To hold spices

A short history.  3003 was sold as a as is, don't ask too many questions, don't look too closely deal.  Two of the four brick walls were hidden behind two stud and drywall walls.  When I took my sledge and crowbar to those two stud and drywall walls this was why the sellers didn't want too many questions asked.  Funny though is I did ask what were they hiding behind the stud and drywall walls.

They said they weren't hiding nothing.  (except for huge ass holes in the brick)

Decided to fill in the holes in the wall with concrete.

The concrete pour came out imperfectly perfect.  Exactly unexact.  Annie's clean canvas for color completion.

I made some shelves for the part of the wall that will be eventually be the kitchen.  Bought some thick aluminum but the rest came from what was in the space already.  When the earthquake comes, the strongest place to be will be under the shelves.  Way way way overbuilt.  But they fit right in I think.

The angle steel was left up on the rafters, the big spikes I used to anchor the shelf supports were also scavenged from 3003.

Tapped the pieces together with 1/4-20's

Everything is held to the concrete with 18 1/2" bolts...4 would have been overkill.  18 is insane.

I'm sure the mantra at Ikea is "From Ikea to the landfill as soon as possible."  I was at a holiday party yesterday afternoon.  A holiday party of photographers, quite a few were there.  Two of them were talking about using Ikea kitchen cabinets in their recent construction.  I threw up a bit in my mouth.  Have we stooped this far to think that buying this shit that is only manufactured to hold up long enough for the warranty to expire is ok?  I refuse to be part of the march toward mediocrity.  I refuse to surround myself with particle board shit held together loosely with the flat pack mentality.

So until I can make something that is right for this space, this space right here then the shop tables and old decommissioned work benches that are being used right now will do just fine.  Better funky cool than something that makes me vomit every time I see it.

Holding Breath

I had made a wooden something to hold the stereo components for my second studio.  That was maybe 25 years ago.  The wooden something didn't seem to fit in at 3003 visually so I utilized some of what was left behind here to make a metal something more befitting the West Oakland aesthetics.

The wooden something was strong and enclosed, the components felt safe and secure.
 
But now I'm understanding how fragile and insecure Life here on Planet Earth is.
And how fucking beautiful Life here on Planet Earth is.

The first thing you see as you come into 3003 is how the beautiful music that is filling the space is balanced so precariously.
Three of four support points are on thick steel, the fourth has nothing.  It is depending upon the other three for the survival of all.  The strong here need to hold up the weak.
Maybe the current times demanded me to build it like this.
You look at this and there's this unsettled angst in you.  Metaphorically you hold your breath a bit.

I think it's good.  The fragile unsettled chaos is good.

The top photo is one of the attachments the sculptor before me used to bolt his gantry to the timbers of the roof.  I wire brushed off the dirt but left the patina.  The receiver was too big so I tapped another piece of steel to support the third foot.  And tapped that with three 1/4-20's to fine tune the support.

And since listening to music is such an orgasm for me, I put on a high polish at the end of that piece to underline the Big O.

More

No Attachment

I was doing two things at once.  I'm making some kitchen shelves for the new studio kitchen.  The previous tenant at 3003 was a sculptor.  Apparently he worked in a big and heavy medium because he left a sizable moving gantry up in the roof.  With a lot of hard work on my part I took it down and put it aside.  Forty foot pieces of steel big.  Winch it down a little at a time big.  I wanted to re-use the steel somehow.  A couple pieces I cut off and wire brushed and made a stereo holder.  (see tomorrow's post on that)  Some of it I'm using it for the kitchen shelves along with half inch thick by ten inches wide aluminum.

The other thing I'm doing at the same time is photographing a new wine.  The most expensive wine this particular winery has ever offered.  So I'm doing a full work up on it.  Some straight on bottle shots, some beauty shots with food, some shots suggested by the client and then some "Paul, do some of your artistic stuff, would ya"

I'm polishing the aluminum up so I can put up the shelves this weekend when I decided the polishing itself was a beautiful background.  I tried to use it for a background for a wine shot.

But sometimes it just doesn't work.  Sometimes if you work at it hard enough you can make it work, sometimes no matter hard to work at it, it just doesn't jell.  Started to set something up but maybe my heart wasn't in it because after three different setups I said fuck it.  You see you have to be willing to give up attachment to things.

Earlier in life if I had made a prop for a shot, damnit that thing was going to be in the shot no matter what.  And I would work and work trying this way and that way. The thing got in the way of what I was trying to do.  But once I understood how liberating it was to lose the attachment to things, shots flowed so much easier. 

