Drying Bed
These shots are of a freshly oiled bed, drying in the living room. I made the bed last weekend for my son – I have to do my carpentry on the back patio as I have no workshop or covered space available at this time. Naturally, after several unusually dry months it started to rain just when I was going to apply some Danish oil and has not stopped for a week now. So, the bed has ended up drying in the living room. I don’t do carpentry very often, and making things from scratch even less so – its been a few years since I last tried something like this.
I took these photos yesterday with the idea of posting one on Facebook, but I like how they turned out, especially the colour one, so am putting them to work here too. The bed is made with the tools at hand – skil saw, drill, chisel, screw driver, screws, glue and dowels. The wood is former shelving salvaged from my neighbour’s house supplemented with new pieces as needed – all Douglas fir, except the headboard which I think is maple, though it seems a bit softer than I would expect. The slats are from Ikea. The design I conceived as something simple suited to my rudimentary skill and equipment.
I really appreciate how HDR works in this kind of lighting where much of the bed was in shadow and the room and window are in very different light levels. The black and white image is processed in Photomatix from three hand-held brackets taken at +/- 1.0 EV. The colour one was processed from a similar set using Lightroom 4 and the 32-bit HDR plug-in, described in more detail in an earlier post of mine More Natural HDR. Both were then tweaked in Lightroom after HDR processing (and a bit before as well).
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Canon 5Dii, Nikkor-N 24mm/f2.8 lens, ISO800, f2.8, brackets at 1/60th, 1/30th, 1/15th, hand-held.
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burnt embers 
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Absolutely stunning work here, my friend! Subtle, natural feeling images yet the viewer is left amazed by the ability to see into all the highlights and dark corners! All the rich tones from the wood on the bed, on the floor and inherent in your furniture are exquisite here!
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Thanks Toad. I like the natural feeling of the colour shot especially. I thank you again for putting me on to that plug in which gets these great effects, through your lighstalking round up. Much appreciated.
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Nicely done Ehpem…a fancy wood shop is not necessarily needed to produce fine craftsmanship!
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Wow! You made that bedframe, Ephem? I’m impressed, it’s really beautiful. I love the simplicity of the form.
Both the images are wonderfully balanced.
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Thanks Karen – the simplicity arises from necessity of my limited skills and equipment. As to the photos, I much prefer the colour versions for being more natural in appearance, but the black and white on its own works pretty well (it is what I used on Facebook and it does just fine there).
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Beautiful bed!!! I have always wanted to work with wood but I lack the skills and talent. I did make a coffee table many years ago that lasted almost 40 years. I have a lot of admiration for good woodworking. and the photo isn’t bad eather.
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Thank you Ken! It worked out better than i thought it would. Most of my ‘carpentry’ has been done in the field – 2×4’s, plywood, nails or screws and a chainsaw. What that crude effort did teach me was some elements of basic design to make something that would be pretty strong, not too wobbly, and hold together for the desired length of time. And simplicity.
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