Wood Shop Season Starts Again!

Now that we're FINALLY starting to get some nicer weather around here, we have kind of "re-opened" our wood shop. As it's nearing the end of the school year, I have begun to make pens for some of my teachers. One teacher in particular (who teaches the Newspaper class, as well as some English classes) really enjoys writing. As in, poetry. I figured she would probably appreciate a fountain pen. But I wanted one that would really fit her personality. She's unique, not not in a negative, weird way. She's just awesome. So is Fig-Asian Satinwood, as I discovered.




click to enlarge, or see it on Flickr
Aperture: f/7.1
Shutter Speed: 0.3 seconds
ISO: 100
Focal Length: 53mm
Tripod


Even though I was working with a light tent, I wanted some directional light to try and capture the "holographic" effect the flame in this wood gives, especially under polish. I don't think I did it justice, but facing the open side of the softbox into the light helped a little bit. It also gave me that rather obnoxious glare coming off the main barrel of the pen. I guess that's a fair trade off.

Also, because I haven't been very good with keeping up with this blog (or photography in general) the past few days, I have already noticed a really big oversight in the process of taking this photo. I got to the "pick the best photo to use" stage of post-processing and realized... I shot all of my exposures at f/7.1. I didn't vary the aperture once. f/7.1 happened to be a reasonably good aperture for the job though. If it hadn't, I would have gone back and shot again. I need to be doing photography, every day, otherwise I start slipping. It doesn't take long.

One final piece of news: I got hired at a camera store nearby! Dream job, here I come. I start work in... 2.5 hours. Woot!