WHAT FOCUS

I was in a hurry to photograph this particular Oribe style vase and rather than use my actual digital camera which was not at hand, I relied on my "emergency use" cell phone, basic technology from 2007 if I remember correctly. There is nothing smart about my cell phone, it has five emergency numbers programmed in to it and it takes very rudimentary photos at best, a lesson I learned the hard way and as I look at the phone know and look for a focus app I ask myself, what focus? Of course I didn't learn how poor quality the photos were until after the pot was gone and out the door, yet a new lesson learned. This 11" tall vase was thrown out of stoneware, incised with a thin, sharpened piece of bamboo and later glazed using my lepidolite Oribe glaze, a glaze which I use exceedingly sparingly but that is what was asked for. Though I use a number of Oribe style glazes, this particular one using lepidolite has a quality that I can just not seem to 100% reproduce without the rare material, especially the unique iridescence that it produces. Where slightly thicker around the mouth, the glaze is this intense, deep green pool that is just one of my favorite effects on pottery and mostly isolated to various Oribe, Iga and Shigaraki pottery. I apologize for the poor quality of the photo but since I am making very few pots in this glaze, I thought it may be worth sharing and the lesson that goes along with it.

I wouldn't bother enlarging the photo, it only gets worse the larger it gets!