This Is What I Meant

There are things I guess at because they seem logical and often it turns out I'm right. There are things I have learned because without thinking I made a poor choice and now I know from bitter experience. And these things that I know, whether via clever guesswork or via learning the hard way, apparently I disregard from time to time.

Apparently I'm pretty excellent at fooling myself.

One of the things I have learned is that when I'm taking pictures for beading instructions, beads with a matte finish make for clearer pictures than beads with a shiny finish. Most of the time. Opaque is better than clear. Plain is better than lustre. Medium shades are better than pale shades and better than dark shades. Most greys are just Not Good. All these things I know and I generally pick colours for a project I'm photographing step by step so that the pictures are actually useful.

And yet, sometimes I take a sequence of photographs for instructions for a project in which there are basically seed beads and only occasionally something else, and still I insist on using transparent seed beads with a shiny rainbow lustre finish in which it's impossible to see what's happening.

Like this:

It's pretty bad, right? Even I can't see what it's supposed to be illustrating and I made this stuff up so I ought to know.

I have about a gajillion picture for TWO projects using these beads.

Not. Very. Smart.

This is what I meant to do, really:

Much better, right?

And also pretty when finished so it's not as though I have to use ugly beads for pictures. Jeez.

Perhaps I like making these things. I mean, I guess I just made three of them in the last couple of days (not counting this one) and now I've run out of the rivolis.

Huh. Shopping ahead.