The Quilt Photography Workshop: Japanese Fabric Zipper Pouch

 This month's challenge at Beth's "The Quilt Photography Workshop" is all about colour and using white balance to get the truest representation of that colour. To practise using the white balance on my camera (actually a Nokia N8 phone) I decided to use a Japanese fabric zipper pouch I made using a beautiful bundle of fabric from Nunoya.

Nunoya is a Spanish based company specialising in Japanese fabrics retail and wholesale. Their shop is located in Barcelona's historic centre but they also have a very good on line shop. I found out about them at a fair in Milan. Take a look at the Japanese fabrics they stock in their on line shop, you'll be really impressed! From Echino to Nani Iro by Naomi Ito (stunning double gauze fabric), from kawaii to traditional motifs.

Back to the challenge: I started off by taking photos of the pouch using the white balance presets on the phone, taking the same photo using each time with a different setting. Here's the result:

Custom white balance setting

Daylight

Cloudy

Tungsten

Fluorescent

I then tried out the manual exposure  function on the camera. I can only change using preset exposure ranging from -2.0 to + 2.0. Here are the photos I took:

-2.0


-1.5


-1.0


-0.5


+0.5

To finish off, I tired changing the colour of the background, with the same order of white balance: custom, daylight, cloudy, tungsten and fluorescent:

Look at the difference the background makes, it's incredible. Conclusions? My favourite is actually the first photo. I know, after all that, it's the custom white balance setting, on a light background! But to be honest, the truest colours are in the cloudy version. This challenge has been super interesting and I've learned so much!