Light it like film

With eight heads

With 13 C-stands

And then bring it in and swing your hammer in the Photo Shop.

Bonus points for knowing which Bay Area rapper I stole the last sentence from.

WoodNWine

Waiting on some verbal closure with the designer so I can move to another medium.  Each thing that gets placed in front of the camera takes some back and forth between it and me in order to understand what it needs.  Or how to make it do what I want.

I've been working the wine on wood for the past few days and before breaking down the set and putting up copper I'm waiting to hear some feedback.

So far this wood is being somewhat elusive. I'm thinking it's a Chestnut but that's just a guess.  My wood book says it might be a Golden Chestnut in the Beech Family. The book also lists it as "California Chinquapin" but it is a book from the late 1800's and I've never heard of a Chinquapin.

 Photographs real nice with conventional lighting but I want to make it more like this.

Not to say the conventional lighting wasn't good but it bugs me when I can see something with the eye but not with the camera.  It's a matter of working it enough to know what it needs.

Back near where the lens is.

I take a break and look at how the afternoon light goes through one of Ben Dombey's shot glasses.

Now this wood just falls on the paper as we used to say when printing negatives on enlargers.

Shooting copper requires different techniques.  One of the first mantras in the photography school I went was "Angle of incidence equals angle of reflection".  And that's exactly what copper needs.

From Here to There

Always takes me a couple of acclimation days to go from moving things this size

To using tweezers to move things this size.

But boy, it does feel nice.  From the physicality of size and strength, from the loud noises to composing things in your head, light and shadow and the sound of music from the speakers.
I feel blessed to be able to move between the worlds.

#8 / Holding Together [Union]

As I was processing these photos I was thinking how I was moving forward during this world wide sitting still moment in time.
I picked up my I Ching to read up on those two movements and opened up the book to #8 Pi/Holding Together [Union].  That's how the Wilhelm/Baines translation translates it.

It speaks to the hexagram as a requirement "that we unite with others, in order that all may complement and aid one another through holding together."

Well, how appropriate is that?  It does go on to speak of a need of a strong central figure with greatness of spirit and strength that others could rally around....well, how inappropriately appropriate is that?
Barring the strong wise leader appearing then relationships must be formed around inner laws of common experiences...
Need I say how appropriate is that?


But to get back to what was going through the mind as I was working on the photos.  Though we may be all sitting still, I think we're still moving forward.  Like a leaf on a stream that really doesn't move much, the water carries it, when it hits a rock, it just moves around it.

Shot the first go round of shellac on the pieces for the wine job.

Set those aside to harden so I could do the first sanding on them.  Worked on the stuff for the apartment building lobby.
Running some 60 linear feet through the drum sander.

At this very moment while waiting for the end of the day to approach so I can put the first coat of finish on them.

Bonus pic.

Took the longest time for me to figure out what this was after downloading it from the camera.  And I was the one that photo-ed it.
Figured out though, they're seeds in a container with plastic wrap over them to get them started.