Art Knifes & Custom Cutlery ~ On the Edge of Perfection

[Buddy Thomason]

Talk about a tiny slice of the pie - this is it. The world of high-end, hand-made, one-of-a-kind custom knives is an interesting niche where photography plays an important role. Technical and artistic challenges provide ample opportunity for 'honing' (pun intended) photographic skills.

As an advanced hobbyist and pilgrim along the path, I cannot claim to be an expert in this field. Experienced yes, but not expert. If there is interest, it could be a fun and educational discussion - as long as I'm not expected to provide all the answers!

This discussion actually started in another area of these forums. I posted three images in this thread http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=55071 and would invite anyone who is interested to take a look.

To continue - Here's an image of a modern tomahawk or 'hawk' by Mark Williams of Hampton, VA.

#4
http://www.fototime.com/D02249FE72F24B7/orig.jpg

This piece is entitled "The Hunt" and features silver wire inlay on the 'haft' - a snake stalking its prey. The 'surprise' inlay on the reverse side of the haft - the mouse - needed to be featured along with a full profile of the hawk. This left a big blank area in the upper right. I created a 'ghost' image of the maker's head to fill this area and balance out the image.

I wanted a background that was complimentary in color but not flat or uniform in appearance. Experimenting with positioning of two soft-boxes eventually yielded what I was after - a relatively dark bottom right corner leading to a lighter upper left corner where the more important part of the hawk is featured - hopefully drawing the viewer's eye along a diagonal line from lower R to upper L. I realize this is contrary to the usual L to R diagonal which is seen as important because the majority of people 'read' an image from L to R. What can I say - I was experimenting as I often do.

I shot the images used here with a Canon 10D, 24-70 F2.8 L wide angle zoom, using a tripod and the mirror lock-up custom function in my cramped little basement studio. Sorry I didn't record the exposure or shutter speed. ISO was 100 and, since I took this before I began to use RAW capture, a large JPG file was then processed in Photoshop CS.

I welcome comments, discussion and/or your own images of edged objects.

[Buddy Thomason]

Here's another image - this one more traditional - I guess because the knife, a "Bowie" style knife has a long tradition in our history - dating back to the early 1800's in America.

#5
http://www.fototime.com/53FF644DB070EDF/orig.jpg

The challenge here was to capture the layered steel pattern ('Damascus' steel is two or more types of steel forge welded, shaped and eventually acid etched to reveal a pattern in the layers.) - in this case a 'river' pattern.

It takes quite a bit of skill and experience to create interesting Damascus patterns and this one is outstanding. The angle of the light had to be just so in order to reveal the pattern in a visually pleasing manner.

Most photographers in the custom knife world don't particularly like light backgrounds like this one because the highly reflective surfaces on the knife can appear very light and thus create figure/ground visual confusion when placed on a light background. I felt it worked pretty well here though.

In this image I also used the traditional lower L to upper R diagonal line and angled the sheath so that it and the knife together create a number of triangles in the picture. Triangles are supposedly pleasing to the eye and brain - and I think they are so I just naturally create them without thinking much about it.

Another lesser challenge here is the high-relief, high-contrast and dramatically textured deer antler handle. I could've used more detail and a little sharper focus here and as a result I see this image as fairly significantly flawed.

I sent this knife off to a professional to see what he could do with it. Here's the resulting image:

#6
http://www.fototime.com/4E7C46766D422E2/orig.jpg

The pro did a better job than I did in some ways, but his effort also confirmed for me that this knife is just plain difficult to photograph.

[Buddy Thomason]

The advent of easy to use post-processing software (Photoshop CS for this one) encouraged me to create a unique presentation for this "Squid Knife" by Rik Palm. Creating one good image of the knife was all that I needed. After that it was all Photoshop. Lifting the knife from its original solid light grey background, duplicating it multiple times and assigning a different size and transparency value each helped to create depth. Diagonal lines, visual flow from lower L to upper R and application of the 'underwater' photo filter also contributed to the final image you see here:

#7
http://www.fototime.com/BB9C2A1FC87D58C/orig.jpg

This one was a lot of fun and elicited many favorable comments. I am unable to predict whether a given image will generate much of a response. Therefore, I don't worry about that - I just keep pumping out images figuring "it's a numbers game."

[dewmuw]

WOW! That last one is just amazing - thanks for sharing. That has really inspired me.

[Buddy Thomason]

For this shot I really wanted the knife and sheath up front and a very black background. Although I got that effect, plus a lot of good color (notice those copper pins) and nice detail - especially in the beautiful bird's eye maple handle. However, all that came at the expense of a totally blown out blade with no detail to rescue at all.

#8
http://www.fototime.com/EC211F4DD1F6639/orig.jpg

To teach myself a lesson, I set up a similar shot, dialed the exposure down to -2 and used the histogram techniques from Bruce Fraser's book, Real World Camera RAW with Adobe Photoshop CS. I had only just begun to shoot in RAW mode and had not yet learned to use the histogram - so this was a first and an eye-opener. The following image resulted.

#9
http://www.fototime.com/F86F374BFA254A1/orig.jpg

I freely admit this image lacks some of the artistic merit contained in #8 - but as an exercise I learned a lot for in #9 I came very very close to reproducing what my eye saw from the perspective of the camera. Additionally I was able to show detail in the highlighted area of the blace as evidenced by the vertical grind marks and the concave 'hollow grind' of the blade which is produced by a circular grinding wheel. Knife makers and collectors want to see details like this - in fact they INSIST on it.

