Luna's Baublebilities

Today is so full of stuff to do, I have no idea how I will get it all done. Lately, it is becoming difficult to avoid despair and despondency when I look about me and see just how much I have to do. It is truly amazing.



But this morning, I had a major accomplishment. I processed 75 photos - ready for posting in my shops - in less than 90 minutes! I love it when I get all the settings right and the white balance adjusted properly on my camera. It saves me so much adjustment time at the computer. Sometimes I think I should buy a cheapo digital camera to use around the house and ONLY use my Dimage in the studio so that I never have to fuss with the settings.

Last night I shot new photos for some of my old earrings and got some of my new beads ready to post. They are truly gorgeous! The last time I got a new box of beads, I went up to my studio to put them away and take photos of them and I realized that I felt happy in a way that I haven't felt since childhood. My imagination was on overdrive creating new ideas for adornment and my eyes and ears were enjoying the sparkle and tinkle of the beads. I love that my new shop allows me the luxury of buying just about any beads I wan and creating all kinds of other adornment related goodies. I play with the ones I need and sell the rest.


That blissful enjoyment of playing with my beads as I put them away led me to put together two mixes of beads. : Fantabulous Blues and The Fantabulous Warm Mix. they both include gorgeous Czech glass rounds and spacers with incredible finishes and cultured freshwater pearls in various shapes and colors. These mixes might just allow another bead addict to enjoy a dazzling assortment of beads without a staggering price tag.

The Fantabulous Blue Mix inspired me to start working on a choker made of a coiled rolled silk cord with various baubles sewn onto it. So far, it isn't really turning out the way I want it to so I may have to take everything apart and start over - but the basic design idea is that of a jewel encrusted rope. It should have lots of drape, be very sparkly and it shouldn't matter which side is up or down or against your neck. I think the problem I'm struggling with right now is the fact that I've put a few very large opalite beads on to dangle near the middle of the necklace. While they are very pretty, I think they are subverting the original concept. I'm not looking for a pendant with symetry, I'm looking for something much more organic. I'll post more photos as it comes along - the Thanksgiving madness should give me some time to be away from this computer and actually work on something. :)
Now I need to go wash some laundry, post more scarves in my store, wash the dishes, clean the living room and kitchen, put some bread in the machine, exercize, take a shower, order scarves for the Scarf Painting workshop next weekend, Pay the mortgage, direct Molly's homeschool efforts, fold laundry (so that it can sit in baskets being churned through twice a day for three weeks when I get another chance to re-fold everyone's laundry), vaccum the hearth, clean the study and find time to feed my family a couple more times today.

Can I just go back to bed?

Big ones Small ones and Some as Big as your head!
















This potato made a really yummy soup.

It came from our garden - the biggest, lumpiest, bumpiest potato I've ever seen!












I got new beads today - including some beautiful pearls!












Photos for scarves are processed and ready to appear on Etsy Monday. I'm amazed at how difficult it is to get good photos of these satin and velvet scarves. Just trust me when I say that they are a thousand times more wonderful in person. ;)

So - last week was photo day at school for Maxx. I really didn't want to get his photo taken this time around because he hasn't been eating well & has grown another 2 or 3 inches recently plus he cut his own hair a while ago and we had to completely shave his head to finish the job. What with being extra skinny and having almost no hair, he looks like a small prisoner in a concentration camp. Not an image I want to send around to family and friends!

So I thought, "Well, I'll just order the smallest package so I can get the class photo for his memory book." When Molly was small, you could order the small package for 10 to 15 bucks and get a 5x7, a couple of wallets and the class photo. And they had lovely backgrounds and were just very pretty photos, as you can see.

Their business practices always bugged me, though. I would order a small package that I could afford and they would send home a larger package including things like stickers, bookmarks, more large prints, etc... with a letter demanding that I either pay for those items or return them to the school. Since the kids open their packages on the bus and give away half the stickers to their friends before parents even get to see them, most families ended up having to pay through the nose for the extra stuff sent by the photo company. If parents sent stuff back to the school instead of paying for it, the school was supposed to shred the extra prints.

