Colors & Pictures

As I've learned, taking good pictures of fiber articles is difficult. Taking good pictures of dark fiber is much, much harder. I'm not the only yarn/fiber/knitting blogger who has problems taking good pictures. I've seen countless mentions of the difficulty of getting accurate pictures.

My digital camera is almost ten years old -- a veritable antique. In normal mode, I take pictures with 720 kilopixel resolution -- pathetic in the modern world, but astounding for the price when I purchased the camera. I remember telling my mother about this camera when I first purchased it. She was rather dubious about paying so much money just to put pictures on the computer. Then she received the first e-mail with pictures of my new house and her attitude changed completely. Not too long after that first e-mail, her birthday present to me was every accessory she could find for my digital camera. It has been a really good camera for me, but I struggle when taking pictures of fiber -- particularly darker fiber.

I've been trying to expand the inventory available in our on-line store. Good pictures are one limiting factor. Sunday, in exasperation, I spread a clean sheet outside, put tablecloths on some tables, hauled the entire inventory outside, and started taking pictures in the bright sunshine. It was quite a production. I think I snapped over 100 pictures in almost as many minutes. Almost half of the pictures are usable and some new items should be available in the store sometime this week. Some of the pictures of dark fiber worked -- we will have black roving for sale soon. In addition, improved pictures of some items should also be available.

Bright sunshine really improves picture quality.

However, while almost half of the pictures turned out to be usable, many of those decent pictures were of the same item. I still have a large number of items that must be photographed yet again.

Which brings me to the second portion of today's article -- alpaca color.

White alpacas, like white sheep, are most common because white can be dyed more different colors than any other natural color of alpacas. However, alpacas in the United States are shown in sixteen different colors, and the international fiber trade recognizes something like 23 natural colors of alpaca fiber. The problem, as I see it, is that they're leaving out as many colors as they're including.

For example, take the alpacas Toriano, Drake, Carmella, Francesca, Joy, El Varon, Shyanne, Georgia, Barney, Obie, and Jubilee. I have had the pleasure of working with fiber from all of these alpacas and we have fiber from all these animals in inventory at the moment. They range in color from beige (Toriano and Drake), through fawn (Carmella, Francesca), brown (Joy, El Varon, Shyanne, Georgia) to black (Barney, Obie, Jubilee). The problem is that no two of these alpacas are the same color. Even the three black alpacas are three different colors.

Toriano is a uniform beige, while Drake's fiber fades from a medium fawn along his spine to white on the belly. When I card them, the rovings look superficially similar, but if you used them in the same garment, it would be like using two different color lots. Drake's fiber has fibers of enough different colors, it produces a slight heathered effect when spun. Toriano's fiber produces an absolutely uniform yarn. Finally, there is a difference in softness -- Drake is much older than Toriano and his fiber just isn't as soft. I can't just advertise "beige" alpaca fiber because there are subtle differences in the different colors of "beige" fiber I offer.

Carmella and Francesca also look like they're the same color until you put them next to each other. I selected these two fleeces for color and texture uniformity. Only after washing and carding them, did I realize the slight difference. But the problem doesn't stop there. I don't have two slightly different colors of fawn fiber, but three because I blended some of Carmella's fiber with some of Francesca's. The blended roving is a richer color than either Carmella's or Francesca's fleece alone, but it's yet a third, very similar, color.

The browns give me similar difficulties. The lightest brown fiber I have is only slightly darker than Francesca, while the darkest looks black in poor light. In between, I have a number of shades of color, so that while I can tell Georgia's fiber from Joy's very easily, I have to look close to distinguish it from Shyanne's.

Even black alpaca fiber isn't necessarily uniform. The show system recognizes two colors of black -- bay black and true black. In the show system, bay black is a dark brown that's so dark it looks black -- rather like French roast coffee. True black is really black, but there are color tone variations even among true black fleeces. The line between dark brown and bay black is really quite arbitrary and if you talk to ten different alpaca breeders, you'll get at least twelve different descriptions of the difference between bay black and true black.

In good light at a fiber show, all these subtle color variations aren't nearly the problem I make them out to be -- in fact they're probably an asset. At fiber shows, fiber buyers generally notice the subtle differences and get complete fiber lots. Color differences are generally celebrated unless somebody is trying to match existing fiber. Over the internet with every computer displaying color differently, and using an elderly digital camera to take the pictures, distinguishing different colors becomes a real problem. I'm still working on it and this is part of why I've been so slow in adding inventory to the store. I'm not sure I can show the color of Carmella's or Francesca's fleece with 100% accuracy, but I don't want my customers buying one roving each of Carmella and Francesca expecting them to be the same color.

I have always thought the subtle variations in natural fiber colors are wonderful to work with, but there are days when I am sorely tempted to start with white fiber and dye!