Extremely Average

 

“Confusion heard his voice, and wild uproar Stood ruled, stood vast infinitude confined; Till at his second bidding darkness fled, Light shone, and order from disorder sprung.” -John Milton

You might have to read that quote a couple of times. It is about confusion and after I read it the first time, it confused me even more. I wonder if that was Milton’s goal. Today, I was ruled by confusion. I felt like every moment from the first light of day, until now, has been a disorganized mess. I had several things pulling me in different directions. As the work day came to an end, I started to think about today’s blog. Again confusion raised his befuddled head.

I finished the saw horses. I haven’t finished them yet. See, even my blog is confusing. I should have said, though I haven’t applied a coat or two of finish to the saw horses, I have completed the construction. I intend to apply a finish to them. I also need to decide on my next project, for without a project, there isn’t woodworking, and without woodworking, there isn’t a blog. Oh sure I could ramble on about something else, perhaps discussing changes in cheese making technology, or look into recent attempts to unionize hurdy gurdy players, or even write horoscopes for cats. (Leo: You look purrfect today, people admire you, and they want to be near you, to serve you and do your bidding…in other words, same old thing. A new ball of yarn catches your eye. Play with fuzzy ball, nap, play some more and repeat.) But those things don’t really interest me.

I also consider the possibility of just skipping a day. I could do that. What is the worst that could happen? I could go hang out with some friends at the Sports Column in Iowa City. Of course, breaking my streak of 27 days would probably make me feel awful tomorrow, lead to more drinking, and missing of another day. This vicious circle would continue for a fortnight, leading to unemployment, incredible depression, the adoption of a dozen cats (One for each sign), and ultimately the writing of catascopes. So skipping a day seems like a bad idea.

I could ramble on about being confused…no that wouldn’t work…or would it?! Damn I wish I could raise one eyebrow, stupid eyebrowus parallelus. Could I possibly be confused for an entire blog post? Has it ever been done? I could look it up on Google or should I use Yahoo. I just don’t know. I started watching the Tage Frid video, from Taunton Press, and it is marvelous. Maybe I could write a review. Nope, I’m not feeling it today.

I know what I want to work on. I want to build a router table. No confusion there. The problem is that I am torn between two different router plates. Should I choose the Rockler Aluminum Router Table plate for Group A routers or the Kreg PRS3030 Precision Router Table Insert Plate? I have also considered the Rousseau 3509. I just don’t know and I am worried about making a poor choice. They all look like they are fine quality. The Kreg is $10.00 more expensive, but it could be delivered on Monday, while the Rockler would not come from Amazon, and I have no idea how long it would take. Once I make my decision, I am going to be eager to work on the table. I can spend the weekend making the legs. I will use the same methodology I used in my workbench. So maybe I should just ask for help?

If you have built a router table do you have a recommendation?

If you have ordered stuff from Rockler, how was their shipping?

If you have a cat, would the cat appreciate having a horoscope written for him or her?

As you can see, I am still quite a mess. I will do better tomorrow. Sorry.

Here is a picture of… a dog. This is Zoey; she lives next door to my parents, and really likes it when my dad rubs her belly. She never seems confused. I admit a cat would have been more appropriate, but I well…eh.

 

I have been giving one tip to people for years.  It is so simple, I hesitate to even call it a tip, but alas I don’t have a thesaurus handy, so I have little choice.  This applies to every photo, whether it is an image of your latest woodworking project or a prize winning picture of a yeti.  The last thing I do, before I press the button, is to slowly force myself to run my eyes around the edge of the image.  I know it sounds dumber than Jethro Bodine, but that is because it is so easy.  In the words of a thousand commercials for footwear, ‘Just Do It’. 

When you start to look at the rest of the image, not just the finely turned bowl, you will notice that there is a corner of a box of diapers sneaking into the image.  You will also get better at taking pictures of people.  The stop sign that is ‘growing’ out of your girlfriend’s head, or the car with your angry wife driving by the shoot, will suddenly pop out to you, and thus you can make slight adjustments (like making sure you take pictures of your girlfriend only when your wife is visiting her sister in Saginaw).  This tip will work with any camera you have, though I still think you should get those lazy six years olds their first job, and get a fancy pants model.  But I digress.

