11/21/10 - "Twice-Mended Mug"

Twice-Mended Mug

     My favorite coffee mug broke for the second time the other day. As I was hand washing it in the sink (In fact, all of our dishes and utensils are hand washed; I have a dishwasher, but it hasn't been used since I moved aboard three years ago) the previously broken-in-four-places handle detached from the body of the mug. Two of the prior Krazy Glued mends held - the two visible in the photo - and two did not.

     After re-attaching the handle this morning - utilizing what remained of the nearly congealed, very viscous Krazy Glue - and securing the repair job with a rubber band (which originally arrived here with a produce purchase) I placed the mug down on our kitchen table. The contrasting colors of  mug, place mat and rubber band, in conjunction with dramatic side-lighting from the early morning sun, were very striking - immediately captured my photographic attention.

     In a matter of minutes I had taken a couple of test shots, rotated the mug a bit to cast some more shadows, adjusted the exposure parameters, padded-out the maroon background with a couple more hastily-arranged place mats, and shot two more photos. This final image, the last of the four I took - after about an hour's work uploading the photos to my laptop, converting them from RAW to TIFF, selecting the best image of the four, some judicious cropping, very slight tweaking of shadow details and saturation in Photoshop and uploading to my account on deviantART (for copyright protection purposes) - is what you see here.

Links:
"Twice-Mended Mug" prints available here.
More about Adobe Photoshop.
More about deviantART.

Camera Data

Make:Canon
Model:Canon EOS 5D
Shutter Speed:1/332 second
Aperture:F/13.0
Focal Length:53 mm
ISO Speed:200
Date Taken:Nov 21, 2010, 8:10:44 AM
Software:Adobe Photoshop CS Windows