A Blog About Stone Gathering, Tumbling and Polishing, and Rocks and Landscapes, from New Zealand – With Musical Interludes (john.tumblestone@gmail.com)
This Post is partly about the conditions under which stones are photographed. I had two days off from fossicking – one day to recover my energy after Sunday’s tiring activities and one day when the wind and rain were discouraging. In fact, we had quite a storm from Monday night through to Tuesday noon. I spent two hours on the beach on Wednesday morning, arriving at the Gemstone Beach carpark about 90 minutes after low tide. There had been a few rain showers on the drive there and the temperature was nine degrees, and only one other car was there at the time of my arrival. However, during my fossick, there was very little wind and only a couple of very light showers, and I soon warmed up. There was a bit more driftwood than usual on the beach, especially at the high tide line.
The Taunoa Stream spreads out and becomes braided as it gets close to the sea. Made it easy to ford.
1.5 kms to the west, the Waimeamea River was too deep and swift to ford.
Looking west at low tide.
Looking east at low tide.
Rain showers in the far west.
Driftwood near the Taunoa Stream. Pahia Hill in the distance.
Driftwood near the Waimeamea River.
Stones high up the beach – wet today.
The Taunoa Stream, near the carpark, was only a little higher than usual, and had become quite braided as it flowed across the beach. This meant it was shallow enough to cross easily. However, further along the beach, the Waimeamea River was too high to ford. In between the two, there were lots of wet stones on the beach, including these 12. Wednesday afternoon was too cloudy for good photos to be taken of the stones so I took them in the sunshine on Thursday afternoon.
For this Post I took some photos of the stones while they were dry to show how dull they look compared to when wet. Often a hint of their colour and patterns is there, but only when wet and in the sun do the glorious details become clear. The first three stones include trace fossils. Stone 1 has a black trace.
The 12 stones, dry.
The 12 stones, wet.
Stone 1, black trace fossil, when dry.
Stone 1, black trace fossil, when wet.
Stone 2 is a breccia of argillite fragments, one of the fragments containing two small trace fossils. Stone 3 is a small (2 cm long) stone with red trace fossils.
Stone 2 dry.
Stone 2, pic in sun.
Stone 3 dry. It’s very small.
Stone 3 wet.
Stone 4 is a nice shiny banded argillite. Stone 5 may also be banded argillite but the “bands” have been pushed around significantly. Stone 6 is an interesting whitish quartzite with some fascinating patterns.
Stone 4 dry.
Stone 4 wet.
Stone 5 dry.
Stone 5, pic in sun.
Stone 6 dry.
Stone 6 wet.
Stones 7 and 8 are both pink thulites. Stone 7 is very smooth – most thulites I have seen are more like the “bumpy” Stone 8. Stone 9 is a fascinating green stone that, upon closer inspection, proves to be very complex in its composition.
Stone 7 dry.
Stone 7 wet.
Stone 8 dry.
Stone 8 wet.
Stone 9 dry.
Stone 9, pic in sun.
The white “spots” in Stone 10 caught my eye on the beach. Green stones are common on Gemstone Beach and Stone 11 is one such with interesting bands. Stone 12 has flashes of white amid a number of other colours.
Stone 10 dry.
Stone 10 wet.
Stone 11 dry.
Stone 11, pic in sun.
Stone 12 dry.
Stone 12 wet.
I initially took photos of the stones under clouds but I was not satisfied with their quality so waited a day for some sunshine. On a cloudy day, the photos tend to be less clearly focused so that the close-ups, produced by cropping, are less clear. Furthermore, it is much harder to reduce reflections under clouds. Four examples of the differences below, with the photos taken in sunshine lying below the photos taken under cloudy conditions (please note, the close-ups are not always directly comparable):
Stone 2, pic in clouds.
Stone 5, pic in clouds.
Stone 2, pic in sun.
Stone 5, pic in sun.