Along a similar line, when taking a picture of your work, if you wish to put some extra items in the background, like tools behind a project in process, or a delicious ham behind the aforementioned finely turned bowl, try to use a shallow depth of field.  Depth of field is the distance (or depth) in the image, which is in focus.  This generally applies to SLRs (Single Lens Reflex…aka…fancy pants cameras), but there are some point and shoots which have this capability.  My mom’s camera, the Powershot G10, is able to set the f-stop.  So when I say shallow depth of field, I mean a small number on your camera’s lens, or a small f-stop.  For example an aperture setting of 3.5 will cause the background to be out of focus, thus causing the subject to stand out, while f22 (f stands for aperture, I could make up a story for why they use f and not a, likely involving a priest, a Rabbi, and an Episcopalian yak farmer, but I have already digressed.), would leave everything in focus.  It is also important to understand how aperture works with light.

Shallow depth of field requires less light than a longer depth of field.  This is helpful when you are taking pictures in artificial light, because the shutter doesn’t need to stay open as long as it would if you were trying to have everything in focus.  If you are getting really excited about photography and are starting to read up on the subject, you might run across the term ‘fast lenses.  This confused me for a long time.  It is simply a lens that allows for a very shallow depth of field.  They are generally much more expensive than a normal lens.  For instance a zoom lens that goes to 300 mm, can be picked up for 3-400 dollars, a ‘fast’ lens, the giant lens that the photographers use on the sidelines of football games, those start at about $7000.00.  This is not a lens you should need, as it is too ‘long’, for shooting your work, but it brings me to my next and last subject for the day.

This photo shows tilt shifting in the table, an annoying shiny bit from a Jet clamp in the top right corner, and also demonstrates shallow depth of field.   This image can be improved substantially by simply removing the clutter in the top right corner.  Were I to shoot it again, I would also slide the mortar slightly to the left.  It feels slightly out of position where it is.

The amount of zoom you should use when shooting.  If you are limited in space, you can use the wide angle portion of your lens, or zoom out.  Zooming out, a back up the image, but it also causes something called bowing.  Have you ever taken a picture of a tall object, like a dresser, and in the photo it looks warped?  That is bowing.   If you are taking a picture of a tall building, the building seems to bow out and the edges don’t run parallel with the sides of the image.  That is tilt shifting.  It can be corrected in Photoshop CS 2, 3, or 4, but that runs you another $1000 and 8 or 9 months of intensive study to master, so fixing it, is not the best solution.  It is better to try to take the image of your dresser from a greater distance and then zooming in on it.  This will give you much better results.  If you can put the dresser in one room, and stand out in the hall and zoom in, you will be much happier with the results.  One last note, if you are taking a close up of your girlfriend’s face while your wife is in Michigan, then try to stand further away, such that the zoom is at 135mm.  This will be much more flattering.   That is all for now.  I am off to do some woodworking.

If a day goes by without my doing something related to photography, it’s as though I’ve neglected something essential to my existence, as though I had forgotten to wake up.

      -Richard Avedon

I didn’t know about the work of Richard Avedon before his exhibit at the Corcoran at the end of 2008.  As a volunteer docent at the gallery I got to hear a lecture from the curator of his traveling exhibit, and learn about his amazing works.  I became a fan.  This wasn’t the beginning of my love of photography, but it definitely gave me a jolt of energy to continue to practice and work to improve.  My weakest area is the use of lighting; in fact, I just had 3 of my images rejected for ‘poor or uneven lighting’.  I am not kidding, as I was typing that sentence I stopped to check a message from Shutterstock, and sure enough the images I used in the blogs ‘The English Plane’ and the image of the ‘stack’ were rejected.   I don’t sweat those setbacks, because I submit my images to 6 different sites, and it is rare that the inspectors agree, so they will probably get reject by 2 of the 6.

The point is that the subject of proper lighting is somewhat subjective.  There are however universal sins.  Harsh lighting is always bad.  The most common cause of this unfortunate faux pas is the use of an on camera flash.  How does one tell if the lighting is harsh?  The truth is in the shadows.  If one wants to improve their photography, striving to eliminate the hard shadows is a great first step.  I am not an expert, as I have said, but I can share the tips I have learned.

In learning how to create ‘saleable’ images for stock sites, I have read thousands of forum posts, several books, and a few tea leaves, trying to unravel the mysteries.  One of the first tips I would give is to take your photos, with the camera on a tripod, and use the timer.  The reason for this is that you are able to shoot in situations where the light isn’t spectacular.  I don’t mean to digress again, but I should mention a little bit about light, and the way cameras work.

