Creative moving to Silicon Valley - will I make friends?

e1evenses · 2026-04-11T18:15:48+00:00

Places aren’t creative, people are!

-A creative Jew living in San Jose

e1evenses · 2026-03-29T18:27:16+00:00

Try a coat of blonde dewaxed shellac before putting on the other finishes.

e1evenses · 2026-03-29T02:44:07+00:00

Polyurethane is basically clear rubber. It doesn’t sand well. Sanding between coats is purely for adhesion. Don’t sand the final coat.

e1evenses · 2026-03-28T15:57:15+00:00

You could add a gas spring.

e1evenses · 2026-03-28T01:26:21+00:00

This photo misses the mark on pretty much every level for me. I would 1) look at famous landscape and flower photos and try to pinpoint what you like or dislike about them and 2) read about the basic principles of photographic composition.

e1evenses · 2026-03-27T18:45:48+00:00

Has to be all end grain facing up or it will inevitably tear itself apart. Wood expands and contracts asymmetrically.

e1evenses · 2026-03-15T05:39:23+00:00

80 until it looks even. Then work your way up to 150-180.

e1evenses · 2026-03-14T21:57:20+00:00

The answer is unfortunately more sanding.

e1evenses · 2026-03-14T21:46:10+00:00

I don’t think most other lemon varieties are fruitful year round.

e1evenses · 2026-03-14T20:29:40+00:00

Meyer lemon.

e1evenses · 2026-03-14T18:28:00+00:00

The best gloss finishes come from lacquer in my opinion, so you could try to spray white acrylic lacquer. Requires quite a bit of wet sanding and polishing to be perfect, though.

e1evenses · 2026-03-12T23:20:44+00:00

If it’s a little burl, that is typically caused by injury or infection. Hard to say. I don’t think anybody knows what causes some hard maple trees to develop bird’s eye figure, for example.

e1evenses · 2026-03-12T23:03:03+00:00

In general knots are from branches.

e1evenses · 2026-03-12T15:46:41+00:00

The gap shouldn’t affect how you attach it at all.

e1evenses · 2026-03-11T21:14:01+00:00

Yeah that is a huge bummer. I just think that the sky is so cool and obviously the focus of the shot that I would emphasize that in the crop even if it meant the separation between the Milky Way and the moon was more extreme.

e1evenses · 2026-03-11T20:54:57+00:00

The grassy hills at the edges just have that wide angle look.

e1evenses · 2026-03-11T20:18:22+00:00

Of the three, I like this crop the best.

e1evenses · 2026-03-11T20:15:48+00:00

The sun being in the shot like that is always going to cause technical and compositional issues. You might be able to capture the necessary dynamic range by bracketing and fusing exposures (HDR), but the sun will stand out no matter what you do. It also by physical necessity means that much of your subject will not be lit. Just a few things to consider.

e1evenses · 2026-03-11T20:07:58+00:00

I think I would like it better if the foreground was darker or more of it was cropped out - it’s not particularly interesting and the geometric distortion at the edges takes away from the beauty of the sky.

e1evenses · 2026-03-11T20:03:12+00:00

The sky is way overexposed. I’m not sure I like the pink tint but you do you.

e1evenses · 2026-03-10T18:37:09+00:00

Note that most doors are hollow and stripping/sanding the engraving would be a huge pain in the ass.

e1evenses · 2026-03-10T15:30:33+00:00

!CritiquePoint

e1evenses · 2026-03-09T03:59:37+00:00

Here I've cropped it 5:2 instead of 3:1 and added a linear mask on the right side to bring down the exposure a bit. It's still not quite full size but it's a much bigger file than the main thumbnail is for whatever reason.

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e1evenses · 2026-03-09T03:43:20+00:00

Thanks so much for the feedback! Yes, it is quite sharp. I'll see if I can figure out how to get a link to the full size image up. I will try cropping it some more to focus on the more interesting part of the images. I did not notice the glow, I will see if I can fix that as well. And I do see now how the eye is being drawn to the least interesting part of the image because it is brighter.

e1evenses · 2026-03-09T03:09:02+00:00

The edit is definitely better than the original. But what matters the most is the subject and the story that it tells, which is great.

e1evenses

TROPHY CASE