Photography

I’ve written up the rough draft of my WeaveZine article and am ready to start taking the photos that go with the article.  Which of course means another opportunity to play with a new craft: photography!

I don’t expect to become an expert photographer by any means – but I do have a digital SLR camera and bought a few books on photography after reading Daryl Lancaster’s excellent article in WeaveZine.  B.’s also into digital photography and bought a macro lens that fits on my camera body, which I will probably borrow for the samples.  I’ve created a lightbox using a cut-out cardboard box covered in muslin and will use a black velvet background when I start shooting tomorrow.

Here’s a photo of my setup:

As you can see, it’s a cardboard box with the sides cut away and replaced with muslin, with the black velvet backdrop hanging from the top of the box.  The piece to be photographed sits on the backdrop, and the tripod in the foreground will be used to hold the camera steady through the exposure.  I plan to spend part of tomorrow/Tuesday reading up on the technical details, and doing a lot of experimenting.  It probably isn’t really necessary to do all that just to get my WeaveZine article photographs, but I’ve wanted to learn to do this for awhile and this is as good an excuse as any.  Besides, I have a number of scarves and shawls that need better photography…

Meanwhile, I am juggling a few balls:

• migrating this blog to the new site – this has to be done by the time my WeaveZine article comes out, since I plan to link to the new site in my author bio, and the blog is a critical component of the site.  This means porting over about 1100 blog entries (I’ve been blogging for something like six years now!), which should be pretty easy, and also figuring out how to keep the blog separate from other entries in the site, which will NOT be easy.  So I have quite a bit of work to do on this.  So far all I’ve done is import all the blog content to my local copy of my new website – later this week I will take chisel in hand and start cautiously tapping at the blocks of code to make it do what I want.  I expect it to be a good solid week’s worth of work.
• finishing up the article for WeaveZine – once I have the photos taken I need to insert them and revise/polish the article, write author bio, and so on.  Deadline is Sep 30 so I do still have some time, but procrastination ain’t a good idea, so I better get on it!
• warping up for the next 12-14 yards of wedding-dress fabric.  I got the warp wound, beamed on, and about 25% threaded in the last day and a half; I’m hoping to get to weaving by Tuesday evening, even with these other distractions.  I estimate I’m about eight hours’ work away from beginning to weave.
• starting up again in mocking up the dress.  I’ve decided to work with someone different now – she doesn’t have as much design experience as Mily, but is substantially cheaper (important since I am currently unemployed) and can help teach me how to draft, which Mily wasn’t really able to.  So I’m meeting with her in about a week and a half to discuss the project and what she can help with and what she can’t.
• researching the company I’m interviewing at tomorrow!  I really hope this works out, the company sounds right, they look successful, and what they need is exactly what I enjoy doing professionally.  They’re also only three miles from home, easy biking distance.  So I hope it works out!