Assuming you not shooting in manual mode (and if you are good enough to shoot on manual, you don’t need to continue reading, so go eat a donut and come back in a paragraph or two), your camera is using the tiny computer inside of it.  That computer is taking a reading of the available light and it is deciding how quickly it need to open its shutter to get a picture that you will be proud of.  Your camera really wants to do a good job for you.  When you and your camera are shooting outdoors, with natural light, the camera has a lot more flexibility with how it is able to take the shot.  But when you are indoors, in a workshop for instance, under artificial light, the camera looks out into the room and sees almost total darkness.  It decides that in order to get a shot that  has enough light it must keeps its shutter open for 2, 3, 5 or more seconds.

Now that may not seem like a long time, when compared to the life of a  star, or even the time it takes to learn woodworking, but in the world of photography it is an eternity.  To hand hold your camera, it needs to open and close its shutter in 1/60^th of 1 second.  If it is open for twice as long or 1/30^th of a second, the vibration from your pulse will cause there to be camera shake.  This will lead to a slightly blurry image, and force your significant other to lie to you about how much he or she likes your picture.  This is why we want to use a tripod, we don’t need to hold the camera, hence the camera can keep its shutter open until it feels there is enough light to get a clear image.  Having the camera lounging on a tripod isn’t enough to eliminate camera shake though, you must also use the timer, lest the slight vibration from the pressing of the button, undo your efforts.

 

In the world of stock photography, the top photographers shoot medium format Hasselblad, with Carl Zeiss lens, and a digital back.  This set up will set you back fifty to sixty thousand dollars.  Do you need to run out and buy equipment of this quality?  Well, yes you do.  I would recommend, if your children are young enough, that you sell a couple them.  Another, less recommended option, is to keep the children and introduce them to the joys of spending their afternoons working in a sweat shop.  You should still be able to get some nice Nikon or Canon equipment.  That being said, it will still take you a little while to get your new equipment, so you will need to get along with your current set up.  This is fine, as long as you don’t let it go on for too long.  If you have a digital camera, even if it isn’t a fancy pants Nikon or Cannon, it is likely that there will be different write setting which determines how the camera takes the image and writes it to the disk.  Once you find the different settings, there will likely be something like, small, medium, large, fine, and raw, or something along those lines.  Basically it is determining how high a quality image you are taking.  The important one is Raw.  Shooting in raw will drastically reduce your memory card capacity, but that is what you want to use.  The reason is that in raw, your little camera is basically capturing all the information it needs to make lots of adjustments after the fact.

I can tell by my word count that I have rambled on a bit, and I am not close to finishing my photographing woodworking rant, so I will make this a multiple part series.  So before I put this drivel to bed for the night, let me reiterate the main points.  Use a tripod, because it gives you flexibility with regards to lighting, and shoot in raw, because after you shoot, you can make adjustments to the image, to get it to look the way you want.

Once you have shot the image and downloaded it to your computer, you will be given an option to open the image in an editing program, usually included with the camera.  This is where you can play with the image.  You are able to overexpose (make brighter) or underexpose (make darker) the image.  You are able to adjust temperature of the light (a future post will go into greater detail about warm vs. cold light)  I have included 4 images, the 1^st one is cold, the second one is warm, the third one has the black increased, and the 4^th one is desaturated and darkened to create a black and white image.  They are all from the same single shot, taken in raw.  I hope this illustrates the value of raw and will encourage you to give it a try.  I also have included a shot showing my lights.

So class, I expect that you are all eager to try out the tips from today’s lecture.  Your homework is to write a brief description of the camera equipment that you have in the comments section.  Also I invite you to pose any specific questions you might have, though I must warn you that I am not good with world capitals or the periodic table of the elements.

It was in the spring of 975 A.D. when Erik the Red’s 1st cousin, thrice removed, Sven the Brunette with blond highlights, headed out in his longship for weekend of pillage and camaraderie with his buddies. Sven was a giant of a man, standing 6’ 8” tall, with a barrel chest, and a thick beard, also with blonde highlights. His friends were also rather large and one might say malodorous (of course one wouldn’t say that until 1840 or later, as the word didn’t exist in 975, but I digress). They headed out to sea, towards a little village, which they expected would put up scant resistance to their pillaging, and Sven had heard they had a nice day spa. He figured lads would be sore after a day of pillaging and he really needed a seaweed wrap.

