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Friday Slide Show: The Crystal Paperweight
26 July 2024
We are, by nature, not a fan of paperweights. Paper doesn't sit around here very long. It's slit, folded, torn, tossed, filed or crumpled but it doesn't sit. So what use could we possibly have for paperweights?
Nobody, however, said beauty was utilitarian. So we just couldn't leave this crystal paperweight at the old house we were emptying of treasures even if we had no use for it. There's no mark on it but it looks to us like a Waterford piece. Not worth more than $30, probably, but who said beauty had to be expensive?
We brought it home and instinctively put it on top of a pile of red folders we keep drafts of our work in. The stack of folders were sitting on our drawing table for review before being filed away. An edit or two awaited them first.
Drawing tables are not horizontal but angled to make the top of a sheet of paper no further from your gaze than the bottom. That's great for drawing but not so great for stacking folders.
But this heavy crystal paperweight knew what just to do. Sit there.
It has held those folders in place for weeks now. During which we've gradually been converted into a fan of paperweights. God knows the Giants aren't holding our fan enthusiasm this year. Again.
But only this week did we realize what fun it would be to photograph the thing.
Go online and look for crystal paperweights and you'll see a lot of monochrome and desaturated color images. They are impossible to capture realistically.
That's because they play with light. The cut it, bend it, sit on it, ricochet it, bounce it. It defracts. It reflects. It takes whatever color is within sight and dances with it. It's wild.
So rather than fight that, we went with it. We shot from all angles but without artificial light. Just the diffused light coming in the window on a foggy day. Some of the images were warm, some cold, depending on what angle we took.
As we edited the images in Lightroom, we played with the saturation and exposure to emphasize that color. And we did have fun. Lots of fun.
When we were done, we put the paperweight back on top of the red folders where it could do what it does best. Sit.