Stone 9, pic in clouds.
Stone 11, pic in clouds.
Stone 9, pic in sun.
Stone 11, pic in sun.
The next Post in the “Southern Sojourn 2023” Series features a green Gemstone Beach quartzite crisscrossed with silica canyons. The first Post in the Series is hereand the Index to the Series is here.
The eight Kakanui stones with a New Zealand $2 coin for scale.
Kakanui’s Seadown Beach.
I recently returned to New Zealand’s early Spring after a week in tropical Fiji. It takes a while to adjust to home again! In the transition back to blogging, I thought I would post some photos of a few polished stones I had completed at mid-year. I chose a small number of Kakanui stones and, when the sun shone briefly this afternoon, I took some photos of them with my digital camera, a Sony Cyber-Shot model DSC-HX90V. I used an automatic setting, as usual, finding this usually more than adequate, though the focus sometimes needs some care. I have found that bright sunlight outside provides the setting for the least reflections when taking photos of stones.
Preparing the photos for loading onto this Blog, using Picasa software on my laptop, and choosing close-ups for each stone, I realised I was using three different strategies for different types and sizes of stones. So this Post turned into an account of these three close-up photo strategies (I have also used other strategies in the past, though these three are the most frequently utilised). See this Post and this Post (Part 2 of this second one still remains unwritten) for an introduction to my use of the camera and Picasa. (Note: My current camera is a slightly up-dated version of the camera mentioned in these two earlier Posts.)
In my Posts, I often have three “introductory” photos for each stone. First, I may provide a photo of the group of stones featured in a Post, maybe with a coin next to them, to provide a sense of scale. A ruler can be included if accurate dimensions are desired.
The eight Kakanui stones.
The eight Kakanui stones with a New Zealand $2 coin for scale.
The eight Kakanui stones with a New Zealand $2 coin and ruler in mms for scale.
The first individual stone.
Second,the individual stone is shown in my hand, providing again a sense of its size and further detail of its colours and patterns. Third, a photo with the stone filling the frame is shown, usually simply a cropped version of the previous hand-held photo – this takes away the distraction of the background and provides a much better sense of the visual details of the stone itself. The close-ups then explore the details. Usually, each close-up involves simply further cropping, with sometimes some saturation and brightening of the image used to maintain clarity and colour. My camera is set to take large-sized photos – they are usually between 5.7 and 6.3 megabytes. This means that quite a bit of cropping can be done with the images. I then reduce the size of the larger images, using the “Paint” app on my laptop, before posting them onto the Blog, usually to somewhere between 1.1 and 1.5 megabytes.
STRATEGY ONE – CENTRAL PROGRESSIVE ZOOMING
The first close-up strategy is simply a series of crops showing more and more detail of the central part of the stone. For example, this limonite prase (jasper) stone is relatively small (3.5 cms by 3 cms), and a total of three crops is adequate to provide a good idea of its patterning:
The first individual stone.
Close-up of the first stone.
The colour and focus does not encourage further zooming in, there being a loss of sharpness with further cropping.
With the next stone, a yellow quartzite, one further stage of cropping is able to be used. The stone is a little larger (4 cms by 3 cms) and the photo was clear enough to allow it:
This kind of quartzite, with tiny clear quartz crystals in it, benefits from the close-ups which reveal the crystals as well as the clouds of pastel colours. A slightly larger yellow quartzite (below) is given the same treatment, though the zoom is not focused onto the centre of the stone but slightly to the right of centre, a more interesting section.
The same number of crops used on the next stone, a volcanic one, is less successful – the stone is smaller (3 cms by 3 cms), and as it is more spherical it is more difficult to get a clear image.
However, the close-ups do provide a better sense of the the way the stone is constructed.