Of course some things seem to have latched on me and I do have attachment.  And it's good.  There's value to them.  But there come a time when even the most prized of things will be put down and I will move on.


So instead I put them on the wall, or least tried to.  Together the ten foot, half inch thick aluminum with the reclaimed steel, each shelf probably weighed a couple hundred pounds each and I was trying to attach them to concrete with 1/2" bolts.  A struggle I tell you.

The shelves trying to be something they were not.

The polishing swirls

The aluminum writes it's name as it comes off the drill bit.

Morning Light

Through trees on Magnolia
 through trees on Poplar
  through trees on Peralta
   through rose and bougainvillea
    and iron gates on window

Stops at fresh plaster wall
 lands on color chips with tape

By Mouth and Hand

If you are the type that understands the sum is greater than the parts then you'll understand how much better your Ailein Mor experience will be out of nice glassware.
In fact let me have another sip.....mmmmm...the burn as it goes down.  Yep, 55% better sipping out the right glass.
'Specially after a couple and you're a bit sideways then these are for you.

Ben Dombey's new canted bar glasses made with his hands and his lungs.
Custom stamped on the bottom if you wish...or left plain.

Ok.  I need to test my hypothesis again.....yep...better out of Ben.

They're hefty as hell.  Heavy, bulletproof, handhewn sort of feel to the lips from the rim.

This is what you see as you raise an empty one up.  That is if you have a stamped one.

Like a Barn Raising

But a floor instead.
Yesterday, headed over to Taylor and Nick's house overlooking Sausalito to help snap together a new floor upstairs.  Barn raising because it was a family and friend affair.  Nick's father, Doug, Nick, Taylor, me and Steve.  Steve is a Burning Man friend of Taylor and Nick's.
Doug was the foreman, Nick and Steve laid the floor down.  I was the guy who cut things to length down on their back deck, Taylor ran the pieces of flooring up and down.

Sharm brought homemade soup for lunch.

My cutting station.....

I guess someone took me doing a hand sawn cut on a length.

The sun started to go down and it was decided to abandon the project and go drink.  Hopped in their boat and booted across the bay as the sun went down and a huge moon coming up over the east bay hills to have drinks and apps on the water at Sam's in Tiburon.

A late night confrontation on the inky darkness of the bay coming back finished off a perfect floor laying day.

Everybody Drink Beer

Day after the disaster.  Nov 9, 2016.

Finally got around to some beauty shots of bottles and glasses of beer.  Testing showed the labels wouldn't hold up to spritzing...even with a large percentage of it being glycerin.  They bubbled up too quickly so I taped off and layered on several fine fine coats of dead flat protection (Thank you once again Alan*.)

I've always wanted to price my work by charging by the C-Stand.  Never have but over the years I've noticed I would count up the number of C-Stands I used and multiply by $200 and it would be pretty close to my final bill.
The more C-Stands, the more finicky and precise the shot....the more money.

Still setting up, I'm shooting this tomorrow but as it stands now, there are 8 stands being used.  10 if you count the two I used to hold more flags before deciding better without the flags.


And you can see in the background the next job (although it's a freebee)
Ben Dombey's fun tilted hand blown cocktail glasses.
Ben's site

*  Someday I'll do a blog on Alan Krosnick.  I was his full time assistant for five years, taught me more than one can even imagine.

Now let's drink to the end of the world...

Here. State of Goldenness.

There are but two seasons in California.  Green.  And Gold.

Green comes for but a moment or two in the Spring.  A couple few weeks where the entire state seems so fresh and popping with green everywhere.  But it's just a transitory state of color for soon the same green becomes gold and it stays gold until the end to where it browns out.  Even brown though is a state of gold.
California's nickname, the Golden State, some think comes from the goldrush days (and maybe it does, I have no idea) but to me the golden state comes not because of a metal in the mountains but from the color of the grasses.  And the dust.
Even the colors whose intrinsic nature is not to be gold, to me feels like they want to become gold.

I spent the last almost three weeks driving in the gold of California.  Dusty hot Goldenness. 2500 miles of gold.  Quite a bit of that 2500 miles was driving at 5 miles an hour.  Any more than that, then you kick up a storm of dust and you choke as you open your door.

Brushed off that gold dust in so many good ol boy bars, slept in that gold in some of the vineyards so I could feel the terroir of the place.  Slept with owls and hawks and rabbits and coyote covered in that gold.

Every vineyard that still had grapes (not sure why I was hired so late in the season as some of the vineyards were picked already) I would cut off a cluster and eat it.  Chard, Cab, Petit, Muscat, Syrah and on and on. Really nice to eat what you're shooting.