Here's my little studio set-up for #s 8 & 9.

#10
http://www.fototime.com/F91565CDCCDFF71/orig.jpg

[Buddy Thomason]

Cool, somebody visited while I was posting! Thanks, Dewmuw. Hope you'll come back and share whatever you were inspired to create!

[dewmuw]

Cool, somebody visited while I was posting! Thanks, Dewmuw. Hope you'll come back and share whatever you were inspired to create!

Would you recommend Real World Camera Raw?

[Buddy Thomason]

Absolutely I would recommend the book. Without it I'm sure I would've given up on RAW processing, histograms and all the other great related tools. Shooting RAW has given me a 15-20% increase in detail and overall quality. Amazing!

BTW, Re #9 above, that little curving highlight line you see in the blade (back to front - mimicing the curve of the blade edge) is called a "hamon" or quench line. It results from differential heat treating of the blade to provide a relatively more hardened edge and a relatively softer and more flexable spine - an important detail in the world of blade smithing and metal working in general. This is another example of the kind of detail that is important to capture in this niche area of photography.

[Scottes]

Buddy, nice shots, and nice hardware!

As to the Damascus I know that a little bit of oil will help bring out the patterns, But then you've got to work a little harder on reducing potential glare. Perhaps using a thick "dull" oil, little motor oil, will glare a bit less than the thinner but shinier oil normally used.

Another trick in Photoshop could be using a color filter of some sort. Check the RGB channels to see which channel produces the most contrast in the blade. Use a colored filter (Image...Adjustments... Photo Filter) and apply a similarly-colored effect to the image. You could then use the History Brush to "undo" this from everything except the blade. You could also use selections to do the same filter or simply apply more contrast to the blade. Just a couple ideas to play with.

[Buddy Thomason]

Great suggestion Scottes - thanks. 'Damascus' steel is interesting. It was born out of necessity hundreds of years ago as smiths had to use what they had, which meant welding together a variety of scrap, refining it with heat and hammer causing the carbon to migrate throughout the grain structure but leaving nickle and other alloys in their respective layers. The methodology was almost lost to history until revived in this country by William F. "Bill" Moran in Maryland back in the 1950s. Now it's all the rage of course.

Here's a great example of a very large Damascus steel knife. This one's called the "Turkey Slayer." It was forged by Mark Williams of Hampton VA in a style he calls "Frontier Industrial." The sheath was custom made for this knife by Sandy Morrissey down in Georgia.

Regarding the photograph - I should've put a little lift under the handle to bring the knife into a horizontal plane. Other than that it strikes me as a good clear image with a small object made of pewter for balance/interest and all against a grey background.

#11
http://www.fototime.com/C5F05331079A16C/orig.jpg

[Buddy Thomason]

While I'm showing some of Mark Williams' work, check out this 6'1" 'HAWG SPEAR' - this thing is awesome. The panorama basically took me a whole day to do. Photoshop's panorama stitch program couldn't even come close to putting these five images together so I wound up doing it all manually.

I built a sort of track system whereby I pulled the spear through the lighting I'd set up in hopes of keeping perspective, brightness/shadow, color etc. the same. Didn't work the way I'd planned.

The area around the spear tip picked up a dark cast from the near-by carpet. Then the section with the white horse hair was much brighter due to light reflection off the hair, etc. If it wasn't one thing it was another. All in all I learned a great deal and it turned out tollerably well. This was the first and only panorama we'd seen in the custom knife photography world. It is definitely the LAST one I'll be doing for a while.

Here it is:
#12
http://www.fototime.com/303245C0BA4C3BB/orig.jpg

[Buddy Thomason]

In this shot I was going for the 'floating knife' look. I placed the background poster about 4 inches under a sheet of plexiglas. I then positioned two soft-boxes such that they each shown about half under the plexiglas and half over the top of it. Thus the knife is lit from both underneath and from two sides at a low angle. My biggest snafu was forgetting to clean the underside of the plexiglas - you can see some dust and debris here and there.
This knife is 16 1/4 inches long, the handle is Walnut burl and the knife was forged from 5160 steel by Mr. Jerry Fisk in Arkansas. Jerry is the only knife-maker to have been officially designated a "National Living Treasure." This would be a large 'camp knife' based on the old South American 'Gaucho' knife, recognizable as it lacks a 'guard' between the blade and handle.

Here's a link to the image:
#13
http://www.fototime.com/76F69395FB878FF/orig.jpg

[Buddy Thomason]

Here is a completely different style of knife image - a montage to show different aspects of knife detail - also using the 'floating knife' technique described above. This very elegant art knife was made, engraved and inlayed by Mr. Steve Dunn in Kentucky. The histogram in my new 1DMKII and in PSCS is a great help in avoiding over and under-exposed areas in a high contrast object like this knife.

Here's the link:
#14
http://www.fototime.com/600F2916BD4C4AB/orig.jpg

[Buddy Thomason]

What can I say? Thank goodness for Photoshop! The crossed-dagger look appealed to me more than a montage or single knife shot for this particular piece.

Here's the link:
#15
http://www.fototime.com/F26E5A692CFF6E0/orig.jpg