In This Season of White Christmases 2020

 December 29, the christian year of 2020.

130 years ago.

I'm linking to something I wrote 5 years ago on this date.

In This Season of White Christmases

Back to One Offs

 It was just happenstance that I had a time slot scheduled to visit Sensei Shively for a project of mine.  And you know I don't make the trip out very often so on the night before the drive up there I get a phone call it's as if the two things are connected.

 

It's from Jeff.  A Central Cali winery is redoing their tasting experience room in Paso Robles and would I like to give him a price on a signature table for the room.

It's big.  And heavy. Four feet wide, three- three and half inches thick.  This long.

I've known Jeff now for at least 15 years so it's natural I talk on more spiritual terms with him rather than monetary ones.  How I see this more as one of those pieces that define a life chapter, that this is something that turns me on.

It's a one off.  No multiples. A two-three month beautiful curse/love/hate-a-thon that changes me.  The money is not as important as the lessons I'll learn.

So I showed up at Shively's place almost forgetting about why I was going to be there originally.

Not sure where this log came from in California.  Redwood, 49" at it's narrowest, 20' long.  4" thick.   Clear as can be.

Showing you this piece of Redwood is way premature as I don't know nothing really about the table or whether I'll be the one to build it.  But there's piece after piece like this up there.  And species after species.

I did like this wood for the original project/intent for going up to Aborica and I know where this log came from.  Olema, California.  About 22 miles from the sawmill.  Spalted Fiddleback Maple.  4 book matched boards from the same tree.

Bonus pic.  A persimmon from Annie's cousin's tree in Berkeley.

Alan Krosnick

 You can try looking him up on the internet.  Ain't a lot on there, died before the big computer could submit his data into 1's and 0's.  

A couple things recently got me thinking about him.

Alan gave me this old vise somewhere in the 80's.  It's a Reed model 403 1/2.  One day he asked if I wanted it.  No fanfare, just "Want this?" It was a mean old ornery thing that I cursed at every time I used it.  Alan could be a mean old ornery thing himself.  Recently, I said "Basta!"  Enough.  Put it on Craigslist in the free section with two stipulations.

The person taking it had to make me believe I was giving it to the right person.  It was going to be used and not turned around and sold.

And that the end of the ownership, that person needs to give it away as well.

 

After getting out of photography school, I moved to San Francisco and got a full time job assisting a photographer that was a true 100% asshole despicable man.  Ten months.  I've only hated one person in my life and it was him.  He shall be nameless.  

In the middle of a huge job, he and I got into a scream fight with clients right there.  I walked out.

 

 

Alan, whom I thought was the best studio shooter on the West Coast interviewed me while sitting on his full sized billiard table on the top floor of a building that overlooked the corner of 2nd and Howard St in downtown SF.  Ok, for the purests, SOMA, South of Market. Linkedin HQ is directly across the street today, back then it was a parking lot.  He hired me on the spot, I think less for my photography portfolio and more on the fact that I had been a carpenter for twelve years.

He said at the end of the interview that if I didn't have anything to do during the day, that I was to play pool.  He wanted me to become good enough so he could have a built in opponent.  He even bought me my own cue stick.  Worked for him for five years and I could win maybe one out of 25 games.

Very first job I worked on with him was a wine job.  We were supposed to chisel a bottle of Almaden into a 300 pound block of clear ice.  First thing Alan taught me was on that job and he said

"Always look like you know what you're doing."

Alan was a different photographer  He worked like no one else I've ever heard of in the business.  It was left up to me (and his assistants before me and after me) to basically shoot the job.  Oh, it was his shot, but mechanically everything else was up to me.  Light it, determine exposure, focus it, clean the set, expose the film, determine how to process the film.

First time clients often could not believe what was going on.  If toward the end of the shot we were working on, if the polaroid looked ok, Alan would leave and go home.  

First time clients would say, what's happening?  we're paying 2-3 thousand dollars for this shot and your assistant is going to shoot it?

And Alan would say, "Yes, Paul is going to shoot it.  I trust him."  And out the door he went to tend to his greenhouse.

He said when he gave that responsibility to his assistants they would bear the weight and make the shot better for it.

Now you people reading this in 2020 and not having any idea of what was involved in shooting 8x10 sheets of film are probably shrugging your shoulders.  But like I've always said, there are (were) an infinite number of things that could go wrong and you will encounter each one, the trick is not to screw up on the same one more than once.

There was no Photoshop that you could remove a hair that happened to fall on the set, or to correct lighting or fix a million other things.  Everything had to be done in the camera and everything had to right.

Opening the box of processed film always always gave me a knot in the stomach.  It was right or it was a reshoot.

We shot two-three-four jobs a week.  Major ad campaigns, pushing thousands of sheets of film through the camera each year.

Shot everything there was to shoot, Alan had already shot it and everything he knew, he taught me.

On one location job up in wine country, we loaded the 8x10 and all the lights we needed into his Porsche.  Not sure how everything fit, but I remember the client's face when we blasted into the parking lot.

I learned 10% in school, Alan gave me the other 90%.  Worked with every ad agency in the city, every art director.

I owe him more than I can say.

Alan also one day walked in and gave me a box of machinist step blocks.

They have been in the same box, sitting on a leg of the camera stand since.  Use them on almost every job and I think of Alan when I pick one of them up.  The box was starting to give way, so I put some rebar wire around to reinforce.  

