New sword, new photographer.

[Alden Sherrodd]

WIP threads are cool, and very informative, but I have done a few and they are very labor intensive and can require a project to take twice as long to interrupt the work to take the photos. Those who have been chatting with me for a while in different forums are aware of the ones I have done in the past and after my experience in them, I would now charge a premium for a customer who wished step by step documentation of the work. My hats off to those who regularly do WIP’s as many may not realize how much effort goes into them.

Kevin, I remember spending many hours reading the WIP of the the sword project that you did a few years ago. I marvelled then at how much time must have been spent putting all of that together. While very entertaining for the reader I can understand how this could drain precious hours from the days of a fulltime bladesmith.
We do appreciate a peek into your work though.
Thanks,
Alden

 

[deloid]

What a shock; another museum quality piece.
Seriously, that sword is gorgeous and it takes time to study all the detailing and work that went into the piece.

I'm not fond of the photo. Sorry about that since I suspect the map was your idea but IMHO it's too busy, especially considering all the lines one needs to see on the sword.
When I do photography I don't let the customer have a say with the critical components that will impact on my shots. They do have a limited choice but since I don’t depend on photography for a living I get to be the boss

When I set up a shoot I think about how I would paint the setting (I am an artist as well as photographer) on canvas and I try to set up the still or portrait with that in mind.


My apologies to Steve Dean. I went to his web page and he is an awesome professional photographer with a keen eye for art. Steve, if you read this don’t look at my web page…it is badly constructed by a worthless web developer (me) and I have not been brave enough to post images of my work other than old or personal shots. I fear theft more than exposure. I did a trial with a digital watermark and the image was stolen and posted all over the world within a month.

Kevin, the more I look at that sword and see such a high level of achievement the more energized I get. Thanks for the inspiration! It's great having such talent around (to see and appreciate) in our short lifetime.

Dean Lapinel

 

[Kevin R. Cashen]

Deloid I must be completely honest that your post made me outright cringe. I totally appreciate your points on the composition but the thought of a customer, or especially another maker, altering one of my pieces would seriously ruffle my feathers so I can sympathize with a photographer having his work altered even to illustrate a point. However, I may be off base there, and photographers may be fine with others Photoshopping their stuff, I just know how knifemakers are about their work.

I have seen what you mention much more with overdone props in knife photos that make an appropriately themed background seem rather tame. I personally don’t even put too much stake in the backgrounds due to the annoying penchant that most publications have for butchering them away with a magic wand tool set on an 80 tolerance level. But don’t even get me started on that as I have seen parts of my blades chopped away by editorial staff who thought it would be cool to have a pixilated blade float over text. I know I am not the only one who feels that if a book or magazine is not going to devote a little time to do it correctly they should do the knifemaker and the photographer a favor by staying out of Photoshop with it.

Not allowing the customer to have input may work well for portrait type work, but I feel it gets into a touchy area when one is creating their photos with other peoples art. Thus one of my largest criteria in determining a photographer is how much they will include me in the process of creating something using my artwork. This is one of the reasons why I am not fond of a lot of props used in my product photos, simple documentation of my artwork is what I seek.

You have my total sympathy about the webpage dilemma, I too asked Steve not to even look at my webpage, as it is a cobbled together mess that I have not “fixed” in 10 years, and I am painfully aware of that. I have been working on an entirely new cashenblades.com, with proper stylesheets and everything, for over a year now but keep getting sidetracked. So, much to my chagrin, the broken links and cartoonish backgrounds of that outdated page continue to represent Matherton Forge.

I do however thank you very much for your kind and encouraging words about my work. Since I will have input, in the future I will also give consideration to your suggestions on photo composition.

 

[koyote]

Really nice photos, really nice blade. The bronzework is just perfect, I think.

damn. That's nice.

 

[Matthew Gregory]

Fantastic work, Kevin... I've got tons of questions for you regarding the work of the scabbard, however I'll grill you about it over a bit of pipe smoke at Ashokan, I think.

As I can understand deloid's point about the image, I think there's a far easier solution to the problem - simply leave the image larger, and allow us to get a better look at it! I, too am intrigued by all of the details I can't see, but I guarantee I'd see 'em better on an image that wasn't so compressed! Any chance of getting a larger and higher rez version of it?

 

[DaveMartell]

That's flat out stunning!

 

[rhrocker]

I've been studying the patterns in the blade, and have come to the conclusion that I'm not sure what to call it (referring to the center two patterns). On the one hand, I would like to say it's a Turkish Twist, but the more I look at it the more I think there's more involved here. Maybe it's the stars in the pattern, I don't know. Could you (or would you) shed any light on this Kevin? Although I'd dearly love to know exactly how you made these individual billets before forging all together, I can sure understand why
a maker wouldn't want all of the fine details of his work availiable to anyone and everyone. Case in point, the "Feather" damascus. A Bowie got some photo exposure on one of the forums a few short years ago, and now a lot of guys (gals?) are doing fine examples of it. I've even been moderately successful with it until I made the stack to high and it ended up looking like a rather drunk looking pillsbury doeboy with a slight crease down the middle of his body.
Ok, back to the topic and one more question Kevin if you would: The edge I assume is also O1/L6 but the question revolves around the tip of the blade. I see no seam going out to the point, so therefore you must have used one piece for the edge treatment.
I'm having a devil of a time figuring that one out, considering there is very little if any, distortion to the pattern in the tip area. I realize this may be another one of those instances where the maker needs to reserve the right to not divulge all the processes, but am just hoping )
Thanks bud, Robert

 

[deloid]

Deloid I must be completely honest that your post made me outright cringe. so I can sympathize with a photographer having his work altered even to illustrate a point. However, I may be off base there, and photographers may be fine with others Photoshopping their stuff, I just know how knifemakers are about their work.

