Copper and Bronze Pieces, and Auto White Balance

In January I posted a picture of bronze and copper metal clay pieces drying on a hot plate. The pieces were fired and this is how they looked before I began to patch the bronze pieces. Note that the bronze clay cracked much more than the same shapes would have in silver metal clay. The bronze clay was from the original batch handed out in mid-2008 by Rio Grande; many people report that it has improved since then.

In my previous post I mentioned that the copper clay was very moist and hard to work with. The results show that it kept it's general shape very well, yet the weight of the clay itslef pushed some of the texture flat. The inside of the round part of the toggle illustrates this. Since I tried Hadar Jacobson's copper clay, she has started selling the copper clay as a powder (and also bronze clay powder) which you can mix yourself to the consistency you desire. Note that the absence of drying/firing cracks in the copper clay. The bottom two pieces are made from copper clay, the top five pieces are made from bronze clay.

As I took the above picture, I decided to play with the Auto White Balance (AWB) feature on my camera. There are many settings such as 'daylight', 'tungsten', and 'fluorescent.' The choice of which AWB to use made a big difference in the photos. The photo above was adjusted in Photoshop (TM) in order to match the white background a little more to what it would be with proper lighting. View the unedited photos of different AWB settings at this link to see the what a drastic difference the AWB choices make. The pictures were taken late in the afternoon with indirect natural light and overhead full-spectrum bulbs.