photography

May 18, 2014 by Tien Chiu

Eureka!

After three years of fiddling, I have a design for Phoenix Rising that I am happy with. Behold!

second version of Phoenix Rising muslin, with sleeve

I’m very pleased with this muslin, though many details still need to be worked out. The dangling flames flutter beautifully in the breeze, the color gradation gives the sense of flame igniting, and the dark blue really “pops” the fiery colors. After years of fiddling with this and that, I have a design that really speaks to me, that I think is worthwhile. Hallelujah!

I am still on the fence about the sleeve (which would actually be shredded at the bottom, to continue the flame motif). Here is the sleeveless version:

muslin for Phoenix Rising, without sleeve

I like the idea of the sleeve because it gives a natural ending point to the piece, and balances the longer part of the skirt. The sleeveless version feels unbalanced to me, and also my eye gets “stuck” at the shoulder. The sleeve lets it flow down. It may not be the length in the photo – there are many twiddles yet to go – but I like the idea.

A second happiness, as you may have noticed, is that I have finally gotten the photo studio set up to the point where I can take pretty darned good photos. You would laugh if you saw how ridiculously compressed the photo studio is, but it works! Lieven helped me fine-tune it this afternoon, and showed me some Photoshop tricks. I wouldn’t call the resulting images professional grade yet, but the raw material is good enough to be publishable after some better Photoshop tweaking. After I find a publisher, I’ll worry about tweaking it properly.

What’s next after this muslin? Well, now I’m going to weave fabric samples. I have some ideas for making more interesting color-gradient cloth – echo weave is a distinct possibility, but there are others. I also want to try weaving with finer silk thread (120/2 or 140/2 silk as opposed to my usual 60/2) to see if I can produce the floaty fabric that I’m envisioning. And I want to weave samples of a crinkled blue-black cloth for use in the undergarment. (Sharon and I are envisioning the blue undergarment as a close-fitting pair of pants, to give the flames the most flutter.)

We will probably not do more muslins for a good couple of months, though. I’m working on losing weight – lost ten pounds so far and want to lose another thirty or forty pounds – which would play havoc with a closely-fitted garment. So the next few months will be about weaving fabric samples and yardage. I’m looking forward to finally doing something with all that fine-threads yarn I’ve been accumulating!

Other plans for the coming week include putting the fly shuttle attachments and the auto-advance mechanism onto Emmy. I’m missing one or two minor parts for the fly shuttle (which I purchased used), so will be ordering them from AVL tomorrow morning. The auto-advance should be a piece of cake, but since I’m halfway through adding the fly shuttle, I don’t want to mess with the loom until I have that completed. After that I’ll probably use the color study warp to test out/fine-tune the fly shuttle and auto advance. And then, I’ll work out a new draft for Phoenix Rising, and put a sample warp onto the loom. (The sea turtles are on hold for now.) I’m also going to create my examples for the book’s chapter on visual design. That’s overdue, because I’ve been too busy setting up my photography studio! But time to get back to it now. My plans may be delayed, but they are not totally shredded. Phoenix Rising is fun, but the book is important too.

Speaking of shredding, I rather unwisely left a roll of paper towels on the dining room table a few days ago. Several hours later, Mike came into the dining room and was greeted with this carnage – complete with red-handed (red-pawed?) culprit:

I’m not 100% certain that Fritz was the perpetrator, though. Tigress is usually the one who shreds paper towels, so perhaps Fritz was merely the fall guy for her misdeeds?

May 16, 2014 by Tien Chiu

Setting up a photography studio

I’ve decided to use Phoenix Rising’s development process as examples for my book (yes, I’m still working on it), which means taking photos of the work in progress. Which means I need to take publishable-quality photos at home. So I’m setting up a mini photography studio in the garage, next to Emmy.

To call this a studio is a bit generous. The space is incredibly cramped, maybe four feet wide by ten feet long. On one side of the corridor is Emmy; on the other side is the garage door. At the end is a backdrop stand with a white “muslin” backdrop (I think it’s actually a polyester fabric), and crammed in at either side are two light stands. The setup looks like this:

I’ve spent the last few days learning far more than I ever wanted to know about cameras – aperture sizes, exposure times, lenses, and camera controls. I’ve also been playing with lighting, gray cards (used to adjust the color balance), etc. I still need more lighting – a second lighting kit is due to arrive today – and need to figure out how to find space for it (the hard part). But the photos are improving.

Here’s the original photo I took of the muslin, taken as a hand-held snapshot with flash a couple days ago:

No special lighting, harsh shadow around the right edge of the photo, no backdrop. Also slightly blurry.

Here’s the second photo, after several days of fiddling, taken with my DSLR camera (on tripod). Also slightly blurry, but the light is a lot more even. I have one light on the background (to eliminate shadows) and one on the dress form. The lighting is still not ideal, though – the bottom left of the muslin is still in shadow.

second shot of muslin, with lighting and tripod

And here’s a photo taken with Mike’s mirrorless interchangeable lens camera, which has a much better lens than my DSLR camera. For this one we used manual focusing, which is much more practical on his camera than mine. (With mine, you have to look through a tiny viewfinder to see what will be photographed – and at that size and that distance, it’s impossible to tell whether something is in sharp focus. Mike’s camera has a large LED display which automatically zooms in to let you check the focus.)

This came out significantly better than the two previous photos:

photo taken with Mike's mirrorless, interchangeable-lens camera (with a much better lens) — photo taken with Mike’s mirrorless, interchangeable-lens camera (with a much better lens)

Obviously the lighting needs to be fixed, but the image itself is much sharper and brighter than before. (The backdrop was in the washer (to remove wrinkles) during the shot.) I’m not sure whether to attribute that to the better lens or the manual focusing, but it’s definitely improved.

Next step? The second lighting kit will arrive today, so I can tweak the lighting. I also need to master the settings on Mike’s camera. And Lieven (my critique partner, who is a top-notich photographer) will be coming by in the next few days to help me fine-tune things.

Meanwhile, as soon as I get a decent photo of this muslin, I’m going to start making changes. Hopefully I can do that tomorrow, as I’m running up to see Sharon on Sunday and would like to make more progress before showing it to her.

Finally, here are our in-house athletes again, showing off their second Olympic event: synchronized yawning. (Photo credit for this one goes to Mike.)

Fritz and Tigress, yawning in unison — Fritz and Tigress, demonstrating an Olympic sport

September 20, 2009 by Tien Chiu

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. Mike’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!