Every feather no matter how big or small felt like a gift left only for me.

The current trend in vineyards is Owl boxes.  They are everywhere around the perimeter of vineyards.  They would fly away if I came to shoot near them but soon feeling like I wasn't a threat they would come back and look at me.  The remnants of their meals lay at the base of their homes.

I never fought the land

Late afternoon I am crawling up a twisty dirt road through the redwoods.  Crawling because there are signs everywhere to drive slow.  I have to drive around a pile of fresh split firewood in the middle of the road, cross over a cattleguard before I reach the top of the ridge outside of Navarro, California...Anderson Valley area.
See a house and drive to the back of it and walk up to a low deck and start my "Hello!'s"  In the city of course you'd be knocking on the door but I'm figuring up here a Hello! is better.  Eventually a man comes out.  Says he was taking a nap, I say I'm here to shoot the vineyard, he says he's been expecting me.

At the two minute mark of the conversation we're talking about bars.  "I've always said if you want to know America, go into the bars" he says. Now folks, you know how I feel about the value of bars but I let him continue.  To me there seems to be two types...one who actually listens to another and the type who waits until there is a pause in the conversation so he/she can jump in and start talking about themselves.
So I listen to what he has to say.  I don't break in.
At the five minute mark he's talking about coming out to California in 1960 via the army to go to the advanced language school in Monterey.  He told me he had read everything Steinbeck ever wrote before coming here and once seeing Monterey that he felt he had found what he didn't know he was looking for.
Not only went to every bar ever mentioned by Steinbeck but became a regular.  Him and a buddy moved to a beat down shack on cannery row to be closer to Steinbeck's ethos.
Bars.... bars....bars...
I kept listening.


At the fifteen minute mark he's onto how in 1972 he didn't know shit about grapes and went to Wente to buy some plantings for his property.  Just a hippy who wanted to grow some grapes so he could make some wine.
Those plantings have been ripped out but there some chardonnay down there next to the pump house from 74.
I like this man.  Finally tell him my views of bars.
We talk more about bars.

He says stop by after you're shooting the sunset and let's drink some beer.

"Original Beirut Taxi. 92"

 He says.

 There are books everywhere.  I mean everywhere.  We pop a couple of beers and sit at his kitchen table.  His wife has passed away.  Across the table are photos of people.  I'm thinking they're offspring and the offspring's offspring.
We get onto Montana, he finds out I went to school there. Do I know such and such who taught there. We talk about my favorite Montana author...A.B. Guthrie.  He tells me his and starts pulling books off his shelves magically and putting them on the table.  An atlas comes out and we put our fingers on special places we're talking about.  We land on the sheep/cattle wars of the west.
"You know the vineyard here is just a small part of the property.  I own all the way to there."  He's poking his finger out the darkened windows.  "I ran sheep for 35 years up here."
"I never fought the land.  Always undergrazed, always brought the fattest ewes to market."
"I always under logged my land."
And he then brings up his other career as a text book editor and it goes on and on and on.
You know how you meet someone and sometimes your vibrations are the same and you're getting this person?

The house that looks down the valley.

Not that it's pertinent but the next morning I'm at his place to shoot the early light.  Someone across the valley and on the other side must be having target practice with a very large caliber rifle.  Every shot echoed up and down and in and out of every little finger and canyon.  I counted 11 seconds from the time of a shot to when I couldn't hear it anymore.  11 seconds.  It was trippy.

A crop of a snag on this property.  A most magnificent redwood snag.  I could not take a photo of this that did it any justice.  Far enough away to see it all made it feel insignificant.  Closer you couldn't fit into the crop without a wide angle and it again became insignificant.  100-125" of hollow burned redwood.  A thousand holes from birds pecking at it, maybe 15 feet in diameter.

I'm cropping this because Y'all did not pay me and therefore I'm protecting those that did pay me.

Take What's Given

Been in Central Cali now for most of a week shooting vineyards.  Up before dawn to get the sunrise light and staying until after the sun goes down to get that liquid gold afternoon light....or whatever kind of light is being offered.

A week here then almost two more weeks shooting in NorCal and in the Sierra Foothills.  Lot's of sunrises, sunsets, rabbits, deer, owls and hawks.

