snapshots and observations

Thursday 26 August 2010

day trip to sheffield






yesterday i had a shoot for a french woman who is a furniture designer.

it was a real rush job. we had to get the train up to sheffield, go to the factory where she was having some prototypes made, set up a little studio in the factory and shoot the products.

as soon as i'd finished we had to head back to london, edit the photos and get them to the printers to start getting her brochures printed overnight. alors !


here's helene helping to set up my little studio in the middle of the factory floor




and here balancing a corian lampshade onto a wooden tripod





in the end, the shot of her two lamps looked a bit like this
she seems to work with corian quite a lot. i've seen it used for tables and work surfaces before, but never as lampshades. maybe she's onto something though ?




another of the products i was supposed to shoot was a corian brick that she designed.
when we got there it was not ready as it was still being machined or whatever they call it.

here's one of the bricks having the holes drilled into it.
if it looks a bit poor quality it's because i shot this through some bullet-proof glass !
the bloke using the machine pointed at a window that was boarded up about 50 yards away.
he told me that a couple of weeks ago one of the drill bits snapped off as it was drilling, flew through the air and smashed through the window... seriously it was 50 yards away.
anyway, last week they fitted a load of bullet-proof glass around the machine.




this shows the remote control for the drill
maybe remote control is not the right phrase ?




and here are a couple of bricks after being drilled and smoothed off






here's one of the shots i did in my 'studio'
they are going to be available in blue, green and white.
you can use them as little vases, pen holders, paperweights, door stoppers, ornaments etc.
you can stack them up... hmmm... interesting little things. i hope she does well with them.





3 comments:

  1. You are right about the term machining and the remote control is often referred to as the CNC. The machine doing the cutting is called a router. (CNC = Computer Numeric Controller, an old fashioned term which has stuck since the early 60s). My background is in manufacturing, hence the boring detail. I've seen a few machining accidents too and all that glass (guarding) is a relatively new innovation. I know people that have lost fingers and eyes when operating machines.

    Love the blog even more now you photograph routers!

    Paul or Gilli (another term from the 60s), friend to The Earl of Stokes.

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  2. i don't think that routers will feature heavily in my blog during the next few months to be honest.
    i will however try to keep you entertained with tales of coffee, bad food, colourful trainers and other such nonsense.

    for instance i'm hoping to have two blog exclusives before christmas...

    1. some never before seen footage of gerry buying a round.
    2. a few photos and words as the earl actually throws something out of his flat.

    until then...

    ReplyDelete
  3. John - time to bin the B&O VHS

    ReplyDelete