Planet Stripe
"Stripes" presented me with quite a challenge, which is strange because stripes are a favourite pattern of mine in shirts (lengthwise), pullovers (horizontally), and Nato straps for watches, to name a few, so there were plenty of stripe options. I took some photos of the navy/white/pink striped Nato strap (with gold-coloured hardware to match the watch) that I put on my father's wristwatch, and the images were nice but not interesting enough.
Today, a bracelet made of faceted striped agates came to the rescue. I have to re-bead it anyway because I didn't do the final knot on the elastic band right, so I cut the elastic band and picked the stripiest striped agate bead of the lot. Backlight could have been nice, but wasn't an option because the bead is 1 cm/0,39 inches in diameter and my smallest LED flashlight has a diameter of 1,5 cm/0,59 inches, and I didn't want to damage the sensor by shining a super bright light partly right into the lens.
The beads are naturally coloured, with hues of brown, sand, orange, and white. The colour filters were almost an afterthought this time. I didn't want to give up on the backlight (or at least side light) idea, so I put the flashlight in a small green glass jar, hoping it would also help to reduce the flashlight's brightness (it did). The other light source, the flat photolamp from above, also highlighted the bead's reflection on the black tile (and created an unwanted reflection of its own on the bead's surface), but since a planet doesn't have a reflection but floats (or rather gravitates) in space, I held the transparent red plastic lid against the lamp just to see how it would look and if it reduced the reflections. Which is pretty much what you see here. In post, I still increased the saturation and clarity.
HMM, Everyone!
Planet Stripe
"Stripes" presented me with quite a challenge, which is strange because stripes are a favourite pattern of mine in shirts (lengthwise), pullovers (horizontally), and Nato straps for watches, to name a few, so there were plenty of stripe options. I took some photos of the navy/white/pink striped Nato strap (with gold-coloured hardware to match the watch) that I put on my father's wristwatch, and the images were nice but not interesting enough.
Today, a bracelet made of faceted striped agates came to the rescue. I have to re-bead it anyway because I didn't do the final knot on the elastic band right, so I cut the elastic band and picked the stripiest striped agate bead of the lot. Backlight could have been nice, but wasn't an option because the bead is 1 cm/0,39 inches in diameter and my smallest LED flashlight has a diameter of 1,5 cm/0,59 inches, and I didn't want to damage the sensor by shining a super bright light partly right into the lens.
The beads are naturally coloured, with hues of brown, sand, orange, and white. The colour filters were almost an afterthought this time. I didn't want to give up on the backlight (or at least side light) idea, so I put the flashlight in a small green glass jar, hoping it would also help to reduce the flashlight's brightness (it did). The other light source, the flat photolamp from above, also highlighted the bead's reflection on the black tile (and created an unwanted reflection of its own on the bead's surface), but since a planet doesn't have a reflection but floats (or rather gravitates) in space, I held the transparent red plastic lid against the lamp just to see how it would look and if it reduced the reflections. Which is pretty much what you see here. In post, I still increased the saturation and clarity.
HMM, Everyone!