I do however thank you very much for your kind and encouraging words about my work. Since I will have input, in the future I will also give consideration to your suggestions on photo composition.

Thank you Kevin. It was afraid of posting that note but I think so highly of you that I took the risk of creating something that could be taken as offensive. Yes, in the world of photography it is common to express a thought in a forum via an altered photo. This is common whether or not a critique is requested. In the art world (oil/canvas portraiture) it is considered rude. I took a chance mostly because you are a thoughtful individual.

To tell the truth, after I posted I was going to try and delete the message but I was called out on an emergency

I deleted the photo anyway since it may not have been appropriate to do what I did in this setting.

Thanks for your tolerance

 

[Kevin R. Cashen]

I've been studying the patterns in the blade, and have come to the conclusion that I'm not sure what to call it (referring to the center two patterns). On the one hand, I would like to say it's a Turkish Twist, but the more I look at it the more I think there's more involved here. Maybe it's the stars in the pattern, I don't know. Could you (or would you) shed any light on this Kevin? Although I'd dearly love to know exactly how you made these individual billets before forging all together, I can sure understand why
a maker wouldn't want all of the fine details of his work availiable to anyone and everyone. Case in point, the "Feather" damascus. A Bowie got some photo exposure on one of the forums a few short years ago, and now a lot of guys (gals?) are doing fine examples of it. I've even been moderately successful with it until I made the stack to high and it ended up looking like a rather drunk looking pillsbury doeboy with a slight crease down the middle of his body.
Ok, back to the topic and one more question Kevin if you would: The edge I assume is also O1/L6 but the question revolves around the tip of the blade. I see no seam going out to the point, so therefore you must have used one piece for the edge treatment.
I'm having a devil of a time figuring that one out, considering there is very little if any, distortion to the pattern in the tip area. I realize this may be another one of those instances where the maker needs to reserve the right to not divulge all the processes, but am just hoping )
Thanks bud, Robert

Don’t worry at all, I consider everything I do an open book so if you are looking to discuss secrets you are talking to the wrong guy. I absolutely detest trade “secrets” and instantly lose a measure of respect for any serious craftsman who claims to have them. I have yet to see a “secret” in this business that amounted to anything more than common knowledge turned into cheesy P.R. in order cover up an individual’s insecurity in their own talent. I firmly believe that I can show anybody exactly how I do anything and still be safe in the fact that their work will not be a threat to mine.

There is however one thing that will always be more despicable than secrets and that is not giving credit where credit is due. If we want folks who really do have good information to continue freely sharing we need to show the common decency to acknowledge the source. I know my willingness to share has been sorely tested when I hear a maker with a whole five blades under their belt teaching others how to do it with instructions that sound incredibly familiar to me.

Here is a WIP I did many years ago documenting the entire process of making a sword in this type of pattern- http://forums.swordforum.com/showthread.php?t=13809. After this WIP was posted I suddenly saw more than a few new makers doing swords in this style, and this is good since that is why I shared, but it is human nature that only a few gave a mention of where they got the knowledge.

There may also be a possibility of too much information since I am scaling back my hands on instruction these days due to a lack of appreciation for the level and amount of information I try to pass on. Too many students just want to do what they read about in the last issue of Blade magazine, and it is very discouraging to realize that after devoting so many hours to helping them that they didn’t really care about 75% of it. It is tough to humbly endure the hubris of a maker publicly telling you how it is while they conveniently forget they came to you to get started. I feel good when I think of my students who are now ABS Mastersmiths, and some even remember me now and then.


As to the pattern itself, I just call it pattern welding. I would give credit to the originator except he died on some obscure corner of the Roman Empire centuries ago. I have done mosaics and complex progressive patterns but, going back to what Deloid and I were discussing about distraction in photographs, I want to make swords and knives not damascus patterns. Simple traditional patterns allow me to keep the focus on the overall package; I enjoy the positive feedback in this thread about my sword instead of a garish pattern.

The two core bars are just simple twists of 40 layers. The customer wanted a sword from the time of the Gothic invasions of the late Roman period, so I avoided the complex interrupted twists in multiple bars of the later Merovingian and Saxon migration periods. The star bursts are just the results of grinding into the coarser layer count in cleanup.