STRATEGY TWO – HALY BY HALF
The second close-up strategy I used with these stones is to divide the stone in two and zoom in on each half. This is useful where there is a diversity of colours and/or patterns across the face of the stone, and especially where the stone is a little larger. The next stone is most likely another quartzite but with some light green in it. It is elongated, being 5 cms long and 3 cms wide. It makes sense to divide the image into two, left and right, then zoom in to each side, using cropping. The left side first:
And now the right side (repeating the first two photos of the whole stone):
It is the use of “saturation”, aiming to lift the colour a little, that results in the light brown hue of the close-ups. In this case, the changes are not as successful as they should be, and further adjustments need to be made to return the colour more closer to the original.
I treated the next stone, a small hematite jasper (3 cms by 3 cms), in the same way – zooming in first to the left side, then to the right side.
The same strategy in a more simplified form can be used with a small stone or one where the image does not allow further zooming. The next stone, a white one, has only one close-up of each side (top and bottom) as the image was not sharp enough to go beyond this, though I had hoped for better.
STRATEGY THREE – SELECTIVE ZOOMING
Finally, I used a third strategy for a stone that has a complex of patterns on its surface. Different areas have quite different compositions. In this case, I used cropping to zoom in on three different areas.
The stone is one of the larger ones, 4.5 cms by 4 cms but, more importantly, its visual character allows for an interesting exploration of selective sections.
When taking photos of individual stones, I never know how they will come out, how they will respond to a series of crops, and just what will be revealed as the details become clear.
Polished stones are very difficult to photograph well and accurately. Reflections are a real problem, as is the three dimensional character of the stones when they are photographed up close. Furthermore, a polished stone actually looks differently when viewed by eye in or out of sunlight. The sun brings out depth and colour. What kind of photograph might represent the true characteristics of a stone?
My small digital camera is a Sony Cyber-shot DSC-WX500 with a 30x optical zoom lens. I always use the camera on an automatic setting for focus and exposure as I find this produces very good results. It is quite good at shooting in low light conditions but struggles at times in bright sunlight. I am able to take reasonable close-up shots with it – it has an automatic macro-setting that is said to be best at 5 cms distance.
For managing and editing photos, I use Picasa, an image organizer and image viewer for digital photos. Google offered Picasa as freeware between 2004 and 2016, but then discontinued it (replacing it with Google Photos). I am able to use Picasa still, but Google no longer offers support for it. Picasa allows me to do some standard things like rotating and cropping images, and adding text to photos. Cropping has produced the “up close” and detailed images of the Stones of the Day. Picasa also provides me with the means to intensify the colour (using a “saturation” feature) and well as brighten an image. I use the Paint app to resize photos (for posting on this blog or on Facebook etc.).
I have used these functions to produce the often stunning photos of the Stones of the Day. Below are examples of the original photos and the images I produced from them using Picasa.
First, Stone Twenty, a yellow quartzite from Birdlings Flat, is a good example of how “saturation” was used to inrensify colour. Here is an original photo and the photo as used in the Blog Post for Stone Twenty:
The original photo.
The same photo as used in the Blog Post cropped a little and “saturated” a little to bring out the yellow.
In the two sets below, the original photos were cropped before a little “saturation” was used to bring out the yellow:
The original photo.
The original photo cropped.
The photo as used in the Blog Post, after “saturation”.
The original photo.
The original photo cropped.
“Saturation” used to bring out the yellow.
The “close-ups” were constructed by using “cropping” to focus on only part of the stone, the basis being the “saturated” images to the right of the two sets above.
Stone Twenty close-up.
Stone Twenty close-up.
Stone Twenty-Two, a hydrogrossular garnet, was one of the few stones whose original photos needed little “enhancing” apart from cropping:
The original photo.
The cropped photo used in the Blog Post.
The original photo.
As used in the Blog Post.
The original photo.
Cropped for the Blog Post.
The “close-ups” were produced by further cropping of the cropped photos:
Stone Twenty-Two up close.
Stone Twenty-Two up close.
Stone Twenty-Two up close.
