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.