Sven had not done a lot of pillaging in his life, he was more of a home body, but the continued success of his cousin, forced him to, according to his wife, ‘get out more’. Apparently the other wives were beginning to talk. So off they went. As he stood at the head of the longboat, looking out over the waves, he thought about the conquests of Eric, and he thought about his other cousin, Bahn the rather grumpy. History has forgotten Bahn, but Sven knew only too well of his tales. He cringed as he remembered the stories of Bahn, with his massive hammer over head, screaming as he ran into the villages, ‘Fear my hammer, fear the Wrath of Bahn!’. This cry would cause the men to tremble and the women to swoon. When the tales of Bahn were told back home, the men toasted him, and the women, well, they swooned too, except for Sven’s wife. She hit him on the shoulder and gave him a dirty look. That night was a cold and lonely one for Sven.

He spent the next week fashioning a massive hammer from his best wood. He reinforced the handle and polished it to a fine sheen. He then gathered his smelly friends and told them of his plan for fame and riches. The lads were not terribly bright, and they all liked the idea of getting away from the wife and kids for a weekend.

As the little village came into view, his excitement almost overwhelmed him. They had been crossing the sea all day and were eager for battle. Sven had been practicing his war cry in his head. The boat crept ashore, down the coast from the village. They made their way through the woods, over the glen, and soon they saw the village. There were several dozen huts, people milling about, an ox pulling a scratch plough, and children playing near the center of town. It was just as Sven imagined.

He led his band of Viking Warriors down the hill. As they got within ear shot, Sven yelled out his battle cry, wielding his hammer with bravado. The bravado was short lived. The town’s people all heard the cry, and a group of women, washing clothes in the stream at the edge of town, defeated Sven, not with weapons, but with their laughter. Not just laughter, but a full on eruption of boisterous chortling, with a fair amount of finger pointing. Several woman, laughed so hard that they slipped and fell into the stream.

Sven’s friends, his Viking hoard, stopped soon after hearing the battle cry, and the aforementioned laughter. They just shook their heads, turned around, and headed back to the boat. Sven was crushed. He was confused and didn’t understand what had happened. The lads got back in the boat, snickering, and waited for Sven. When he returned and demanded to know why they had stopped, Holgar spoke up, and said, “I’ve got wood!?…Massive hard wood!?…Really?! THAT was your battle cry?…Did you think it through?” The rest of the hoard busted out laughing, and continued through the night as they returned home. It didn’t stop until most of them had gone to bed, but quickly started up again, when they told the tales of their great adventure. Sven said, he would never pillage again, and his wife said she loved him regardless, which was all he wanted in the first place.

So with Sven in mind, I declare, “I’ve got LUMBER, really massive lumber.” When I began my journey into woodworking, I imagined creating all sorts of beautiful tables and chairs, with exotic woods, and stunning grain patterns. I don’t think I ever spent even a moment, thinking about where one gets beautiful lumber, for I knew that, unlike most things, lumber did grow on trees.

The book ‘Selecting and Drying Wood’, which is a collection of articles from Fine woodworking magazine, has opened my eyes to the challenges involved in selecting and buying lumber. I have learned that one should be prepared when they head out to buy those bits of trees that will become treasured projects. Roland Johnson’s article in the book, suggests that one have a ‘kit’ for their trips to the lumberyard. He believed in taking a flashlight, gloves, tape measure, moisture meter, clip board with cut list, pencil, and even a hand plane. I wouldn’t have thought of any of these things, with the possible exception of a cut list. The book also taught me the value of trying to select pieces of lumber that are from the same tree and gave tips on how one can determine if two boards go together. I had no idea how much the color can vary between different trees of the same species. I didn’t know what heartwood was or how one could use defects in a board to match it to another board from the same tree.

I don’t know if I got a good deal. I paid $400.00 for the lot, or $1.17 per board foot. It feels like a good deal to me, and I will get lots of hours of enjoyment from my lumber. I am learning how to build stacks. I didn’t even know what a sticker was, before I needed one. And perhaps the best part, is the joy I feel when I walk downstairs to my basement (where I have the dehumidifier running 24/7), and see the stacks I am building. There is something great about having lots of wood.

“The English Plane”

    -by Brian Meeks

In a tiny shop north of London town

Off cobble stone road sat a flower girl

He’d returned from the war a scar on his face

He’d flown a camel; they’d called him an Ace.

Each day he worked fixing table and chair

An easel she made from two apple crates

The days rolled by and He spends them alone

Violets waited for him and whispered hello

With chisel and plane and saw and mallet

The rough hewn walnut became a palette