For this Stone, I also used “saturation” to intensify the colour of one of the “close-ups”:
Stone Twenty-Two up close.
The same close-up with more “saturation”.
Stone Twenty-Seven has very complex patterns within it, that are able to be brought out by cropping and a little saturation:
The original photo.
Photo as used in Blog Post.
The original photo.
As used in the Blog Post.
The original photo.
As used in the Blog Post.
Sometimes a little more “saturation” and/or “brightness” was used in a “close-up”:
In June, my sister Helen and her grandson Sam came with me on a visit to Gemstone Beach. I took 15 of Sam’s stones home with me to polish (see “Sam’s Stones“) and I also took a number of stones that Helen had collected. I used two three pound barrels to tumble their stones in 320 grit and then combined them in one four pound barrel to polish them in two grades of tin oxide. Altogether, I polished 104 stones for Helen:
Helen’s 104 polished stones from Gemstone Beach
The 55 smallest of Helen’s polished stones.
29 medium-sized polished stones collected by Helen from Gemstone Beach.
The 20 largest of Helen’s polished stones from Gemstone Beach.
In this series of Posts, I will describe how I take photos of stones and how I prepare the images for posting on TumbleStone. All the photos of stones used in the examples are from the batch I recently polished for Helen.
MY CAMERA
My small digital camera is a Sony Cyber-shot DSC-WX500 with a 30x optical zoom lens which I find quite good at shooting in low light conditions. I am able to take reasonable close-up shots with it – it has an automatic macro-setting that is said to be best at 5 cms distance. All the photos taken by myself that are posted on this Blog, of beaches and landscapes and stones, have been taken with this camera.
The above photos of Helen’s stones were taken inside the shed where I do my tumble polishing. In fact, they were taken next to the sink where I empty the tumblers and wash the stones, away from any natural light. There is a small florescent tube light above the sink and two lights, with compact fluorescent bulbs, along the roof beam of the shed.
The sink and work bench area in the shed.
I often place stones on the workbench to be photographed – notice the florescent light to the right.
I have sometimes taken photos at the workbench, near where the tumblers are sited, under this window, but they tend to be more washed-out in colour.
The work bench at the window.
The two overhead lights in the shed, using compact florescent bulbs.
Sometimes I take photos of stones in my hand just inside the door to try to avoid sources of reflection.
I often step outside the shed to take photos of stones in my hand in the sunlight.
The outside of the door to the shed.
Generally stones look their best in direct sunlight, their colours and patterns and grains shown in a lively manner. However, the reflections off polished stones, even a reflection of the camera itself, can often interfere with good images. Sometimes the sun moving behind clouds makes the light conditions better and reduces reflections. Moving inside to low light conditions can eliminate reflections to a large degree (if there are no windows or other light sources nearby) but then any minor movement blurs the photo and the stone’s colour often looks more washed out. This could be overcome by mounting the camera on a tripod, but I have not yet done so. Different lighting conditions also highlight scratches and other “imperfections” in a stone in different ways.
Examples of photos of several of Helen’s stones under two different light conditions, inside the door of the shed and outside (the photos are as they came out of the camera):
Photo taken inside the shed
Photo taken outside the shed
The photo above left was taken inside the shed. The stone’s colour is slightly more washed-out compared to the photo above left taken outside the shed in dull sunlight. The reflections showing on the stone are different, with the light source(s) inside interfering less. The next stone is a layered grey mudstone:
Photo taken inside the shed
Photo taken outside the shed
In the photo taken outside the shed (above right), the shadowed reflection of the camera and photographer can actually be seen in the stone. The two photos of the jasper stone below also show the same issues with colour and reflection.
Photo taken inside the shed.
Photo taken outside the shed.
Below is a stone that is a little less shiny than the previous ones. The inside photo (left) is a distinctly different hue than the outside photo (right).
