The Cottage Creatives Corner (Discussion and Help)

[Lail]

The Cottage Creatives Corner (Discussion and Help)

Tucked away in a cozy corner of the Cottage of Lost Play, there are a cluster of pillowed sofas, rocking chairs, and floor cushions. On a roaring fireplace, a tea kettle is always hot and ready for a cuppa coffee or a tea infusion of any flavor. Sunlight streams in through the lush garden outside growing thick with herbs and wildflowers in dappled shade and sun spots.

Pick a comfy seat and stay a while or write a message on the chalkboard for your fellow creatives. All types of creative arts are welcome to discuss here: writing, poetry, music, drawing, painting, digital art, photography, fiber arts and crafts, pottery, miniature making and painting, etc. Your imagination is the only limit!

The corner has plenty of supplies for creative pursuits - parchment, quills, and ink pots, paints and drawing pencils, clay and pottery wheels, needle and thread, beads, sequins, yarn, and knitting needles, musical instruments, cameras and lenses, and more.

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What is this thread?

The Cottage Creatives Corner serves as a friendly space to ask questions, get advice, or collaborate with your fellow creatives. Need help with a photography technique? Wondering about watercolors? Stuck on a story? Any type of creativity is welcome here. Just go ahead and ask your question! If you feel you can help someone, offer an answer!

Please be kind and supportive to your fellow creatives in giving help and feedback. We're all at different stages and experience levels of our creative journeys. Take a look at the following blog post for advice about feedback for creative projects: https://creativitychronicles.com/giving ... -feedback/

RP is not necessary for this thread - I simply wanted to set a cozy little scene for the discussions.

It is my wish that I, the ThreadRunner, am not "in charge" of this thread - nor is anyone else - but rather, it should serve as an open discussion space for everyone to participate in.

[Romeran]

One thing I consistently seem to struggle with in my miniature painting hobby is photography. I constantly feel like the images never pick up the level of detail that I'm actually looking for. For example the yellow "gem" in this photo is very glossy IRL (it literally has gloss varnish on it) but it doesn't show up at all in the photos. I do play around with post-processing in the camera app in my iPhone. My guess is I'm not getting enough light on the minis? Or the background is too noisy?

[Lail]

First of all - wow your miniatures are amazing!!! I can't believe what tiny details you are painting! I love the Ents :D

Second - I am definitely not an expert on mobile photography or miniature photography...but I am thinking back to when I worked in an archaeology lab and we took photos of artifacts in a little lightbox. What is your current photo set up? Could you make a little DIY cardboard lightbox and put a couple of small-ish lamps to light the miniature from the top, and both sides? I wonder if that would help capture the detail better.

Does your iphone have a macro photo function? That would be my other thought would be using a macro lens but not sure if an iphone has that functionality.

also, are you shooting the photos free-hand with the iPhone or do you have like something to set it down on like a phone tripod to minimize blur?

[Fuin Elda]

There are two things that can be happening here -

1. Lighting isn't hitting the gloss enough to make it read. Especially since with the clear stand at the bottom that may be an overwhelming amount of lighting required and might make that burn out as well. If you have a small flash light you can focus and hit just the gem with that may help.

2. Most phones actually use an ungodly amount of AI to take the photos now (it's actually something I've been looking into as I am on the cusp of needing a new phone and I'm looking at the differences between the Samsung S23 and S24 Ultra as well as the Google Pixel 8 Pro simply because I hate how Iphones ai edits images. (Admittedly for what your'e doing all phones will likely do it most drop out high points and autofill so you don't have burn spots where it's just white. I know I need to mess around horrifically with my Pixel 4 to get it to stop that nonsense. If you can find a way to do manual setting on your Iphone that might be your best bet but honestly if something is glossy 90% of the time the easiest way to make it look glossy is a post photo edit where you bring up the white point in JUST that area which can be tricky outside of a computer.

[Melahny_oftheWoods]

Well met, friends. :)

I would like to make some "poetry videos" (like a music video but with spoken word audio) but I don't know how to video edit. I used to edit photos but videos editing software seems to be so much more complicated for me to figure out and I get really frustrated with it. I've yet to find one that's user friendly and straightforward for me to figure out. They don't seem to come with instruction manuals either so I find it very difficult to do a simple thing like cut clips of a video file and put them where I want it.

I need to find something free or inexpensive. A monthly subscription that's cheap would be okay because then I could work on the video and cancel the subs after I'm done to save money. But I also need something that's user friendly and simple. I get really overwhelmed by programs that have way too many functions and no instructions. I don't need anything complex or high quality either.

Ideally, I'd like to film outdoor scenes mostly. I'll be using my phone as that's the only camera I have. The first video I'll be filming at the beach, getting shots of the waves, birds, scenery, etc. All I really need to be able to do is edit the footage together and add my audio track to the video. Might be cool to keep some sounds of the waves and birds in the background at certain parts if that's not too difficult to figure out.

Can anyone offer their advice or experience?

Thanks
Mel

[Romeran]

First of all - wow your miniatures are amazing!!! I can't believe what tiny details you are painting! I love the Ents :D

Thanks! I shouldn't be surprised you like the Ents

Second - I am definitely not an expert on mobile photography or miniature photography...but I am thinking back to when I worked in an archaeology lab and we took photos of artifacts in a little lightbox. What is your current photo set up? Could you make a little DIY cardboard lightbox and put a couple of small-ish lamps to light the miniature from the top, and both sides? I wonder if that would help capture the detail better.

