took some shots tonight.

[EdStreet]

I finished a paring knife I have been working on for awhileand broke out some extra equipment and took some photo's, thought I would pass them on here to get some feedback and the like.

Ed

this is a green river knife with high figured apple handles and brass rods.



this is one of the frame lock kits.



this is a work 'block' I am making, it's 8" claro walnut.

[Buddy Thomason]

Hi Ed,
Others with more experience than I have may jump in with some good feedback and suggestions, but in the meantime here's what I'm thinking after looking at your pictures.

First off, they are very good pictures! I do love a soft black background like that - especially for internet images. The clarity you're getting with your camera and set-up is also good - nothing out of focus, not too grainy, pretty clear and crisp actually. The color rendering is very good.

Regarding suggestions for improving the images I'd say it depends on what you're after. Since I don't know your specific goal I'll just offer a couple of general tips I've learned from hanging around this forum that should be easy to do and very productive in terms of visible results.

1. Move in closer or crop your knife images so there's at least as much knife (or even more) as there is background in the picture. This will 'feature' the knife better.

2. Place the knife (or tilt your camera accordingly) to get the knife in more of a corner-to-corner place, rather than horizontal. Most folks put the tip towards the lower left and handle toward upper right, plus or minus. That's not a hard and fast rule but it's generally more pleasing to the eye.

3. Looks like your light is above and behind your subject, which is certainly fine. However, you might try catching some of the light that's simply passing through space above the knife and reflect it back onto the knife from the front. Two easy ways to do that are: a) Use some white foam board, poster board or whatever - white as you can get - and experiment with some way to keep it stationary and at just the right angle while you take your picture. b) Or, and this will get more light back onto the knife, use some white foam board or other suitable material (white or light grey only, though) and spread some aluminum foil over one side and use that as in 'a' above. I would say that, in general, the amount of reflected light you need is enough to light up the bevel on the sharpened edge of the blade. If you can reflect that much light then you also have enough to provide other benefits as well.

Given what you're already getting with your set-up, if you can do the three things I mentioned above you'd have attained a quality level such that you'd be able to have some fun entering your images in the little photo contests going on here. Those contests really help one advance their photography skills, assuming that's at least part of your goal.

Then if you want to go further, you'll have a very strong base upon which to add some more advanced techniques like sharpening, dealing with color issues, pulling more detail out of both very bright and very dark areas on the knife, putting frames around your images, adding text etc.

Good luck and hopefully you'll post more of your pictures soon!