IN HAND
I often take photos of stones after a batch has just been polished, which means I may have anywhere between 40 and 70 to record. I might photograph only a selection, maybe the most interesting ones, but there are always quite a few to do. That is one of the reasons why I take photos of the stones in my hand – I can quickly move a stone closer to the camera if I wish, I can change the lighting conditions by moving the stone around or by going outside, and I can do a number of stones in a relatively short time (though it might still take 20 minutes or more).
PICASA
When I download the photos from my camera’s memory card onto my laptop, I open them in Picasa, an image organizer and image viewer for organizing and editing digital photos. Below is the “home” page when a photo is opened in Picasa. On the left is a kind of dashboard, with “Commonly needed fixes” (the spanner icon) selected. This shows options for “Crop”, “Straighten”, “Redeye” etc.
Picasa “home” page
“Commonly needed fixes” in Picasa
Google offered Picasa as freeware between 2004 and 2016, but then discontinued it. They replaced it with Google Photos. I am able to use Picasa still, but Google no longer offers support for it (not that I have ever needed such support). I will describe what I do with Picasa and I assume that other photo programs or services will be able to do similar things.
In the next section of this Post, I discuss how I use the “Crop” function then I will look at the use of the “Straighten” function. My use of other Picasa functions will be examined in the second Post in this series.
CROPPING
I crop photos of stones for three reasons – to balance the elements in the photo, to get a detailed enough image of the stone, and to “zoom in” very closely on the pattern, grain, colour and texture of the stone.
Cropping in Picasa
The “Crop” icon in the dashboard
Here are three examples of progressive cropping of the image of a stone (click on them to view the full photos). The first image of each of the three (far left) is the original photo, the second is the cropping to reduce the edges around the stone to frame it for viewing, the third is a “close-up” of the majority of the stone surface, with the fourth “zooming in” more closely to provide even greater detail:
The main limitation of the most-cropped image (the far right ones) is the possibility of blurring if the focus was not very good originally. This can be off-set a certain degree by using the “Sharpen” option (see next Post).
STRAIGHTEN
Another option provided in Picasa is to “straighten” a photo. This is particularly useful for photos of beaches where you really want the horizon line to be as close to horizontal as possible. With this photo of the Back Beach at Riverton, the original photo (below left) was on an angle, but can easily be “straightened” (below right):
Before straightening
After straightening
Picasa provides a bar along which the cursor can move an “indicator”. Grid lines are laid over the image so it is possible to line up a horizon with one of the horizontal lines of the grid. The main limitation is that you lose part of the edge of the image as you straighten it (it “zooms in” as it straightens).
“Straighten” on the dashboard
Grid lines appear over the photo image
Moving the “indicator” leftwards straightens the image
“Straighten” can also be used to change the orientation of a photo of a stone if you want to move it around less than a 45 degrees rotation (the “rotation” function is below the image, just to the left of centre):
The “rotation” functions in Picasa
It can be useful to crop an image of a stone as close as possible to its edges to highlight the stone itself. But if the photo has the stone lying at an angle to the vertical or horizontal, the “rotation” function won’t help:
Photo of a stone lying at an angle
Cropping of the original photo
Rotation of the original photo counter-clockwise
Rotation of the original photo clockwise
The “straighten” function allows a less-than 45 degree rotation of the stone, but at the cost of a proportion of the image:
Photo of a stone lying at an angle
Using “straighten” to full effect, moving the stone clockwise
After saving after the first use of “straighten”, it can be straightened again, until the loss of image at the top prevents more
The photo after the first straighten
The photo after the second straighten
The cropped straightened photo
The two end results – at left is the cropped non-straightened image, at right is the cropped straightened image. The latter is closer to the perpendicular so that cropping will end up with a “closer” view of the stone:
Cropping of the original photo
The cropped straightened photo
In Post Two of this Series [not yet available], I will look at the use of the “saturation” and “brighten” functions, which are crucial for the quality of the image of a stone.
TumbleStone 