more photography

Yesterday I did some more photography for the book. I had not been completely happy with the photo I had of my sampler. It looked a little washed out and I just wasn’t happy with it.

My mum let me have some of her Christmas bush to photograph around the sampler. Christmas bush is a bush with dainty red “flowers” – they’re not the flowers actually, the flowers are long gone, and what most people consider to be the flowers are actually the bracts. What is a bract, I hear you ask? No idea, but that’s what my sister, the botanist, calls them! 😉

Because the theme of the book is red and white (if you’d notice this by looking at the book, I’m not sure, but its been a good way for me to get the book to come together visually) and Christmas bush is red, it seemed like it could work well with the white embroidery. So we raided Mum’s bush on Tuesday and yesterday I used it.

It did work really well. The “flowers” are very pretty and they made a lovely border around the edge of the sampler. It was much more pleasing than the washed out photo I replaced.

I also took some more little “filler” photos to brighten up the pages. The idea is that they give you a little more of the “story” that I’ve set up in each main photograph. I don’t want you to think that my photos are over-propped (ie. have too many extraneous things, scattered around that detract from the actual subject of the photo, which is the embroidery) though. Most of the “stories” don’t have much of a plot! Most just have a couple of things that help to suggest its use, or give a bit more colour to look at.

Having a story makes it a little bit more inviting than museum-type specimen photos. While museum-type specimen photos are great for giving you a good view of the whole item, and therefore they also have their place in the book, they’re not really all that exciting or enticing!

I have very much enjoyed doing the photography for this book. Its been a challenge to try to communicate the sheer beauty of this style of embroidery, and hopefully I have managed to do that. I recently showed what there is of the book to a highly respected needlework writer, and she said she was left speechless by the projects. I guess that’s a pretty good sign! I certainly found it to be very encouraging!