Making It Come to Me

At least for the moment, there's no gathering in restaurants.  One of life's real treasures, sharing of food and drink made by someone else.  But that's just not possible right now so I built my own.
It's a pop up, it went up yesterday, coming down today.

Since I can't have knowledge of how much knowledge you have, I'll briefly explain some salient points in the photo above.
The black silhouette in the middle is the camera which is tethered ( here by a physical wire) to the computer (on the left) which allows for near instant relay to the big screen after the exposure.  So much better to work like this where you can see it large.  Many of the movements that happen in commercial photography are small and they are much easier to see when the image is big.

The front table and chairs have been raised up, this was done for the perspective relationship of the camera height, the wine bottle and elements in the rear.

The front hanging lamp is actually behind the table, it worked better visually.  The front strobe did most of the heavy lifting as far as lighting the table.


A new client from right down the street.  High end chocolate in various forms.  Since he's somewhat small, I take most of the payment in product.  Here, close to ten pounds of the pure stuff and some of the small bites.
He does his own Photoshop to keep his cost down so disregard the state of surface on the small bites.

Bézier-ish

Bézier Curves

Seems they're all around at the moment.

The new climbing rose needed some more lash points than the straight lines I put up earlier.  I thought I could metaphorically introduce nature by adding some organic twisty things by doing it this way.

Glued up these curves using the centuries old hide glue and rubbing of the joint method to build up the shape.  No clamps.  Freedom I tell you.

And last night for the first time in two month, we got together to get twisty as we curved our way through freeform jam.  That's Jules' head behind the bottle of Ouzo by the way.  Don't want him to get lost in the clutter of photo.
Yes, more than 6' apart.
Ouzo you say?  Yes Ouzo.

Bonus Bézier reference.
The left over tapers from the ellipse project.  That large round object in the middle, by the way, is from a Chevron grease shoot from the early 90's.  It a roller bearing from a very large engine.

Ellipse Empiricism

Spent some hours trying to figure out if I could figure this out with math.  I could not.
The several ellipses I'm building are to have the wood oriented pointing somewhat toward the center point.  It would be easy to do the arithmetic of the angles needed if the arc was a portion of a circle but an ellipse is way above my pay grade to calculate.

So I did it like anybody with a pencil and a straight edge would do it.  Laid out the wood and sort of made lines until it looked about right and cut each angle by eye so to speak.

Thought I would do the old big/small configuration.  A large piece followed by a narrower wedge followed by a large.  I think it was a real nice solution.  I also think it will play well with what Ken has planned for the front of the cabinet.  Laid out the large ones somewhat pointing toward center, placed narrower piece on top and eyeballed where to draw a pencil line.
You can also see a contraption Mike made to draw the correct ellipse(s).

First three pieces cut and fitted.

Then took the marked up wood over to my interpretation of a taper jig.  Since I have a large sliding table, the jig rides on that.  Most jigs I've seen slide against the fence of the saw.

Here's the jig with a marked up piece of walnut in it.  I can vary the angle with the arm that rotates.  The square of plywood that's against the fence accomplished two things.  One is since it's parallel to the blade I rotate the arm until the pencil line is aligned with the inside edge of the plywood.  The plywood also sits exactly inline with where the blade will cut so I slide the jig left or right until my cut line is under the plywood.

One of the narrower tapers.

Went very well, even had time to bake some bread.

I'll glue up tomorrow and somehow take it over to Ken's to see how it fits on the counter.

Covid Production

The decision was made to have Ken host the various elements of the lobby build-out.  Mike brought in the elliptical front counter so we could fit our parts to it.

By the way, please check out Robin's stunning beeswax and string art you can see here on the walls.
Here

Mike decked out in approved coverings.
Ken, not so much.

Mike demonstrating to me a drawing jig he made so I could draw the same ellipse he did.  Ken apparently digging out a splinter!!!!!

The production schedule for install has been waylayed and not because of the Virus.  Legs and whatnot waiting.

Ken asks me if I've seen his upstairs.....well, yes of course.  He takes me upstairs anyway to see how all the other things are being stored pending the schedule opening up.

One of the interesting things about this shot is how Ken constructed the bed in situ and how the roof truss goes through the bed.

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.