My "day" job...

Don Kondra

Greetings,

I finally made some time to shoot some of my work with my relatively new Alien Bees strobes and a "focus gray" backdrop.

A lacquered side table.



A cherry entrance bench with brown leather seat.



A side/hall table with a single plank walnut top.



And finally an air dried walnut coffee table.



Cheers, Don

DaddyO

Very nice photography for sure and excellent working craftsmanship.
Well done. thumb

Eia

Wow, what is more beautiful, the photo or the subject???? You are very, very talented. Which do you enjoy the most; photography or wood work?

black mamba

I wish I had seen your wood productions before now. I'm a sucker for really good artisan woodworking pieces....I think half the boys ( and gals ) doing quality work in the Blue Ridge Mountains have retired off of me. I'm scrambling around the house right now, trying to figure out where I could stick one of those walnut coffee tables. I'll be in touch.

Thanks for the photos,

Tom

Don Kondra

Eia wrote:

Wow, what is more beautiful, the photo or the subject???? You are very, very talented. Which do you enjoy the most; photography or wood work?

Right now it's a toss up

I started woodworking as a hobby and loved it so much I quit my office job to do it full time. I would wake up in the middle of the night with new ideas.

The photography started the same way but with digital it's so much more immediate, never did get into the dark room thingee.

Now I wake up in the middle of the night thinking of new ways to light objects

And I think there are enough technical aspects to keep me challenged for some time to come

Cheers, Don

Don Kondra

black mamba wrote:

I wish I had seen your wood productions before now. I'm a sucker for really good artisan woodworking pieces....I think half the boys ( and gals ) doing quality work in the Blue Ridge Mountains have retired off of me. I'm scrambling around the house right now, trying to figure out where I could stick one of those walnut coffee tables. I'll be in touch.

Thanks for the photos,

Tom

Tom, rearranging the furniture to fit in a new piece is a good thing

Cheers, Don

Skippy

Don Kondra wrote:

Greetings,

I finally made some time to shoot some of my work with my relatively new Alien Bees strobes and a "focus gray" backdrop.

A lacquered side table.
A cherry entrance bench with brown leather seat.
A side/hall table with a single plank walnut top.
And finally an air dried walnut coffee table.

Cheers, Don

Wow Don you are a talented guy aren't you :ivar

I admire people who can get ideas out of their head and actually create what they see with their hands, it truly amazes me how the hands can do what the mind can think.

I hope you pass your talent on to your children if you have any.
Nice going with the photography and the funiture making Don :ivar

.... Skippy

Don Kondra

Thanks Skippy,

No children but I do teach workshps regularly

Cheers, Don

dank-photo

Don,

first of all....absolutely wonderful furniture. I worked on a shoot for the artists guild (the artful home magazine) a while back, and it reminds me of some of the great, original furniture that they sell. Having said that, I am mainly an asst. at a large commercial studio that mostly shoots clothing, but we shoot furniture every once and a while, and the tricky thing with lighting wood (and my only nit-pick) would be the milky looking table tops...you really want to make that beautiful wood grain pop. Not a pro at this by any means, but I would suggest trying to take a stop or so off of the overhead light with a scrim of some sort...or make the reflection on the table bounce into something black?

...just my 2 cents.

Great work!

-Dan K.

*edit* didn't see your homepage until now...WOW! I've always been interested in woodworking...mainly abstract sculpture, but have always wanted to try furniture...any chance you'll ever hold a workshop in Wisconsin? (or do you teach from home?)

Don Kondra

Thanks for the suggestion Dan.

But, it's a little more complicated than that, sigh...

In hindsight I should have waited until I delivered the latest batch of custom spray finishing and I had more room to set up my 9' backdrop, that way I could have placed my side and main lights lower and farther back. That's were the reflection is coming from.

This was the last piece of the day to be shot and it was a toss up between getting enough light on the bottom of the piece or having the shiny top.

I had planned to try different lighting ratio's and a circular polarizing filter in the morning but needed to get back to making sawdust

As to the workshops, I usually teach from home but I occasionally travel to teach. What normally happens is a woodworking guild will sign up enough participants to pay my travel, room and board and teaching fee. I'm flexible enough that I can tailor the workshop towards whatever the participants are most interested in, ie. vacuum veneering, bent lamination, the design process, traditional joinery, etc..

The great thing about teaching is that woodworkers in general are a great group of people and I almost always learn something from others that have developed techniques with a different set of tools and work experience..

Cheers, Don

dank-photo

Yeah, it sounds like the 9' backdrop would have helped...wasn't sure what kind of space/set-up you had to work with. (other than the AB's)

Do you do any lathe work? Someone I work with is in a woodworkers guild here who might be interested...

I'd love for woodworking to be a hobby of mine in the future...focusing on my photography as the full-time gig for the moment though...just starting out.

Anyways, I hope you don't mind; I don't want to hi-jack your thread, so I'll keep it small...but I wanted to show you one of my sculptures from school a couple years ago and see what you thought of it...just the sculpture:D I know the picture itself is horrible...just a quick snapshot under horrible lighting.

made of basswood/walnut

Don Kondra

Hmmm.... interesting concept.

I think it might be a stronger piece with just one support element with a longer gradual taper towards the top?

Perhaps even have the end of the base turn up, aka. a snakes tail

Introducing some texture would also take it to a different level.

Cheers, Don

dank-photo

Don Kondra wrote:

Hmmm.... interesting concept.

I think it might be a stronger piece with just one support element with a longer gradual taper towards the top?

Perhaps even have the end of the base turn up, aka. a snakes tail

Introducing some texture would also take it to a different level.

Cheers, Don

Thanks a lot Don! Those are all great ideas! The concept was an abstract human figure...more specifically, "having a strong base, with a good head on your shoulders"

not evident in the picture are the slightly different tones in the basswood...quite a few pieces fit together like patchwork...somewhat of a texture maybe...

Thanks again for taking the time,

-Dan K.