Pickled Bearings
Ball bearings with dilute ink in an old bottle.
One of the interesting things about living in an old village is that you never quite know what you are going to dig up in the garden. This is an old bottle, suitably battered and worn from it’s burial experience.
I chose it for the image because of its interesting shape. At around two inches tall it was also a good size for this week’s Macro Mondays theme In a Bottle. You can tell it’s an old bottle because of the thick lopsided glass on the bottom, the bubbles in the glass and the centre seam. It’s mass produced though and colourless glass so not as ancient as some of our archaeological finds.
One of the challenges with the theme was to put something interesting in the bottle. I took the easy way out and just added ball bearings (easily bought at a fishing shop - just ask for catapult ammunition!) and water, coloured with fountain pen ink.
To bring out the textures in the glass I lit it from behind and above with two LED penlights. Yep, I’ve doubled my investment in photographic studio lighting, though the second doubled up as a Christmas present for my wife :) .
Thank you for taking time to look. I hope you enjoy the image. Happy Macro Mondays!
[Lit from behind and above with LED penlights; on black glazed tile with back card behind. Tripod, remote release, VR off, focussed in Live View.
Toyed with the exposure and lighting in Lightroom; a bit of extra clarity and vibrance.
In Affinity Photo selected the background and used Levels filter to remove it by upping the black point.
Sharpened with acombination of Unsharp Mask and High Pass blended with Linear Light blend mode. Finally used an HSL adjustment layer to change the ink colour to purple from an unappetising orange :).]
Pickled Bearings
Ball bearings with dilute ink in an old bottle.
One of the interesting things about living in an old village is that you never quite know what you are going to dig up in the garden. This is an old bottle, suitably battered and worn from it’s burial experience.
I chose it for the image because of its interesting shape. At around two inches tall it was also a good size for this week’s Macro Mondays theme In a Bottle. You can tell it’s an old bottle because of the thick lopsided glass on the bottom, the bubbles in the glass and the centre seam. It’s mass produced though and colourless glass so not as ancient as some of our archaeological finds.
One of the challenges with the theme was to put something interesting in the bottle. I took the easy way out and just added ball bearings (easily bought at a fishing shop - just ask for catapult ammunition!) and water, coloured with fountain pen ink.
To bring out the textures in the glass I lit it from behind and above with two LED penlights. Yep, I’ve doubled my investment in photographic studio lighting, though the second doubled up as a Christmas present for my wife :) .
Thank you for taking time to look. I hope you enjoy the image. Happy Macro Mondays!
[Lit from behind and above with LED penlights; on black glazed tile with back card behind. Tripod, remote release, VR off, focussed in Live View.
Toyed with the exposure and lighting in Lightroom; a bit of extra clarity and vibrance.
In Affinity Photo selected the background and used Levels filter to remove it by upping the black point.
Sharpened with acombination of Unsharp Mask and High Pass blended with Linear Light blend mode. Finally used an HSL adjustment layer to change the ink colour to purple from an unappetising orange :).]