How I Photograph Crochet for Etsy

I've spent the last few evenings photographing crochet amigurumi for an Etsy page my wife set up.

Here's the little studio setup:

• Canon 60D (currently running about $250 on eBay for a used body)

• Canon - EF 50mm f/1.8 STM Standard Lens

• The off-camera flash + trigger setup Peter McKinnon describes here

• A cowboy studio umbrella thing and stand

• White foam roll from Michaels taped to the wall

• White foam boards

One thing to note is that the picture of the setup is using natural light but the product images themselves are only using the flash. If you turn the flash off, the image is almost completely black. ISO is set to 100, aperture is 10 to keep the whole item in focus, and the exposure is up to 1/100 since I'm holding the camera body. I was using a tripod at first to have a longer exposure but with the 50mm lens (prime lens with no zoom), it's tricky to move back and forth in a small space like this.

Here are some more examples of the animals. I'm still working on getting consistent lighting across all the pictures but individually I think they represent the work well.

I also haven't figured out how to show the scale in a way that doesn't detract from the items. Here's the Etsy page.

There are a ton of great YouTube videos on lighting products but I think this one was the most helpful for thinking about lighting product with one light source. I have not been able to get consistent results from a lamp like this but it's the same idea with the flash reflecting off the umbrella.

Synthesizers and Star Wars

The journey of learning synthesizers has taken me down some terrific YouTube suggestion rabbit holes but no video stands out like this 27 minute masterpiece by Christian Henson Music.

This is a wonderful technical discussion of the "stuff" that makes up acoustic sounds we hear in the world versus synthesized sounds. For instance, if you strike a piano key on a real piano, you hear the note itself as well as these tiny notes "around" the note called harmonics. You also hear bits of the other strings in the piano, as well as the little echoes and things inside the instrument and the room.

A synthesized piano note has essentially the note itself in a much more simple form. It doesn't make it "bad", but just like the uncanny valley effect of digitally animated human faces, our brains know something is off.

For me, when I think of the Uncanny Valley effect, I think of two great movies: "Toy Story" and Star Wars Rogue One.

In Toy Story, the animated toys register in my brain without any major complaint. I just accept that the toys are talking and move on. But the computer-animated humans throw off the mental acceptance of the universe and break me out of the story. Something is... off.

Likewise, Rogue One is my favorite Star Wars movie. I love how you don't need to know anything else about Star Wars to enjoy it and how the characters legitimately do not know anything about the rest of Star Wars. In every other Star Wars movie, the characters all seem to have seen the other movies and seem to wink at the audience.

The only thing that throws off Rogue One is the inclusion of a few main characters from the originals, Grand Moff Tarkin and Princess Leia. When I think of the movie, my brain immediately thinks of those CGI characters and creates a tiny break in trust towards the story.*

In the second half of the video, Christian goes through how he processes a synthesized note to build out the harmonics, distortion and other audio colors around the note to create a sound that our brains can trust as more pleasing.

Up until this video, I had thought of the analogue vs digital debate as a bit of a snobby farce. Now I'm not so sure, especially after seeing it visually represented in the spectrum analyzer.

One of the top comments has been rattling around in my mind since reading it and I think it's worth sharing. This is from user Wells Oliver:

Reminds me of the great Eno quote: “Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty about a new medium will surely become its signature. CD distortion, the jitteriness of digital video, the crap sound of 8-bit - all of these will be cherished and emulated as soon as they can be avoided. It’s the sound of failure: so much modern art is the sound of things going out of control, of a medium pushing to its limits and breaking apart. The distorted guitar sound is the sound of something too loud for the medium supposed to carry it. The blues singer with the cracked voice is the sound of an emotional cry too powerful for the throat that releases it. The excitement of grainy film, of bleached-out black and white, is the excitement of witnessing events too momentous for the medium assigned to record them.”

Of course, this raises the question of whether the uncanny valley effect in modern CGI will acquire its own charm over time. We may look forward to tutorials on recreating the "slightly off" CGI of Rogue One and Toy Story in years to come.

* My wife used to watch General Hospital, a long running soap opera that has to deal with the loss of actors all the time, either permanently due to death and career changes or just for a few days due to sick leave. How do they handle it? An announcement at the beginning of the show that "The part of character x will be played by x." That's it. They move on with the story and no one acknowledges a thing. I asked my wife if she was ok with that - of course. That's how it works... as a space "soap opera", I wonder if the reaction to Rogue One would have been more generous with a bit of old fashion understudy switching.

The Best Ableton Live Teacher on YouTube is a Children's Puppet

I woke up this morning thinking about a puppet.

Over the last few months, I have been working on learning Ableton Live, a piece of software for producing and recording music. It was developed for DJs and dance music (i.e. the "live" part of the name) but it is incredibly powerful for creating all sorts of music.

Ableton is not necessarily user friendly - many people install the software and abandon it within a few minutes. I was definitely one of those people and learning Ableton has been on my list for years while the (expensive) program sat dormant on my hard drive.

The initial learning curve has created a ripe market for a thriving YouTube ecosystem of free tutorials by a range of teachers, musicians, hobbyists, and pros. Ill Factor's Beat Academy, Andrew Huang, and Underbelly's You Suck at Producing are some of my favorites.

And then there's Reid Stefan, a professional producer who has millions of streams on Spotify, incredible tutorials, and a massive following. On the Internet though, he's a puppet.

Initially, it feels like a gimmick. Over time, the content starts to take over and you start to trust the puppet. At some point you forget you're watching a puppet and you just *learn*, which is the whole point.

How do you make a real connection with someone else across the Internet? How do you do it in a book, a song, a movie? Do you put everything out there?

I've wasted so much time waiting for everything to line up. I'll do it when I lose weight. I'll do it when I don't have any debt. I'll do it when things settle down.

What if I had stopped worrying about how I would be perceived and just start putting things out there? What if I take the things that make me *weird* and put that right there out front? What's the worst that could happen? Rejection? Silence?

Put the work first and do whatever it takes to release the ego. Use a puppet if you have to. Just do the work.

Here's the video that got me thinking about this. The level of skill here is unbelievable. I love how there is no acknowledgement of Reid being a puppet. Amazing.