New Old Friends

Yesterday morning I'm driving onto a winery I haven't been on in years but it's one I've been on a thousand times before.  Used to shoot for this place for years and years, then the Director of Marketing moved on, the winery was bought from the large Japanese liquor conglomerate that owned it and as is the case, the photographer moves on as well.

But as the world turns, I was re-discovered! and so I'm there unpacking into old but new surroundings (heavily redecorated by the new owner) and hugging old friends from other wineries that work here now and shaking hands with new ones.

The deadhead on the wall is new.  Sort of wished it was another foot higher on the wall because I could've used that foot.

And now they're doing food so that was a new thing for this old place.

Just some quick plating shots before food goes on the set.

It turns out to be Ingrid's birthday yesterday so as the day went on, so did the sampling of the products of winery...Sparkling and a very nice Cab for lunch,  some Rosé during the 3-4:30 hours and some sumpin sumpin after work as well.
Damn, you just gotta love working for the alcohol industry.

photos courtesy of Nicole Rosenstiel and Ingrid Greiser.  

A Tape Shooter Addendum

Should have placed this with the post below.

Details of the tape shooter.  This was an add on to the rolling cart a few years after completing it.  I'm not quite sure why it never felt right visually.  Maybe I chose to keep the wood just a might too thick because it has always felt a bit clunky.

The shaft was constructed like so.  First sawed the block into an 8 sided form, then cut grooves to hold the splines. I put a chamfer on each spline to reduce friction while pulling the tape.  Lastly I cut a male dovetail in the end.

And those two male dovetails slide ever so nicely in the female receivers.  The cutter is a piece of bandsaw blade.

A Rolling Holder of Things

I built this while still an assistant working for Alan in 1987, right before opening my own place.  You need a place to hold all the random but necessary things for still life photography.  And it needs to roll around so you can have by the set.

The random but necessary things have changed since digital came into being.  Just judging from how many times I pull a drawer open to get something out, the digital doesn't need as many tools as did the film.

All vertical grain Douglas Fir.  The drawers slide on wooden glides.  I think a drawer feels so much nicer to open when it's wood on wood rather than the ball bearing engineered metal slide.  The wood on wood requires attention to the opening and closing.  Like life should be.  Attention to the moment.
Hundreds of thousands of opening and closing I'm guessing over the years and not one tiny moment of any of the joints.  The fronts are held on with through mortise and tenon the back of the drawer is a fingerjoint.

Let's go through it and how it's changed from film to digital.

The lower left side drawers held the 4x5 and 8x10 cameras, lenses, bellows, etc.   What was used a hundred times a day then is never ever used today.  The cameras are still folded up, the bellows are still there, the lenses sit in their slots but these drawers sit closed.  Dead.  Put a fork in em.

The two smaller top left drawers used to hold sheets of 8x10 Polaroid.  Dead.  Put a fork in em.  These two drawers now hold foreign money left over from trips, my passport and random wood working tools.  The opening above the drawers used to hold a 8x10 Polaroid processor.  Now it's a place for the little cameras.  The top of it opens and is supported by the tape shooter to the left of it.

The middle low stack of drawers was the place for the color gels, sheets of diffusion  and small white, silver and gold fill cards.  All of this stuff is still used but not nearly like before. I hardly ever use the color gels anymore.  Small fill cards just somehow don't work the same and it's easier to open up the shadow in post.

One drawer held a foldable chart of the available gels and which drawer you'd find it in.

The lower right side had blocks, small pieces of duvateen and the large medium format camera things.
The blocks still get used but two of the drawers never get opened anymore.

Ahhhh.  The top stack..  The things that still are used the most.  All those ten thousand little objects.  Qtips, bamboo skewers, rubber bands, solvents, glues, razor blades, tweezers, C47's, longer sticks, staple gun, string, fake ice, fake smoke, blue tac, mortician wax, the list just goes on and on.  Still used, still vital today.

The top back left opens as well.  It was a place to hold 4x5 and 8x10 film in their holders.  Now it's a place for momentos and memory type objects.  Rarely open it.
There are two slides that you pull out so the top has a support.

On each corner of the top is a trigram.  Heaven, the creative.

And Taylor, since you asked to have this after I'm gone....there's one hidden compartment that houses one long object.  When you find it, you'll laugh at what's inside.

Love Dad

You are Here.

Had a gate made for the big roll up.  In a dual flash of inspiration of walking the streets around here that are nothing but big and little triangles, the idea of putting the map of 3003 on the building came to be.  The red dot is of course Here.

The red dot on the gate is the biggest strongest rare earth magnet I could find.  It came silver, I painted it red.

In the move from San Francisco to Oakland I took sand from San Francisco's Ocean Beach.  The sand there is loaded with iron ore.  If you run a magnet through the sand the iron jumps onto the magnet.

So both as homage to where I moved from and to those who love the ocean I slowly poured some of the Ocean Beach sand in proximity of the red dot and allowed the iron to jump on it.

You are Here.