Slightly Larger Maple Bowl

Messages
687
Location
Harvey, Michigan
Just buffed out this bowl today and decided to try out my new photo tent and backdrop. Man – have I got a lot to learn! Believe it or not I took close to 50 photos and wasn’t real happy with any of them! Played with exposure settings, shutter speeds, apertures, etc and either my camera doesn’t understand that I just want a simple picture of a bowl or I really don’t know what I am doing!

Maple bowl, 10 ½” x 3 ½”. Most of the bowl is close to ¼” thick except for the rim which is slightly flared out to 3/8”. Finish is 3 coats of Antique Oil and then buffed.
Large Maple Bowl Front View.jpg Large Maple Bowl Top View.jpg
Any and all comments are appreciated – specially with regards to my photography!

Thanks for looking!
 
Steve,

The bowl is beautiful!!! I really love the grain and the colouring. The shape is pleasing to my eye.

Never mind the photography ... it's just a way to let others see how lovely your work is ... and the photography is ok anyway.

cheers eh?
 
Aw yeah!! Real nice photo! You're definitely on a good path.

There's just a hint of green in the background which may be caused by white balance (yellowing). What kind of camera do you have? Does it have a white balance control? And if so, is it set for fluorescent?

If it makes you feel better I still take a couple of dozen pics trying to get a decent one. Thank goodness for digital!

Lookin' good, Steve.
 
Thanks for the kind comments everyone!

Neal - have a Canon Powershot A70. Bought it 3 years ago cause you can adjust just about everything. I have the white balance set for daylight fluorescent and also adjusted the compensation up to a +1. Color adjusted (photoshop) to make the bowl look natural and it managed to tint the gray background. After 50 photos, with different settings, I just gave up and went with the 2 posted here. Biggest problem I have with this camera is the focus. Auto or manual - I cannot get a clean crisp focus. Will take some more experimenting to get colors correct and then also to play games with compressions. Always something!

Thanks for all your assist with determining what I needed for a photo tent setup! Got the tent yesterday and the backdrop today - so no real play time yet. Do have some finished hollow forms I can play with and hopefully have some better shots soon!
 
That Powershot ought to do the trick nicely but I know what you mean about the auto-focus. My A75 drives me mad.

Just one other thought... even though they are "daylight" bulbs you might get better color out of the plain "fluorescent" white balance setting. Worth a try.
 
Sweet-looking bowl, Steve. :thumb: I think the pics look good, too. Definitely an improvement. The lighting in the first pic is especially nice. I can feel your pain in regards to trying to find the sweet spot in the camera settings and Photoshop tweaking, but once you do, they'll come a bit easier.

To add to Neal's suggestions, when you resize the picture, I'd suggest setting the largest dimension at 800 pixels (so the forum software will let you upload it). The pics you uploaded were 425 and 355 pixels in width. If they were 800 pixels, we'd be able to see the piece much better. To get the picture that size to fit within the 107 KB forum limits, set the "Quality" slider in Photoshop (displayed when you save the file) to somewhere in the middle range. You may have to experiment a bit to find the quality setting that will reduce the file size to 107 KB or less, but it doesn't degrade the picture quality enough to be seen on the web (at least not to me).

All in all, great job. :clap:
 
Thanks everyone!

Neal - will spend some time today experimenting with photos and the first thing I'll mess with is the white balance. Funny how the color looks true when I take the picture only to find out once I download to computer that everything has taken on a blueish hue.

Vaughn - one of the areas that have always troubled me has been the compression settings. Want to be able to post larger photos but never thought about playing with the quality slider. Always something!

I do have a hollow form that I spent about an hour photographing last night. Wasn't happy with the results. Will put these suggestions to work and hopefully have something new to post later on in the day!
 
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