As you may have noticed my 'setup' is not consistent. Most of the photos I take are directly on my painting desk (hence all the paints in the background of a lot of the pictures). The desk has a pretty big light which I use for painting and provides the light source for the photos. Sometimes I try put up some paper towel (usually what I'm using to catch back spray on my airbrush ) or a piece of paper if I'm feelin' fancy. Often I just leave the background as-is.

I bought a lightbox one time but didn't have much luck with it and then it got dusty which made it hard to use... but I think that it is like to have have been a combination of a bad lightbox and user error. I think getting more light and having a consistently plain white background is probably optimal. I should give it another shot. Maybe one that I can affix multiple lights to.

Does your iphone have a macro photo function? That would be my other thought would be using a macro lens but not sure if an iphone has that functionality.

I have no idea, nor any idea what that means I can certainly check.

also, are you shooting the photos free-hand with the iPhone or do you have like something to set it down on like a phone tripod to minimize blur?

Free-hand. Maybe I should try a tripod? I haven't thought of that.

Thanks for the thoughts @Lail I appreciate it and will see about trying some of them.

There are two things that can be happening here -

1. Lighting isn't hitting the gloss enough to make it read. Especially since with the clear stand at the bottom that may be an overwhelming amount of lighting required and might make that burn out as well. If you have a small flash light you can focus and hit just the gem with that may help.

Yeah I think lack of good lighting is a recurring issue.

2. Most phones actually use an ungodly amount of AI to take the photos now (it's actually something I've been looking into as I am on the cusp of needing a new phone and I'm looking at the differences between the Samsung S23 and S24 Ultra as well as the Google Pixel 8 Pro simply because I hate how Iphones ai edits images. (Admittedly for what your'e doing all phones will likely do it most drop out high points and autofill so you don't have burn spots where it's just white. I know I need to mess around horrifically with my Pixel 4 to get it to stop that nonsense. If you can find a way to do manual setting on your Iphone that might be your best bet but honestly if something is glossy 90% of the time the easiest way to make it look glossy is a post photo edit where you bring up the white point in JUST that area which can be tricky outside of a computer.

Well you're going quite a bit over my head lol, I'm a photography noob. What do you mean by burn spots? The bright white part? I'm less concerned with the glossy gems coming through (although they are one thing I find consistently looks better in person than in picture) more in general with improving the quality of the photos that I take. Another thing that I think don't come across very well are more subtle gradients of color (e.g. from the base to the darkest parts) -- obviously as a painter I can greatly improve here but I still find it more noticeable in person than in picture. The highest highlights consequently don't always come across unless they're very starkly contrasting with a base color.

Thanks for all the advice and great idea for a thread!

[Aikári Salmarinian]

Romeran: I'll be certainly curious to your new photos of what you feel are better quality. I never had much of a problem, but hey the screen I see them on is a graphical monitor in fact. So in colour and intensity the screen does do a lot.

Melahny: I am pondering over your question as it was just the thing my dad did years ago with movies and music. The software he used came with the Canon camera he had bought back in the early 2000's. But sorry I cannot advice the right program. I use my phone to ring with only, not to shoot pictures although I can do it. I use a camera, which is much stronger and lots more options to choose from. For editing photos I use Photofiltre mainly, it is free to use and quite simple, yet has a wide range of tools, as Photoshop would have. But it doesn't work with videos. I have a Video Editor on my PC, but I never used the program this far. It came with Windows Pro.

Lailyn: Thanks for opening this advisory thread. It is worthy addition. Something that was definite missing.

[Melahny_oftheWoods]

@Aikári Salmarinian Thanks Aiks :) I may check out Photofiltre as I like to edit photos too and would need cover art for some poems and books & things. Maybe you are thinking of Windows Movie Maker from your PC? I should have mentioned I have a Chromebook so options are more limited. Although I do have a Windows PC in storage, though it's not very good and I have no where currently to set it up to work. I will try it out if I can't find anything on Chromebook.

[Fuin Elda]

You could try Capcut? It's free (it does have a paid variant that allows for better captioning. The other option if you don't care is TikTok. It's actually got a decently easy to use UI for making poetry videos and captioning them.

I"ll admit I do a fair amount of editing in Tiktok and then save it before uploading it because you can do that and have it watermark free but with the captions.

Well you're going quite a bit over my head lol, I'm a photography noob. What do you mean by burn spots? The bright white part? I'm less concerned with the glossy gems coming through (although they are one thing I find consistently looks better in person than in picture) more in general with improving the quality of the photos that I take. Another thing that I think don't come across very well are more subtle gradients of color (e.g. from the base to the darkest parts) -- obviously as a painter I can greatly improve here but I still find it more noticeable in person than in picture. The highest highlights consequently don't always come across unless they're very starkly contrasting with a base color.

Thanks for all the advice and great idea for a thread!

Yeah lighting is the biggest part.

Burn spots in film is yeah your bright whites (in film processing you burn out an image it goes white because its burned all the information out of that area its gone so white.) Honestly yeah it's quite likely the AI leveling a lot of the contrast in that regard which as a noob can be tricky and I'm useless for helping with Apple products I find them overly expensive for technology that they boast. My biggest suggestion would be to do something along the lines of playing with contrast in post editing if Apple will allow it was well as saturation highlights and low lights. YOu can also try playing with the settings while taking the photos. (As someone suggested a macro setting would be good)

Basically the trick is Phones AI all your photos. They have for the last 7 years. and their AI is getting better less prone to wiping out data but it still does a lot of alterations because.... Phones are meant for social media which is all a lie as I like to put it.