Projector Lens Monday!

 I think even casual readers of MU will have noticed certain photos that are mushy dreamy.  Nothing is really sharp, colors can be bleached or strange, out of focus areas really are out of focus.  Black and white have a nice quality to them.  Curves things, it gives a natural vignette as well.

Those come from a slide projector lens without an aperture.  It's a $20 or $25 lens, I can't remember which.

We'll come back to Projector Lens Monday! soon.

But first a few from a conventional lens.

Glued up some end grain Hard Maple in order to have more blocks for the wood engraving.  I glue it long like this so I can run it through the drum sander more easily and I can cut to size depending upon the proportions of engraving I'm doing.

Been struggling in getting a crisp transfer of image but I've latched onto using the end of this porcupine quill I found in Turkey while we were hiking on the Lycian Way.  And good old fashioned carbon paper

The horse photo comes from a trip to Faroe Islands.  I'm using as a metric as to my progress in wood engraving. I will consider myself a beginner when I can cut something acceptable.

So far every time I try the horse, it's a real hot mess.  It all comes down to the eye.

I'm getting a few blocks cut and will print all at once.

Alright back to Projector Monday!.  Most of these I made today, January 1st, 2024.

 

 

Yes, a touch of Elegancé! on the new 3003 sign.

Edit. Some people wanted to know what the projector lens looked like attached to the camera.

I made a tight leather sleeve that's attached to a platform on the bottom of the camera.  To focus the lens, you slide it in or out.  The camera is a Fuji XPro 1.

Micro-Dosing

 Morning light on Robin and Ken.

 

 

We travel to Jerez de la Frontera, Spain for Sherry Week. 

See more photos here

 

 

 

A stunning house concert here with The Crazy Dog

Photo courtesy of Bryant Kirchner

 

 

 

 

Thanksgiving for 30 here.

You have to get Clean to get Dirty (snacks)

 

The Last Harvest of 2023 at 3003

 

 

 

It had been a long while since we had a house concert here.  A worldwide shut down due to a microscopic killer mainly but also floods and fires.  It's been quite an action packed last few years.

But it's over now so it was time to open the space up to a night of music.  Time to get The Dirty Snacks and Shimscheimler Family in here.

Dirty Snacks

Shimscheimler

 

A house concert or not, the place needed a deep deep cleaning anyway so I took things down to bones, cleaned, waxed, polished and new coats of finish on just about everything.  Three weeks of cleaning.  Let me tell you, the dust from a couple years of wood working along with the industrial soot of West Oakland, the space absolutely had to be cleaned.

Glasses came off, bar got polished.

The LC back together.

 

Cleaned and tidied up the hand tool wall, scraped and washed windows.

Took some photos off the wall added new ones.

The world premier of Annie's graphite of the beginning of her family's great American Adventure.

Had been barreling 6 liters of tequila for a year,  stuck a spout in the barrel and made a premixed cocktail out of it.

The two premixes for the night

Beginning the load in and set up.

A full house.  Photo courtesy of Taylor Kirchner.

What's more beautiful then music?  It could be human's greatest discovery.

The morning after.  

 

Tip jar for those that didn't prepay. 

Feels so good to feel the magic of music and people together again.