Tuesday, June 29, 2010

The Color Purple

I am in a block swap and July is my month to decide what kind of block I want the other members to make. After looking at swap blocks from other bees and changing my mind from day to day, I finally chose a variation of Red Pepper Quilts' scrappy quilt.


Instead of scrappy, I have decided to go with a "color wheel" theme. Each member of the swap picked a color, and going out in the mail today is a 6 1/2" square of white Kona cotton and a little stack of ten tone-on-tone prints in a specific color, and each person is encouraged to add some fabric from her own stash. (Yep, two people picked orange--hooray!)

I had made a sample block in purple, which I then tried to photograph. It turned out to be really difficult to get a true representation of purple. It kept photographing as blue. I'm sure it had to be fabric, not the photographer. So then I tried playing with the white balance settings on my camera. These are the crummy pictures I came up with.
I finally did something I hardly ever do: photograph with the flash on. Whew. The white really got bleached out, but the purple looks a little better.

I'm pretty happy with the block and I think the quilt will be awesome.

But is there someone out there with photography hints?

12 comments:

05 08
Grandma G said... #

My camera doesn't like doing purple sometimes, either. Just certain ones, it seems. It doesn't like motorcycle purple, but it'll do irises or violas. Weird.

Jennifer said... #

I'm not a very good photographer but my husband is. I'll ask him for his tips on purple!

What a great idea for your blocks!

Jennifer :)

Needled Mom said... #

That will be awesome!!! I love the colors too.

Kris said... #

I was having this problem with my old camera and when I bought my new one the guy at the camera store explained that it actually has to do the with camera itself. The camera allows all kinds of light in, including infrared light. The camera has technology that filters the infrared back out and the purples come out funny when that technology is filtering poorly (and you can't change this). You can see if your camera doing it by pointing your tv remote at and you'll see the normally invisible light. He explained that the nicer the camera, the better the filtering. So that's not a solution, but I found it comforting to at least know the problem.

Kate said... #

This quilt is going to be gorgeous!

CitricSugar said... #

Purple is not photogenic. It is always replaced by an impostor at the very last second.

I'd've picked orange, too. :-)

Katie said... #

Love it! Your inspiration quilt is one of my favorites too :) Fun to see you last weekend!

Marit said... #

I can only agree with you, purple is difficult to capture correctly. My best result for my resent purple quilt was to take the pictures outside on an overcast day...

Love your design for the bee quilt!

; )

And thank you for a lovely visit!

Lisa said... #

great idea!

wishes, true and kind said... #

You picked a great block for your bee (it's hard, isn't it?)! Can't wait to see all the blocks as they come back to you.

JHNickodemus said... #

Oh oh oh! Cindy! I just did a happy dance for this quilt! One in every color I LOOOOOOOVE it! I shoulda gotten in on that one!

The Luedtke Family said... #

One of my graduate school professors' hair always looked deep purple in the flourescent lit lecture hall right after she died it. Light with colors must be tricky!