Dec 18, 2008
chez Madame’s, originally uploaded by sarajane helm.
A long while back, I made 12 dolls and miniature sets for a photo shoot. Using paper, polymer clay, fabric and whatever was right for the job, I made several different Shady Lady dolls and their environments. Here’s one of the shots! This one is of the petite and buxom bouncer in the Nightclub room. She’s about 9 inches tall. Part of the set is made using an epoxy resin and paper fan made by Elaine Schaeffer.
This is one of the photos taken by Bobby Grieser in 1992. He does wonderful work, and did all the photography in my first two polymer clay books. Unlike my own digital camera work, Bobby’s pictures for me were all done in 35mm film slides. I have several shoe-boxes filled with over a decade’s worth of images. but have had no way to access them for use on the web. Until Now!!!
This year, Santa brought me a new scanner with a slide scanner function, which has been on my list for a long while!!!! (Thank you Santa for making it happen, you know who you are.)
It even came early so that I get to use it in creating some of MY Christmas presents to give in the next week. I’ll be showing off more pics right here too.
Feb 10, 2008
I just put up a tutorial page about using my digital camera, a portable studio box from Digital Concepts, and Adobe Photoshop. I use one of Melanie West’s miniature masks from the swap last year to illustrate the setup and the process of fixing images for better use.
This is the setup that I used to do photos throughout the book “Adapting Quilt Patterns To Polymer Clay” and also for photos on my webpages and in upcoming books.
I’ve been doing a lot of work lately taking photos for my own business endeavors including The Polyclay Gallery, and for other clientele locally. Practice and camera familiarity really do help to improve the skills involved and to get me more usable images. And having good lighting sure counts for a lot!
But truth be told, for me it is the Adobe Photoshop program that lets me really make the pictures look much better. No matter what I’m shooting–beads, dolls, jewelry or step-outs to show the process in a tutorial, it is all made better looking with Photoshop. Cropping, resizing, and image editing are only the tip of the iceburg when it comes to this powerful set of tools.
The Adobe Photoshop Elements version contains everything most artist would need for use. Versions like CS2 or CS3 are more powerful by far, but contain much that may not be needed by the individual who just wants to document their work beautifully. Professional graphic artists of all sorts can enjoy a lot of potential in presenting their work if they have good digital images.
I really enjoy my digital camera, whether using it outdoors for the big wide world or indoors for beads, jewelry, masks, and how-to tutorials.
There’s a lot more to come; I’m working on several projects at once. Do take a peek at some of the photos on the links here!
Jan 27, 2008
It is Winter time, windy and cold, and the wolf is at the door….
Well, not precisely at the door. This big bad winter wolf is a picture of a miniature mask made by Patricia Edmonds using polymer clay, measuring less than 3″x3″. And instead of at the door, it is in the folder with the pictures that have been photoshopped and are ready for inclusion in the new book “The Art Of Polymer Clay Masks”. But before I can get onto the job of laying out all the cool pics onto the pages, I have about another 200 to photograph. So I’ll be busy for quite a while, 
staying warm in the studio with the help of the lights!
Shown next is a miniature polymer clay mask created for the swap by Bernadette Mangie. This Little Red Cap has no fear of the Wolf; she’s used to them!
These masks are both from the Internet miniature mask swap 2006. Do remember that you are seeing them at close to actual size!
There were over 90 in that swap alone, and I have a lovely collection now that reaches back to 1997. Before I can host another one of these swaps, I am pledged to catalogue the collection. Then Bryan will mount them all into framed groupings.
