead and changed the colors using the Color --> Levels command. This command lets you adjust the color levels using a histogram, and lets you fiddle with the colors until they more closely approximate the colors in your original beads.
I used to use the automatic white balance eyedropper, but now I just use the slider bars in the histogram (it opens up when you click Colors -->Levels) until the colors look natural.

Only some times they don't. I've found there's lots of ways to make the colors pop, but one of the simplest is to add an ND-Filter. The tutorial creator does a good job of explaining how to do this, so I will just add my results here. However, if you have trouble following the video, let me know and I can walk you through it.

The final result:

Try it and see if it helps your photos!
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Four Tails Lampwork at Amalgam Arts Studio Cruise

I'm absolutely chuffed, as my Australian friend says, to be part of the Second Annual Rail Arts District Studio Cruise. Together with Art of the Firebird, we're going to participate in the marketplace. This is a great opportunity--last year's Cruise attracted nearly 1000 people! This year's cruise is on 7 February 2009, 5-10 pm.

If you live in the Atlanta area, stop by! (Or tell a friend who lives in Atlanta.) There will be food and drink and music in plenty, but most of all wonderful eye candy. Even if your pocketbook is flat, come for the music and the demos and the conversation. There will be an open studio at Duckbill Studios--watch owner Tadashi Torii and his assistants blow glass. There will be performances and demos at Mudfire Gallery and Clayworks, art over at The Alcove, and numerous opportunities to hang out and talk to some seriously creative people. Don't know where the Rail Arts District in Atlanta is? Here is a map.

To whet your appetite, here's links to two videos from DuckBill Studios. The first is about the glassblower's way of toasting bagels. The second shows an open house from 2007. Alas, I cannot embed either, as embedding has been suppressed. You can still see the videos by following the links.

Happy Holidays!

Yes, I have committed the ultimate blog sin: not updating for nearly a month. Mea maxima culpa. It was that whole Real Life thing--you know, having a full-time job that has seasonal busy spots--combined with not planning ahead appropriately for those busy spots. I'm sorry!

What I am doing: spending Christmas at my sister's house and spending more time in her studio than she is--the poor kid is barking like a seal with a cough and sleeping every second she isn't at work.

Here are some of the experiments: I was playing around with Frogsong's wonderful tutorial. Frogsong does some lovely beads, and created a technique-based tutorial. Since I like to do structured organics, I was all over that one! So I have been playing with placement and color, as you can see. I like the layered look!

Here are some more.
Over the next couple of weeks I will be listing these on Etsy (as focals) or on 1000Markets (as pendants). Stop by either place and check them out!

Medical Alert Bracelets

One of the things I am committed to is making jewelry and lampwork that is useful, rather than being just One More thing cluttering up a home or office. Along those lines, I am creating a set of medical alert bracelet chains out of lampwork beads.
Medical alert bracelets can be real life-savers, but oh, boy, are those chains ugly! So here are some bracelet chains that are rather more interesting. You can find them at my ETSY shop, but also at my new shop at 1000 Markets. It's a wonderful site--come and visit it!

This Sunday

I will be at the Amalgam Arts Trunk Show, from 11-4. We're right around the corner from the Farmers' Market, so you can save gas--come shop with us and then go over to the Market! Art of the Firebird and Becky Sizemore will be there, too -- lots of beautiful beads!

Pass around the flyer, too!

At the Show II: Bead Release and Tiffany Glass

One of the neat things about doing a show is that you get to talk to many interesting vendors. The owners of Forward Motion Arts were there. They were handing out samples of a new bead release that they have formulated. Bead release is basically kiln wash, and kiln wash is basically kaolin and alumina hydrate. Some add graphite, or nepheline syenite, or diatomaceous earth. It's easy to mix, but one doesn't want to breathe the release in while reaming beads, which is why, unless I am very broke, I use commercial releases. My favorite so far has been Foster Fire Smooth 'n Tuff

The thing that is so exciting about that is that most bead releases have been formulated with the dry inter-mountain west in mind, or the humid but cool western coast. Here in the subtropical south, many bead releases crack, flake, or just won't hold. Most people I know who torch in this region use a mix of commercial products or make their own. However, Forward Motion Arts has a new release that was formulated and tested here in the humid South! I am looking forward to working with it. Like all good releases, it can be air or flame-dried (i.e. wafted in and out of the torch flame to speed drying).

The owner of Forward Motion Arts also had a special present for all of the flameworkers at the show: three rods of assorted glass. What maker? we asked him. "There's a story," he replied. (The following text is from FMA's EBAY auctions.) "I bought these rods a couple of years ago from a supplier who had found them hidden in a warehouse in France. They had been sitting in their warehouse since the 1950s. There [were] only limited quantities of it in each of the colors and all the colors except one sold out within a few months. ... I have looked up the history of it and have found that opalescent glass is very rare. ... In trying to find out who made it and where did it come from, here is what I have found." What he found was that the glass was not produced in the 1950s, but in the 20s and 30s ... in the Tiffany color palette, likely by a member of the Tiffany family.

And he GAVE US SOME! One of each rod color. MMMMMM.

Show Postmortem

By Friday, I was getting pretty worried! Here in Atlanta we've had a pretty severe gasoline crunch. It hasn't been as bad as the problems in Tennessee, but it hasn't been pretty, either. People have reported waiting in lines up to forty minutes long for gas, stalking fuel tankers, and even seeing owners of small stations carrying shotguns. It was a mess by anyone's standards, and I was afraid it would mean no patrons at the show.

While it wasn't the highest-grossing show ever, we actually did pretty decently, given the circumstances. Unusually for me and my partnership with Art of the Firebird, who makes awesome beads, I was the top seller of the pair of us. I think my style is just "fall like". I need to find a way to translate that into spring and winter shows, though! One of the things that helped all of us is that, while there were six lampwork booths at the show, not one of us had precisely the same style. Some people, like Dogmaw, had things that nobody else had--her shank buttons were wonderful!

And no matter if you make tonnes of money, make nothing, or something in between, it's always fun to do a bead show. We got to talk with other vendors that we see infrequently, and see what's out there, and just hang out with some very cool people. Dogmaw of Dogmaw Glass was next to us, and we had a fine time. What's not to like?

Here are some pictures of our booth. Note the new lights that Frostfire's husband made!

Hiatus Explained

My apologies for not being "around" virtually for a while. The last two weeks held both registration and the first week of classes, a new adopted dog, and a trunk show in Ellijay, GA.

Art of the Firebird and I went up to Ellijay on Saturday to do a trunk show at Beaded Couture, run by Lisa Barraca. It was a blast! AoF had hurt her arm, so she described lampworking and pointed out beads, and I did demonstrations and taught a couple of people the basic fundamentals. There was a lot of interest. The demos caught the eye of the husbands who came through, too.