I recently returned to New Zealand’s early Spring after a week in tropical Fiji. It takes a while to adjust to home again! In the transition back to blogging, I thought I would post some photos of a few polished stones I had completed at mid-year. I chose a small number of Kakanui stones and, when the sun shone briefly this afternoon, I took some photos of them with my digital camera, a Sony Cyber-Shot model DSC-HX90V. I used an automatic setting, as usual, finding this usually more than adequate, though the focus sometimes needs some care. I have found that bright sunlight outside provides the setting for the least reflections when taking photos of stones.
Preparing the photos for loading onto this Blog, using Picasa software on my laptop, and choosing close-ups for each stone, I realised I was using three different strategies for different types and sizes of stones. So this Post turned into an account of these three close-up photo strategies (I have also used other strategies in the past, though these three are the most frequently utilised). See this Post and this Post (Part 2 of this second one still remains unwritten) for an introduction to my use of the camera and Picasa. (Note: My current camera is a slightly up-dated version of the camera mentioned in these two earlier Posts.)
In my Posts, I often have three “introductory” photos for each stone. First, I may provide a photo of the group of stones featured in a Post, maybe with a coin next to them, to provide a sense of scale. A ruler can be included if accurate dimensions are desired.
Second, the individual stone is shown in my hand, providing again a sense of its size and further detail of its colours and patterns. Third, a photo with the stone filling the frame is shown, usually simply a cropped version of the previous hand-held photo – this takes away the distraction of the background and provides a much better sense of the visual details of the stone itself. The close-ups then explore the details. Usually, each close-up involves simply further cropping, with sometimes some saturation and brightening of the image used to maintain clarity and colour. My camera is set to take large-sized photos – they are usually between 5.7 and 6.3 megabytes. This means that quite a bit of cropping can be done with the images. I then reduce the size of the larger images, using the “Paint” app on my laptop, before posting them onto the Blog, usually to somewhere between 1.1 and 1.5 megabytes.
STRATEGY ONE – CENTRAL PROGRESSIVE ZOOMING
The first close-up strategy is simply a series of crops showing more and more detail of the central part of the stone. For example, this limonite prase (jasper) stone is relatively small (3.5 cms by 3 cms), and a total of three crops is adequate to provide a good idea of its patterning:
The colour and focus does not encourage further zooming in, there being a loss of sharpness with further cropping.
With the next stone, a yellow quartzite, one further stage of cropping is able to be used. The stone is a little larger (4 cms by 3 cms) and the photo was clear enough to allow it:
This kind of quartzite, with tiny clear quartz crystals in it, benefits from the close-ups which reveal the crystals as well as the clouds of pastel colours. A slightly larger yellow quartzite (below) is given the same treatment, though the zoom is not focused onto the centre of the stone but slightly to the right of centre, a more interesting section.
The same number of crops used on the next stone, a volcanic one, is less successful – the stone is smaller (3 cms by 3 cms), and as it is more spherical it is more difficult to get a clear image.
However, the close-ups do provide a better sense of the the way the stone is constructed.
STRATEGY TWO – HALY BY HALF
The second close-up strategy I used with these stones is to divide the stone in two and zoom in on each half. This is useful where there is a diversity of colours and/or patterns across the face of the stone, and especially where the stone is a little larger. The next stone is most likely another quartzite but with some light green in it. It is elongated, being 5 cms long and 3 cms wide. It makes sense to divide the image into two, left and right, then zoom in to each side, using cropping. The left side first:
And now the right side (repeating the first two photos of the whole stone):
It is the use of “saturation”, aiming to lift the colour a little, that results in the light brown hue of the close-ups. In this case, the changes are not as successful as they should be, and further adjustments need to be made to return the colour more closer to the original.
I treated the next stone, a small hematite jasper (3 cms by 3 cms), in the same way – zooming in first to the left side, then to the right side.
The same strategy in a more simplified form can be used with a small stone or one where the image does not allow further zooming. The next stone, a white one, has only one close-up of each side (top and bottom) as the image was not sharp enough to go beyond this, though I had hoped for better.
STRATEGY THREE – SELECTIVE ZOOMING
Finally, I used a third strategy for a stone that has a complex of patterns on its surface. Different areas have quite different compositions. In this case, I used cropping to zoom in on three different areas.
The stone is one of the larger ones, 4.5 cms by 4 cms but, more importantly, its visual character allows for an interesting exploration of selective sections.
When taking photos of individual stones, I never know how they will come out, how they will respond to a series of crops, and just what will be revealed as the details become clear.
