A blog about the creative parts of my life. Knitting, Dyeing, Sewing, Spinning, Photography, Gardening - although some other bits might work their way in there as well.
Hi all… Just a quick little blog to say that my Ariel Sock ‘Polly’ has been used as part of an article on the Folksy blog. How very very nice of them…
You can visit ‘Polly’ at our Folsky shop and many of my other yummy yarns that have all been dyed using only natural dyes.
Recently I embarked on a Top Gear style ‘How hard can it be!’ adventure into the wonderful world of quilting. I’m still very much just setting out on this journey but thought I’d share a few thoughts with you anyway……
and on that note since the sun has gone in, I’m going to fire up the sewing machine and liberate some of the pins currently holding pieces of fabric together whoop whoop…..
When is cheating really cheating? When is it just bending the rules? When does it go from being clever to deceitful? It’s a tricky one isn’t it…
I ask because the last few weeks have been making me think. I’ve been part of a few discussions on the subject and it’s interesting how peoples views differ.
HDR image of the inside of the Natural History Museum.
Two comments got me think about this in relation to photography. The first was made by the friend I visited the Natural History Museum with. When he saw one of my photos he commented, ‘Wow that came out well didn’t it’. My initial reaction, which I didn’t articulate, was why wouldn’t it! Then later when Maytheweed was looking at a few shots she asked, ‘How many of these are HDR?’. I replied all of them which didn’t seem to impress. I immediately felt the need to justify and defend myself.
This got me thinking about the cheating it. Is HDR cheating? For those of you who don’t know HDR stands for High Dynamic Range and is the fairly loose term given to describe digital images that have been manipulated using something like Photoshop with the aim of allowing the scene to represent the range our eyes can see.
The original shot.
Normal photographs don’t show the same range of colours, light and dark etc as our eyes and brain can process. So in the case of the images May was looking at I had taken a single image capture from my camera and manipulated it so that a greater range of light and dark can be seen. The result resembles what I actually saw much more closely that way.
The single RAW image was used to create 5 more images with ‘different exposures’. These were then combined again to create the HDR image at the to of the post.
So was that cheating? I don’t think so. I didn’t Photoshop things in or out… No one has suddenly lost 3 stone in weight due to airbrushing etc. There is crucially no intent to deceive, just a desire to represent the scene how I perceived it. I’m sure some will argue it’s not pure or some such, then point to black and white images by a master such as Ansel Adams. Well I’m fairly sure that the world wasn’t black and white in his day, and I’m also fairly sure there will have been some darkroom techniques used to create those beautiful images.
Some more images from the Natural History Museum…
I’m on a bit of an ammonite kick at the moment so was delighted when I found this. You can’t see the scale from the photo but it was about two and a half foot across.
T. Rex is everyone's favourite which is probably why it was chosen to be made into a full sized animated model. Can you call something the size of this a model?
It never ceases to amaze me that places like the Natural History Museum are free. So, spurred on by my visit to the Science Museum, I was up early yesterday to visit this wonderful place. I won’t mention the horrific journey in and out of our nations capital, except to say it’s no wonder our rail service has such a bad reputation!
Anyway I just love these amazing old buildings and once there we set out exploring. I had my camera grasped in my grubby little mitts much of the day and thought I’d share my favourite bit with you.
It’s part of the Earth science area and satisfied both my inner geek and my inner child……
Today started badly as I decided to use my new cutting mat and rotary cutter to cut some squares ready to make a patchwork runner for my bed. It did not go well. In fact the phrase ‘pigs ear’ springs to mind.
However, things started to look up as I met up with a friend and headed to Quilters Haven for a spot of shopping. This it turns out was a good move. Perhaps not good for my bank balance, but after a stressful week I figured it was ok to spoil myself.
Fortunately between Debs (very friendly sales lady who was a fount of helpful tips) and Nicola Foreman (waves ‘Hi’ at Nicola) I came home much more confident and ready to have another go.
The results were much more respectable and I’m even vaguely confident that they may be useable!
This was my first visit to Quilter Haven and it was full of yummy fabrics, many of which were shouting ‘buy meeeee, buy meeeeeee’ from the shelves. In fact if anything the problem was too much choice. I mean, how do you decide?
I think part of it is that I’m used to thinking in terms of one or maybe two fabrics for a project. Suddenly my brain was confronted with having to process 5, 6, 7 or even 8! Add in my inexperience with quilts and it was hard to visualise what I could turn some of these beautiful fabrics into.
I did buy some lovely things which I’ll blog about separately, but I couldn’t resist taking a quick photo of one of the fat quarter packs I bought which my mind is telling me should be a throw for the armchair in my bedroom. I think I need to get a bit better at the cutting out first though……