A couple of nights ago I'm on my ladder in the middle of a vineyard, it's getting real close to dark.  An ATV is driving towards me.  This is not uncommon for someone to come a calling to see who you are and what you're doing.   I climb down as the ATV approaches and there's a maybe high school aged girl driving.  She's got a rifle on her lap.
Me..."I'm working for J Lohr"
Her..."I'm looking to shoot some coyotes."
My eyes are darting because my first thought is she's looking for the guys who bring people in over the Mexican border.  First thought, like I say since we are way too far North for that but for that first instant I was concerned she thought I may have been a coyote.
Her...They get our chickens.  This time of year they're real mangy looking, eyes are all crusty too.  Tell me if you see one."
She drives off real slow.

Yesterday morning, a man from the next farm to where I'm standing comes out of his place, gets in his truck and drives over to me.  I watched him the whole way.  Tells me I should move a hundred yards South.  That's where the moon will come up right over a big tree.  I tell him well I won't be around for the full moon.  He shrugs, gets back in his truck and drives back to his place.

This morning a truck stops, leaves it running and the guy gets out to asks if today's light is any good for photos.

Me...."Well, you gotta take whatever it is that's given to you.  It's all a gift."

Him..."I s'pose it is that."

This morning's gift.

Edit....and snakes, tarantulas and a most magnificent Elk.

OD Talisman

Early Friday afternoon I send a clipped email to my Utah people...."Coming in for a quick couple for Laura's happyhour."

Laura is the bartender I've been following for twenty years at this point.  Wherever she bartends, I go there.  She always hooks me up for a couple free tugs on something.

I get there on Friday afternoon and Lee's got a bar stool.  There's a plastic bag on the bar next to him with something in it.  I sidle up, it's pretty crowded in the Utah so I don't have a stool.  Laura pours me a beer without needing a prodding from me.  The guy next to me halfway spills his beer, it's running towards Lee's tied up plastic bag.  We rescue the bag.
Lee starts..."Paul, I had an inspiration............."  That's about as far as he gets before I can't remember what interrupted him.
TequilaJohn and Cary come in, the three of us move to the far end of the bar because there's room down there.  Lee is left on his stool.
Motion for Lee to move on down to our end of town, he drags his stool and the plastic bag with him.

"Paul, I had an inspiration.  I was issued this blanket (he pats the plastic bag) when I went to Vietnam and have always considered it good luck.  It is the reason I made it out alive and have kept it ever since.  I thought it was time to give it to your son.  I know it will bring him good luck too.  I just know it will."

A wave of humanity comes in on me knocking me to the ground.

I'm sort of speechless.  "This is the one thing that you think kept you alive and you want to give to my son?  Are you sure?"

"I know it will bring him good luck, I just know it will and so yes I do."

I wait until I get home before I cry.......

Olive Drab Talisman

And it's fate has been decided.

I grew up in a house.  On Countryside Drive in Beavercreek, Ohio, USofA.  Wonderful place to grow up.  There was a field across the street (Drive I guess) filled with cows.  Next to it was a field of horses.  There were creeks with fish and tadpoles and turtles.  There were woods you could build forts in, build tree houses and play in for hours and hours.  The house had a basement we roller skated in, my dad's workshop in one part that was filled to the gills with the most magical of stuff you could ever imagine.  My mother decorated the main floor with colors and patterns of things that if I didn't know better had come from LSD trips. A baby grand my dad bought at an auction. My room was upstairs in the peak of the roof with it's sharply sloped crazy angled ceiling.  There was a bass fiddle in the corner.  I kept my drums in my brother's room down the hall.  His bed was on wheels that rolled into the roof somehow.  Off his room was a tiny door, maybe three feet tall that went into a room over the garages.  That's where I first smoked pot with him after my first summer away to college.
I have always described my childhood as perfect.  Living in Beavercreek, Ohio, USofA.

But houses give me the heebegeebies.  The willies.  Can hardly stand to be in them.  They contain or maybe better constrain me to the point where I feel the need to flee out the door to the big sky and the big wind and the big air.  Sooner the better.

Maybe it's because for the past 20 years I've been living the warehouse way of an unpartitioned constantly moveable life.  Most of my stuff was on wheels and almost every day everything was moved around.  The big roll up door was always opened.  It brought in the California sun and air and wind but also the random people off the street.  The inside and the outside were one.  No 8 foot high drywall walls to make your spirit kowtow.  Tall spaces allow the head to fly and roam.

I don't know the spirit of the island top but I'm hoping it's spirit is ok with being in a house because that's where it's been screwed down to.  It sure does present itself well, what with the contrast of the walnut color holding court in the whiteness of the walls.

Couple pics of Ken brushing on some stuff.

The dovetails came out very tight.

Just a short portion of the top had a live edge.  The rest was it was square edged.

And this is how I live.  Right now.  I'll be able to roll things around again soon.

Hanging the bike on the snap ties.