A Finished Object and a Photography Lesson!

lollyknits ♦ January 28, 2013 ♦ 2 Comments

Hello, my dear readers! 

Today I bring you a special treat. For too long, I have been taking crappy pictures in crappy lighting with nothing but my iPhone camera and my extremely poor photography skillz. It was finally time to say enough! Enough underexposed grainy photos! Enough weird angles from trying to photograph yourself! We rise in a revolution against our pixellated overlords! We fight for truth, beauty, and well edited photographs! 

This is Greg. 

 

Not only is he the bestest best friend a girl could ask for, he also has wicked photography skills! AND a talent for passing them on to his less skilled brethren. (or sistren?) He spent an hour out in the freezing cold, explaining to me how to take interesting pictures, how to make the most of my less-than-professional-quality camera, and being a truly excellent sport as I got him to model the scarf I made. This post is going to be very picture heavy, because I am extremely proud of how they came out!

This is, (as my pictures usually are) at my favorite park. For some of these pictures, I had to do some weird contortions to keep my shadow out of the frame. There were some kids skateboarding who probably thought I was eating a big ol’ slice of crazy pie. 

 

Here’s a closeup of the scarf. Isn’t it gorgeous? It’s a Noro scarf a la Jared Flood of Brooklyn Tweed fame. I even used one of the same colorways that he did in his original version of this scarf, because I was so smitten with it. But more on that later. Pictures first!

 

Not only did Greg help me by modeling the scarf, (which is his waaaay overdue Christmas present) he also helped me learn how to edit the photos so they look better! I learned about how to lighten the shadows and darken the highlights in order to bring out different parts of the picture, when to pump up saturation and contrast and when not to, and how to sharpen the pictures so the neat little details are evident. Yay!

 

Also, see how the light is all soft and pretty and warm? It was already sorta like that, since we had some nice bright sunlight, but I learned about color temperature! We made it seem like a nice crisp fall day, when it was actually about 15 degrees out there. I lost feeling to my fingers.

Isn’t he a great model??

 He was very nice about my frantic hopping around and constant conflicting requests. “Do this!” “No, do this!” etc. 

 

 

I made him climb on that thing. It’s way fun. 

 

When I first told him that I “wanted to put his pretty face on my blog.” he threatened to make horrible contorted grimaces the whole time. As you can see, he didn’t follow through on that threat

 

Another closeup. Aren’t those colors scrumptious??

 

 

I really like this one! I even think it looks kinda artsy!!

 

 

I know you can’t tell, but in this one, he’s saying, “I’m freezing my a** off. Are we almost done?”

 

I like this one! That cool stone arch is the entrance to the park, and I think it looks like Europe. 

So there you have it! I made this scarf as a Christmas present, using Jared Flood’s Noro Scarf pattern. The colors I used were Noro Silk Garden 201 and 349. The 201 was really hard to track down, as it was a colorway from a few years back, but Greg really wanted a near-exact replica of Jared’s scarf, having seen it and become extremely enamored of it. I did my best to oblige, and I think that the result is simply stunning. He really deserves to have such a nice present, he’s a great friend! Anyone who will stand around outside in the freezing cold to have his picture taken by a fumbling, inept photographer deserves some kind of special reward.