Jade Mat

This photo of a jade mat was also part of my Traditional Thai cooking photo shoot, and again this was a photo of an everyday item. I wanted to show of the shapes, sharp lines, and colors of the jade spheres. I also filled the frame so that viewers wouldn’t really be able to know what the actual item was. If I were to say that this was a mat for the cook to sit on most people might not believe it at first. I wanted to show of the immense detail in each jade sphere, because close up it looks as though each sphere is different in color. Some of the natural colors were: ivory white, purple, and green. I also used natural lighting to create a shadow to look like dark black strips on the jade mat. I wanted it to look like the jade spheres were actually that dark and was purposefully there to create a design. The original shot did not show the detail as much as I wanted, so I used Photoshop to change some of the color settings. I cropped the photo to show cleaner lines and show the jade spheres in more detail. I cropped it so that the dark shadow lines are more pronounced and in the middle of the photo. I used a filter to change the colors of the photo. I played with contrast, brightness, saturation, and tint to get the vivid colors of the jade. I tried to show more of the colors of the jade spheres, because the actual photo was not depicting the beautiful colors. The original photo was kind of dull, and I wanted the individual colors of each sphere to really pop. I made the image sharper to show the viewers the swirls of colors inside of the spheres. It was my intention to show off the curves of the spheres with the sharp lines of the shadow and the bright contrast of colors that the mat had to offer. Altering the photo really allowed the details of the mat to shine.

Done