Just today, I used them to block out a glass, so I could take it off set and return it to the same spot.

Film days it would be way more important to determine focus, remove and replace, now with digital, not so much.

I've been meaning to put my 1's and 0's about Alan into the great computer for some time.  He could be the gruffest of farts, yelling at you if you screwed up, telling you do something over.  But like just out of a Hollywood movie, he was this warm intelligent marshmallow of a man.

During the first dot com boom time in San Francisco and greedy landlords were cashing in on the seemingly endless amount of money in the city, the rent on Alan's studio went from a couple thousand to twelve thousand.  I said why not share my space Alan til you find something else.

I walked in one day and he had a personal shot halfway set up. He was good about personal shooting.  It's hard to keep that up after 30 years in the business.  He wasn't there, he had left for day.  On his way home, he died.

I miss you Alan.

The Short Version

We were going somewhere on our bikes in Berkeley.  We were talking about art in relationship to quality of the craft.

Annie said, "If you ain't got a metaphor, you ain't got shit."

That stuck pretty good to me.

There's some time involved in this one.  Lots have happened between start and stop.

One thing I think I can see is a loss of skill.  Over the seven years this took is the erosion of hand and eye working together.  Attention and patience have increased but the increase is in relationship to loss of physical skill.

Maybe I can make a case that a slight gap in a joint is a sign that I'm seeing the flaw as actually leading more toward perfection as opposed to moving away.  Maybe the loss of skill is that the hands and eyes are seeing the arc of life a bit better.  

And acceptance.

That's a good way to look at it.  

This is a jewel.  That holds jewels.  I made all the angles as sharp as I could, facets that shone.  To hold jewels.

Three photos here, that's all you get, I did a longer write on it here for those with longer attention spans.  It's a photo essay so to speak with lots more to look at.

A Lesson Lands

When it was the correct time, 

         a lesson flies through opened front door.

On Copper Dragon Wings

        With Four Words.

 

Wrapping it up.

 Let's start with the excitement of the week.

SFFD rolls up to the jobsite.  That's their very very shiny bell on the front of the engine.

"Man trapped in the elevator!"

One minute later they're back in the truck.  Couldn't find nobody stuck on no elevator.

Oh..ok another bit of excitement.

An electrician was standing up his 12' step ladder.  I'm watching and see the impending doom.  The Big Ass Fan (that's a brand name)  was spinning, the ladder and it were coming close.  I shout but too late, fan catches the ladder and throws it down here, right after these people had left.

Mike, the foreman asks if anybody got hurt.  Nobody did so he says, "This never happened".  This is a Union site you know and that wouldn't look good.

And speaking of both of those topics.

Union carpenters hold a meeting.  One man reads from an iPad about the latest virus regulations, various safety updates and a general pep talk.  Then the iPad gets passed around and each sign that they were present and heard.

At the end of each day, Mike, the foreman of the electricians makes them all line up and hand him a piece of paper that states what they accomplished that day.  That's Mike in the yellow shirt.

And if you look closely, construction workers still gawk at passing females.

Let's get back to work.  

Ken drilling holes in concrete.

And if he looked up he would've seen the pyramid of light.

John, who in this photo is driving the forklift but is actually a carpenter, picks up my camera and says "You been taking our pictures all week".

Me and Ken.

And see that frame on the wall behind my head.  That comes into play eventually.  Somebody didn't catch that what we're building is not to be built in front of the fire control access panel.  Somebody caught it after we built it though.

Anyway, there's a ten minute break in the action and I stroll around the site. 

Bonus pic.  

Self Portrait 10012020

 

                                                    MakerUnknown 

And this is all you'll see from this project.  Wrapping it up, calling it good to go.

Fractal Chaos

 Visually the feeling of the installation

It's really no different than drinking in a crowded bar.  I'm real good at that.  Sitting at the bar, drinking my drink as madness surrounds me.  Being a certain type, the crazier the night, the more serene I become.  Buddha in the still center of a swirling vortex.

The install started a couple days ago.  Maybe a total of five hours of actual work, five hours of waiting for other trades to do their thing, move their ladders, their compressors, their tools, their bodies.  But before any of that happens, three trucks with pallets and pallets of Ken's Kustom Kreations arrive in the alley.

We rapidly put this up.

Tammie, the construction elevator pithy saying operator takes us up to see some finished units.

Her elevator is covered with duct tape and sharpie stuff.

Some floors require us to put on socks on our boots to keep the new carpets clean.  Tammie just sheds her boots to point the way.

Day two.  

The end piece is added to the bar counter.

And one of six booths is assembled and bolted down.

Bonus pic!

I add skilsaw blade on top of the cymball.  Real nice "tink, tink" sound comes off of it.

 

It's Moving Day!!!

 Might as well start out with the bonus pics first.

I try and polish the copper on the liquor cabinet every two weeks or so in order for it to become a glittering eye magnet when it's open.

And me! on Moving Day.

Ok, enough with the eye candy!  Let's get to work.  Picking everything up, putting in/on two trucks and heading over the bridge to SF.

The elliptical counter is taken apart.

Getting it in the trucks.

Ken spins his own spiderweb.

So this is the front door of a quite large new apartment building where we're reassembling the lobby.  Seems oddly tiny to me.

One section of the 25' counter top.

And the angle that said counter top is bolted to.

Installation begins in two days.