I was prompted to take out this ring by a post from Marloes which featured a daisy head at the end of a teaspoon.
It was an 18th birthday present from my parents, made by their friend who was a jeweller. I don't know why she chose daisies - my sister also got a similar ring on her 18th. Maybe it was the memory of us playing together with her daughter and others, in the fields and gardens, making endless daisy chains.
My fiancé and I went on to commission her to make our engagement and wedding rings, some years later.
This week's theme for the 52 week challenge is to shoot in manual. I nearly always do - unless using the special settings for sunsets, long exposures etc. But what I don't do very well, is take note of what I am using and why. So I thought that this week I would try to document this. No need to read on, this is just for me:
Firstly, I only had time to take an indoor shot, but the light today was very poor, and so my only chance of success was going to be to put the ring on the window ledge to access maximum light. I therefore knew I would need macro setting, so that I could obscure as much of the background as possible taking the focal length as short as possible. I also had to deliberately underexpose, in order to keep the speed to something manageable for hand held. Ofcourse I could have upped the ISO - I'm not sure I thought about that too much, but would have avoided it as I wanted as much detail as possible. That's about as far as my thinking went.
Post processing. The exposure went up, I used a touch of the sharpen tool in photoshop, and experimented with using filters to take out the dust on my poorly maintained window casing. This was not successful as I could not adequately iscolate the background from the ring. So I learnt a new trick - the patch tool, to replace some of the larger dust fibres and make the dusty surface less obvious. So, why have I never found that tool before? (rhetorical). It seems pretty useful to me. Once out of photoshop, I discovered that the Microsoft photo filter, sahara, added a touch of sophistication to the shot.
I'm tagging this for the 52week challenge, but also for the macro metal - it is Silver and Gold.
Very nice ring! I also like that little leaf. So subtle. How lovely that your sister has the same one. Such great details. The background looks okay. Great ‘dusting’ job ;-)
that's one beautiful ring. sometimes the most mundane are the ones with more sentimental value. you did pretty well with post processing as i don't see any dust at all and the dof is spot on.
that said, i hate photoshop. i almost always do my post processing in ribbet. easier for the old brain like mine.
@helenhall The patina gives it character. If you want to just freshen it up without a polish, Swish/soak in mild detergent and warm water for 5 minutes and dry. That is all it needs. Fresh as a daisy! :)
Very nicely done. I read your whole piece, another alternative to hand -holding/high iso would be to position/rest the camera in such a way to get the shot or to use a tripod. Most, if not all my indoor shots are taken in this way as it allows me to have a low iso and a longer shutter speed, both of which make for lighter and cleaner image (as in low grain).
January 25th, 2018
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that said, i hate photoshop. i almost always do my post processing in ribbet. easier for the old brain like mine.
@haskar thank you so much.