Lighting for Glass Studio

Lighting Challenges for Art Glass Studioe
Coast Chimes

Since moving into our new home almost 4 years ago, I have had the pleasure of space for a small gallery, so I can be open to the public and participate in our local Sunshine Coast Art Crawl.

A major challenge has been lighting. Many of my works fall into the suncatcher category, and really come alive when bright sunlight is shining through from behind the glass. We have a lot of rain, cloudy dark days, so it is really tough to explain to people dropping by how the glass is not showing at its best.

Lighting from behind with strong lights tends to blind people, as the light leaks out from behind right into their eyes. A lot of lighting also throughs the colors of the glass-- not natural, and not as pretty as sunlight.

I got the idea of using fairy lights, and ordered one sample string from Amazon. I thought they worked pretty well, and could work really well with a few more strings. Those on Amazon were expensive, and so I ordered five sets from eBay, for much less money. Sadly, those from eBay are okay, but just a bit less bright and a bit more yellow than my Amazon string. They do not shine through the glass very well. Sigh. Solution still not found.

You can visit my website to see all my wind chimes and suncatchers, photographed with natural sunlight behind the glass, of course. Visit Coast Chimes.

Picture of My Creations

Kaleidoscope Glass and Copper Handcrafted Wind Chime

Ever since we moved to our new house, I have struggled— really struggled —with taking decent pictures of my works. Now, after more than a year, I discovered that morning light coming through the semi-transparent metal fence, with the ocean far down below, makes for a very interesting background. How could this possibly take me over a year to discover? I don't know-- I am just happy to have found it.

As soon as I realized how much better the pictures could look, I spent a week retaking almost all my art work. Thats over one hundred items! You can see the updated images on my website, at Coast Chimes.com.  I'm very proud of my designs, and now I am a little proud of my pictures.

Natural Light for Picture Taking

Glass and Copper Kaleidoscope Wind Chime
available at Coast Chimes

Taking good pictures of my work is definitely one of the biggest, if not the biggest, challenge. But it is so important, I know I need to keep trying.

After determining that my indoor photo studio lights were not doing justice to my works with glass (okay for beach stones, driftwood), I moved back outside to take advantage of natural sunlight. Side-by-side, it was immediately clear that natural light was far superior. So I retook all the pictures. I was somewhat happier with the resulting images-- not thrilled, but less unhappy. I thought early morning, blue sky, indirect sunlight, was the best.

But there was one last kaleidoscope wind chime that I forgot to take pictures of. So although yesterday was quite overcast, I decided to get it done. Well, it turned out that the overcast sky was better than blue sky!

Now I think thin white high clouds are the very best. Today is more thick, grey clouds, so I don't believe that would be any good. But you can be sure that the next bright cloudy day, I will be back out there, trying to capture the perfect image.

Top Section, Detail Image, Kaleidoscope Wind Chime

At last~ Decent light!

Beach glass inspired kaleidoscope wind chime. Five copper chimes with a beach stone clapper. For more information, or to bid on this wind chime, Click here.

It's been a long, cold, wet, dark winter. For most of my work, I'm outside in unheated spaces. So it's been hard. If it's not so cold my fingers freeze, it's wet, which makes working with wood very challenging. But the worse is trying to take decent pictures. For that, I need light!

At long last, the sun was shining yesterday and I broke my schedule of going to Vancouver each Wednesday to take advantage of it. The light was really great for only about forty-five minutes, and I can tell you that was a busy three quarters of an hour! I took over three hundred pictures (each piece gets numerous pictures, and then I choose the best of the lot).

It was worth it. There is no doubt that the image is the most important element for selling my work online. So I'm very happy to have been able to get some decent pictures. Now to finish sorting through them all, and to update those on my website, as most are not so great.

My new website is into version 4.5 now. It's getting there. More on that later.