Now, the same company is only offering mottled color backgrounds and if you want a bright color instead of a blah grey, you have to pay an extra 5 bucks. If you want the class photo, you have to pay an extra 10. If I had wanted to get a photo of Maxx that didn't look a prison mug shot and would include the class photo sheet, I would have had to pay 30 bucks.

Last year $30 wouldn't have been a big deal, but living on half salary makes it seem like a much larger chunk of change than before. I couldn't stomach the idea of taking that amount of money out of our grocery budget and giving it to a huge national conglomerate school photo scam job for a picture that would surely make my kid look like a starved convict.

As I looked at more of the package prices, I saw that some of the bigger packages were running over a hundred dollars. I am totally mystified! Why would anyone spend that kind of money on school pictures? Even if your kids looked super on photo day - even if they were using beautiful backgrounds? If I had hundreds of dollars to spend, I would go out and find a professional photographer who would take some time to get GREAT photos of my kids. Maybe the dog could even be in the photos. I would be so much happier about spending photography money in a way that supports a real live local artist and helps a local small business.

Last night I stayed a little late at the Arts Council to help out with Fright Night and I met the very photographer I would hire if I had hundreds of dollars to spend - and if Maxx had any of his beautiful hair right now!

Jodi Durow is new to St. Lawrence County and she does child, family and pregnancy photography in black and white. She was asking about promotional opportunities at the Arts Council for photographers and when I mentioned my frustration with school photos, she pulled out her beautiful business cards. I visited her website this morning and I am just so impressed with what I found there. Her photos are warm and personal. Her subjects look happy and comfortable with the camera. Her fees are appropriate for her services and to top it all off, she is a very engaging and peaceful person. In the few minutes that we were able to speak with each other in the crowd and craziness of Fright Night, I felt like I had met a new friend.








(Jodi's Business cards are from Moo and they are amazing! The photograph is saved here in very low resolution so that no one will want to steal this beautiful image but the actual card is beautiful. It is very sturdy, the image is crisp and it feels substantial and professional. That does it - I have to get some Moo cards!)

She is also an infant bereavement photographer. If you are unaware of what an infant bereavement photographer does, you can visit the NILMDTS website. This service is one of the most compassionate and one of the most most difficult things I can imagine doing for another family. As I was looking at the Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep website, I realized Jodi's calm manner and engaging approach makes her perfect for this service.

I can't afford Jodi's photos right now but I do appreciate the fact that we have a real live talented portrait artist right nearby. And I'll be saving this business card against the day when I do have some extra money to spend on portraits.

I have been trying to cut my computer time down to no more than 3 hours total a day. Partly to save my back and eyes and partly to increase my real-world productivity.

You know - stuff like washing dishes, feeding children and sweeping up gobs of shed dog fur. I can announce some success in this area. My children aren't looking quite so gaunt anymore, There are 5 clean cups in the cupboard and there is only enough dog hair on the living room floor to make two whole new puppies. Last week, there was enough for ten puppies.

The down side to this is that I haven't had as much time for my blog as I would like because I have been learning how to use GIMP - the GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a free image creation and manipulation software with a ton of powerful tools. I'm discovering that amazing things can be done with it. I used to covet my own full version of JASC's Paint Shop Pro, but GIMP has saved me from having to spend hundreds of dollars on software Yay!

The main reason I've been learning how to use it is so that I can produce my own banners, promotional "stickers" and avatars for my Etsy stores. But Molly, Bryan & I all want to learn to use it to enhance our hiking photos to make greeting cards and prints to enjoy at home. In the photo at the top of the post, taken by Molly Bryn on a recent hike at Harper's Falls, I added a black border and some lens flare to Molly's image of tree trunks and deepened some of the color and contrast. It was a lovely photo to begin with and now I think it is really nifty. I think this software will help me overcome some of the frustrations I have with digital cameras. I simply cannot get my digital camera to do the same things that my old, manual 35 mm used to do and I can't seem to find a replacement or reasonable repair for my old camera. I really miss it and lament the fact that I never had an opportunity to run my own darkroom. I must admit that playing with photo re-touching software is almost as much fun as playing in the darkroom. Fewer chemicals, too.




I've managed to make some preliminary banners - the images I used for my banners are from (GoblinsMarket) an Arthur Rackham art and fonts package that I got from the Scriptorium at Fontcraft and (LunasBaublebilities) fairytale images from Sur le Lune's website.




