Photography for Knitters

Today I was able to take part in a class on Photography for Knitters taught by Gale Zucker (be sure to check out her strictly fiber blog, She Shoots Sheep Shots, too!).  Aside from the really adorable sheep and lamb pictures that were part of her tutorials, we also learned a lot about lighting by reflection, using natural light, and using your perspective and surroundings to play up a shot.  Another thing that really stuck with me from her presentation was the importance of capturing small segments of shots to help give people a feeling for an area or a knitting piece rather than just big picture shots.

For example, I took this photo a few months ago when I finished this shawl.  It shows that the shawl has some impressive lacework, but the green background sort of swallows the cool colors and you don’t get to enjoy some of the detail

Even this close-up gets sort of washed out and muted

This photo (taken today during our class) shows off the color a lot better, and lets you see the detail in the knitting without the distracting blur of green in the background. I thought the highly textured bark might be too distracting, but it’s really less so to my eye than the leaves were. The colors are still a bit over-exposed for my taste, but I think it’s a more compelling shot overall.

I can also use the tree like velcro to hold up my shawl and show off just the points, hiding the rest of the shawl!

This one doesn’t give much of an idea of what the shawl or the lace pattern are like as a whole, but shows off some of the movement and drape of the silk as it’s caught up in a passing breeze.  I brought a bit of color theory from the talk Kristin Nicholas gave at the Common Cod Fiber Guild meeting on Friday into this shot, too – using the red dirt to bring out the cool colors in the shawl a bit more.

Altogether, a lot of stuff to think about and try.  I’m still digesting a lot of the things we learned in class today, and will hopefully  be better able to apply them once I go back to my notes and get some more chances to get in some practice.  Not this evening, though!  We were lucky enough to have great partly cloudy lighting for the hands-on part of our class, but it’s quickly turned dark and rainy.   In the future, I’d love to take a more advanced sequel to this class that gets more into technical details – but that might just be my technical nature talking!