Submitting Bead Photographs for Publication

Another of my goals is to submit more photographs for publication. Since I'm so happy with the recent photo of Retro Lovebird, I decided this morning to send it out to the wider world.

My first thought was to submit it to Eye Candy, the gallery page in the Internationaal Society of Glass Beadmakers' quarterly publication. However, the deadline for the next issue was last week and the submissions must be made on CD. Rats! I'll do it anyway, but what else would be more immediate gratification?

Then it occurred to me that I could try a submission to the Gallery in Art Jewelry Magazine. I think of their coverage as more metal oriented, but why not try? They made it incredibly easy, too, with online submission. So away the file went. Now I wait anxiously to see if they think it might fit.

One of the things I noticed when doing the submissions was the request to submit an unaltered image if possible. So now I'm kicking myself, since I routinely adjust light levels on my images and the necklace is in Denver, unavailable for reshooting.

Somehow I've fallen into the habit of shooting my photos without worrying too much about the proper exposure. The focus is perfect, but they are usually dark. I just adjust levels quickly in Photoshop. Now I know I should tweak at the camera. It took all of five seconds to fix. I'm supposed to be a hardware geek, and here I am relying on software!

Here is how I adjusted the photo:
Image - Adjust - Levels (Cntl L) -- I used the slider to set full scale to go from 0 to 165 rather than the original 0 to 255

Of course, adjusting at the camera means just extending the exposure time slightly. I use my camera in full manual mode, and I had to change from 1/15 sec to 1/8 sec to correct the error.