I'm sure my banners will get more interesting as I learn how to use the logo extension - in the meantime, let me know what you think of them!

I promised a fellow Etsy seller that I would produce a short tutorial on how I photograph earrings for my Etsy shop this weekend. I'm a little behind in getting it done but here it is. This technique probably won't work for other jewelry items and some may not like the results but I am pleased with them and have gotten positive responses from people who have seen them.

First, you need to set up a space for photography. You need lots of light but you don't want to take photos outside because direct sun can be too harsh, causing too much contrast and dazzle. A light colored and/or well lit background is also essential as any item will get lost in a dark background. I set up a large piece of white or cream paper or poster-board on my studio table with a white or pale colored paper laying in front of it. My studio has 3 large windows but I also I use my swing arm lamp and my reading lamp for additional light that is positionable. This is the basic set up.

I like to have a colored or patterned background in some of my photos. I feel like having an interesting background for the initial photo draws a viewer's eye a little better. The trick is to make sure that the background does not overpower the earrings. I have a selection of specialty papers in patterns and textures that I experiment with as I'm photographing things. I've also tried fabric as a background but have found that it makes for a confusing image - are you shopping for fabric or for earrings? Patterned paper is more 2 dimensional and thus less confusing.

I like to photograph my earrings so that I have some photos with them hanging and some with them lying flat. This allows me to demonstrate the dangling or draping qualities of the earrings and the complete earring, including the ear hook design.


For a dangle station, I use a paintbrush and two fancy glass objects to suspend the brush between. I hang the earrings from the paintbrush and start photographing with several different backgrounds. (Do this when your three year old is asleep. When I took these photos, my little guy was in the studio helping mommy and every time he touched the table, the earrings began to swing - that's why these photos are a little fuzzy!) I shine one directional light on the earrings and one on the background. This eliminates shadows on the background. I set my camera on macro or super macro and get right in close to the earrings. This allows for incredible detail in the earrings and causes the background to soften a bit.

I try several different backgrounds. As you can see, the first background I chose was a bad match for these chalcedony earrings. They disappear against it because the colors are too similar. Plus, I forgot to turn on the reading lamp to shine on the background so I have harsh shadows behind the dangles.


The second background is better.






The dark green is perfect.


If you want to get a shot of both earrings, one in sharp focus and the other a bit softer either in the background or foreground, you need to set the camera at super macro and get as close to the earrings as possible with the hanging rod (paintbrush) angling away from you so that one earring is closer to you than its mate. Place the focus box on the earring you want to have in focus and take your photo.

Then I move on to photos of the earrings lying flat. I use directional lights for these as well, so that I can control where the shadows lie and what part of the jewelry to illuminate. I take at least one photo of the earrings on white or cream colored paper so that potential buyers can examine the product without any distractions. Throwing a quarter in there helps people gain a visual understanding of the size. I also like to photograph each pair on a pretty background. We are so accustomed to seeing jewelry as it is presented on the front pages of jewelry making magazines that I think buyers expect to see this sort of setting - it establishes a sense of familiarity and comfort. This photo shows that the background that did not work for dangling the earrings actually looks nice as the pretty background for photographing the earrings lying flat.



Once the photos are all done, I upload them to my computer and make necessary correction to color, exposure and cropping. I always crop first as this eliminates unnecessary dark and bright areas that would affect brightness adjustments. I always photograph at the highest quality available on my camera and then adjust the file size down after adjustments are made so that the photos load faster for viewers.


I hope that this wordy post is useful for someone. I have read lots of articles about photographing jewelry and have felt so intimidated by the recommendations of professionals, including the expensive accessories that are recommended. Maybe someday I will be able to afford a professional camera man for my jewelry, but in the meantime, I'll just continue with trial and error to find what works for me.

A note about copycats - I hope other beginners are able to use this information to improve their photos. So many people help, support and encourage me as I grow as an artist that I enjoy having something to share with others. Having said that, I also hope that I won't see photos of other sellers' items on Etsy that look like my exact product , photographed exactly the same way as mine. That would be rude and I would report it. Instead, use your imaginations and make your work your own!