Phil Thien
03-11-2011, 10:57 AM
This is sort of woodworking related.
I had a woodworking friend visit me at work. He saw a copy of a woodworking magazine laying on my bench and commented on it. I mentioned the cabinet on the front was pretty outstanding.
"Perhaps the picture of the cabinet makes it look outstanding," he said, and then went on to relate a story.
He has a SIL that was bitten by the bug and removed an old built-in in the dining room of a house he and the wife owned. He then proceeded to make a new one.
This was one of his first large projects, and he made quite a few mistakes. Nonetheless he was very happy with it and proudly showed it to everyone.
So my friend was over there one day and was looking at the completed project and patting his SIL on the back. As he had helped on the project when asked, he was familiar with the project already, and knew there were some poor joints, some of the grain tore when planing, etc. Don't get me wrong, he was a very proud FIL, and he said the project was a vast improvement over what was there, but he mentioned his SIL is a much better woodworker already from the experience.
A couple days later he received an E-Mail cc'd to a bunch of relatives/family friends from his daughter, which had pictures of the new built-in (she was very proud, too, and wanted to share pictures with everyone on her E-Mail list).
My friend started looking at the pictures and was amazed. Had he not seen the unit in person, he'd have thought Krenov himself had made it. The camera just didn't catch any of the problems. The close-ups only showed the hits, none of the misses.
His point was, don't trust those photographs to tell the entire story.
So I wondered how many times I've looked at a picture in a magazine, or a book by one of the greats like Krenov, and assumed that the details were all perfect. What the camera can't show, I assume is 100%.
I do remember seeing a close-up of the back of a genuine Krenov cabinet that was being sold on eBay, and quitekly, the back seemed pretty rough. This surprised me given what Krenov has written on the subject. And even then, I'm not sure the photograph was a good approximation of the actual back.
A lot of rambling. Any thoughts?
I had a woodworking friend visit me at work. He saw a copy of a woodworking magazine laying on my bench and commented on it. I mentioned the cabinet on the front was pretty outstanding.
"Perhaps the picture of the cabinet makes it look outstanding," he said, and then went on to relate a story.
He has a SIL that was bitten by the bug and removed an old built-in in the dining room of a house he and the wife owned. He then proceeded to make a new one.
This was one of his first large projects, and he made quite a few mistakes. Nonetheless he was very happy with it and proudly showed it to everyone.
So my friend was over there one day and was looking at the completed project and patting his SIL on the back. As he had helped on the project when asked, he was familiar with the project already, and knew there were some poor joints, some of the grain tore when planing, etc. Don't get me wrong, he was a very proud FIL, and he said the project was a vast improvement over what was there, but he mentioned his SIL is a much better woodworker already from the experience.
A couple days later he received an E-Mail cc'd to a bunch of relatives/family friends from his daughter, which had pictures of the new built-in (she was very proud, too, and wanted to share pictures with everyone on her E-Mail list).
My friend started looking at the pictures and was amazed. Had he not seen the unit in person, he'd have thought Krenov himself had made it. The camera just didn't catch any of the problems. The close-ups only showed the hits, none of the misses.
His point was, don't trust those photographs to tell the entire story.
So I wondered how many times I've looked at a picture in a magazine, or a book by one of the greats like Krenov, and assumed that the details were all perfect. What the camera can't show, I assume is 100%.
I do remember seeing a close-up of the back of a genuine Krenov cabinet that was being sold on eBay, and quitekly, the back seemed pretty rough. This surprised me given what Krenov has written on the subject. And even then, I'm not sure the photograph was a good approximation of the actual back.
A lot of rambling. Any thoughts?