This started as a picture blog when my daughter Stacey and I went on a photographic expedition to the Pacific Northwest. I've added pictures occasionally but will be doing so on a more regular basis now that I have upgraded all of my camera gear and we are prepared for some great travel. In the meantime, I decided to start cataloging my woodworking projects so I would have a photographic record of some of my successes (and failures!). Here are a few.

Curly Maple and Cocobolo Sushi Tray

Birdseye Maple and Cocobolo Box. Birdseye Maple and Chechen Table. Burl Walnut Base under box.

Cherry and Hard Maple Cutting Boards

Cherry and Painted Poplar Frame (surrounding one of my all time favorite pictures of the family taken when I worked for Kodak in Sequoia National Park. Picture was used to advertise our campground programs)

Cherry Blanket Chest

Cherry Hall Table. Birdseye Maple and Chechen Stationery Box

Cherry and Maple Spindle Back Bench

Rolling Flip-Top Tool Table (Planer one side, Belt/Disk sander on the flip side)

Rolling, collapsible, miter saw stand

Workbench and Tool Cabinets

Closets, Cabinets, and Bookshelf (built in Stacey and Juan's D.C. co-op)

My Other Hobby

It has been a long time since I've posted to this blog but my camera has been stored away for a few months. Instead, I've been back in the workshop creating sawdust. I found a beautiful selection of tiger maple at my local hardwood supplier and decided to build this hall table with a maple top and walnut base. The design was inspired by a picture I saw in a magazine. The base was finished with amber shellac and top was dyed and sanded several times to get the tiger curls to "pop", then finished with several coats of lacquer and finally paste wax.

Creepy Guy on the Prairie

Leesa and her husband Rick hammed it up beautifully to create a frightening prairie scene. Our plan was to create ominous shadows by placing a flash with a blue gel filter behind the villain. Leesa was lit with a second flash equipped with a 1/8th inch spot grid to focus the light just on the window. An orange filter on this light provided contrast and drama. Her $5 Walmart plastic pistol looked a lot more lethal with the long shadow it created! But Rick's machete was real. Click to enlarge.

Film Noir

Film Noir was our objective when Stacey and I dragged a carload of equipment out to shoot pictures last Sunday. Sabrina was the perfect femme fatale, dripping with attitude, and Rick the confident private detective, unmoved by her charms and ready to get to the bottom of this.

No lungs were harmed in the making of these pictures. The cigs were only rolled up pieces of paper. Ash, ember and smoke were added later thanks to Stacey's Photoshop magic.

Had a great time over the 4th of July weekend in D.C. Stacey hosted a workshop and she found some great models to work with while we shot pictures indoors and out. Emma and Flow were very patient as we practiced some lighting techniques with shoot-through umbrellas, softboxes, and spot grids, balancing daylight and strobes.

Just make it simple...

Stacey and I got to shoot together again this weekend.

For me, photography pulls something out of me that often gets surpressed in the clutter of my life. From the first time I saw a photographic image slowly emerge in a bath of developer in the faint glow of a darkroom safelight, I was hooked. It was such an adrenalin rush to anticipate the result; a validation (or repudiation) of my skill with a camera and as a technician in the dark. More often than not, the results were awful - the exposure was off, the lighting sucked, the composition included a light post growing out of my subjects head, the image was out of focus. Basically, the image bore no resemblance to what I had in mind when I clicked the camera's shutter. The time between capture and finished print was days or even weeks so it was hard to remember what my f-stop or shutter speed was or even the time of day the picture was taken. Leap forward 30 years and it's a brave new world. With digital cameras you get instant gratification (or disappointment), virtually unlimited chances, auto focus, ISO options, white balance options, exposure sophistication, flash synch at unbelievable shutter speeds, and if you STILL screw up, the opportunity to "fix it in post", which basically means letting a $600 software package make you look like a hero rather than a goat. It aint fair. As Joe McNally (30 year National Geo shooter) often says, "Do you know how HARD this shit used to be???" But I digress.

Yes photography is easier to learn, and that's a good thing. But "easy" and "good" don't always equate. Even with all of the modern tools, photography forces me to really think, to "see" light, to try to tell a story. I've often told Stacey, the more you learn about photography, the lower your percentage of good shots. It's not that your pics aren't getting better, it's that your definition of "good" keeps changing.

So we took a couple of Stacey's very patient and photogenic friends up on a roof of an apartment building in D.C. along with about 50 pounds of gear....cameras, lenses, light stands, speedlights, soft boxes, clothing, hats, tripods...to create a few images as the sun set. Simple? Not by a long shot. But I'm just as hooked on the process as I was 30 years ago.

Surfing USA

Getting up on a surfboard the first time can be tricky, especially when you have the paparazzi following your every move. Even so, Kevin, Chris, and Stacey did an awesome job riding the great Kahuna. Well, OK, maybe the waves weren't as big as the great Kahuna. They were closer to the ripples made when you throw a rock in the water. Nevertheless, spectacular spills and thrills were captured, including the classic "Endless Summer" sunset picture, while we visited Venice Beach a couple weeks ago.

Organ Hummers

So after a couple glasses of wine with our sister and brother-in-law, Katie and Joe Organ, we decided upon the title of this blog entry. The hummingbirds hanging out in front of their beautiful Mendon, NY home were too pretty to resist. So I set up a tripod and waited until the sun went down so I could use a couple flashes to freeze their wings, which beat at 50 - 80 times per second. Click on the pics to see larger versions.

One light in the garden

Nothing better than having family with us over a holiday weekend so we were pretty psyched when Stacey, Juan, and Chris surprised us with a visit from D.C. over the fourth. Stace and I have learned that dragging our cameras and lighting gear out for long periods of time is greatly frowned upon when "family" time is so rare, but we did get to sneak in a few pictures. We were up at 6:30am on Saturday to take some yoga pics (did I mention that Stacey is also a popular yoga teacher in D.C.?). Simple setup; just a softbox to the left of the camera and natural daylight. The other pics used a technique I've been anxious to try; one speedlight mounted high on a lightstand aimed at the windows/glass door on the back of the house. The light is outside, about 20 feet away in the garden behind our house. It strikes the window grilles and indoor plant, creating interesting shadow patterns on Stacey and the wall behind her. The intensity of the shadows is adjusted by changing the camera shutter speed.