The O1/L6 edge is a random stack of around 160 layers, and yes it is one continuous piece wrapped all the way around. Two separate pieces seamed together at the tip would not be any less appropriate or authentic to the period, but I like the look and the challenge of doing the continuous wrap. There is a challenge in defeating the little triangular void that will always want to form where the two core bars come together against the edge at the point. The trick is to round the core and then first weld the edges down at the sides around 2” up from the tip to hold things firm for the next step. The next step is to get the tip to welding temp and then pile drive the whole sword assembly point first into the anvil. Without skipping a beat it goes back into the forge before it can loose any heat and the flux stays fresh, this allows you to repeat the action quickly at 45 degrees to either side and then move on. Thus the tip weld takes the least time of almost any operation. Laying it over the anvil and reaching over the tip to drive it back into you with a hammer is much less effective.

 

[sunshadow]

Deloid I must be completely honest that your post made me outright cringe. I totally appreciate your points on the composition but the thought of a customer, or especially another maker, altering one of my pieces would seriously ruffle my feathers so I can sympathize with a photographer having his work altered even to illustrate a point. However, I may be off base there, and photographers may be fine with others Photoshopping their stuff, I just know how knifemakers are about their work.

.

As a professional photographer, if someone were to take one of my photographs and alter it and post it on a forum I would prosecute for copyright violation. Beyond insulting, it is actually illegal and actionable without written permission.

http://www.copyright.gov/title17/

-Page

 

[Kevin R. Cashen]

Thank you Kevin. It was afraid of posting that note but I think so highly of you that I took the risk of creating something that could be taken as offensive. Yes, in the world of photography it is common to express a thought in a forum via an altered photo. This is common whether or not a critique is requested. In the art world (oil/canvas portraiture) it is considered rude. I took a chance mostly because you are a thoughtful individual.

To tell the truth, after I posted I was going to try and delete the message but I was called out on an emergency

I deleted the photo anyway since it may not have been appropriate to do what I did in this setting.

Thanks for your tolerance

Deloid, the Photoshop thing in your business is what I suspected, and I think it reflects the tough spot you photographers are in as artists. I know you guys are artists because you can see things and produce them in way I simply cannot, but the attitude prevails, that has to date right back to the fist images reveled with a camera obscura, that you guys just run a gadget that makes images while true artists are painters or sculptors. I personally would like to see the same reverence surrounding your work that would keep somebody from reworking a Renoir or Van Gogh. I have never seen a magazine cut away the background in a Rembrandt or Monet in order to float chunks of the butchered subjects over text. And I am afraid digital technology hasn’t contributed to the way people value your efforts either, instead it seems to have broadened the gap between skillfully capturing light and applying oil to canvas.

All the same, I still thank you for your input. Positive feedback feels good, negative feedback is useful, but insincere feedback is worthless at best.

 

[Kevin R. Cashen]

As a professional photographer, if someone were to take one of my photographs and alter it and post it on a forum I would prosecute for copyright violation. Beyond insulting, it is actually illegal and actionable without written permission.

http://www.copyright.gov/title17/

-Page

Easy now, I understand the intent behind it and I appreciate both of you gentlemans input to the thread. But I particularly appreciate your photography as well Page, since I benefit from my share of it saved away on my hard drive. And when I get around to using those images I too would be cranked if publisher cut and pasted your composition. I think deloid feels awkward enough, but I applaud him for telling me exactly how he feels despite his discomfort, I myself have been in that exact same postion way too many times. Honesty is much more important than my ego.

 

[sunshadow]

sorry,
pre-coffee posting. I understand the reasoning behind what Deloid was doing, and was actually curious to see what his suggestions were (but he had already deleted the photo)
The ease of digital has really done a lot of damage to the professional photography trade, since now people are no longer getting a lot of product photography done professionally, they are having their secretary or brother with a digital camera shoot it and it's "good enough" in the same way that mystery metal heat treated in a campfire and quenched in a mixture of transmission fluid is "good enough". Since they don't know what the potential is, they think that what they have is adequate. I have seen on forums a lot of photography that has been butchered and reposted for any number of reasons, often without crediting the original artist or mentioning that the original was altered. When I was a member of the American Society of Media Photographers, one of our successful initiatives was making sure that photographers were legally protected from that kind of abuse of their work. Unfortunately the original artists are not usually aware of it happening to protect their interests. As mentioned, nobody would casually strip the background out of the Mona Lisa to float her in a text box. Personally I liked the composition of the photograph, and while the map is a little busy for what design professors would consider a good idea as a background, I do not think it took away from the sword, I didn't pay much attention to it really. I think your photographer did a good job, personally I would have liked to see the sword and the detail shots occupy a little more real estate in the picture, but the composition as is works beautifully and perhaps would look overly contrived otherwise. It is very easy to monday-morning quarterback a photo, that's why photo school critiques at RIT were sometimes nicknamed corkboard bloodbaths.

Deloid, my apologies for being somewhat abrasive in pointing out the legalities of posting an altered image.:foot:

-Page

 

[koyote]

I tend to think of photographs of a knife or sword as parts of a set. you can't get everything into on photo easily. Whether that's size, detail, the oft requested "in hand" shot, or spine and base of handle.

I think the composition of that one is great, and I personally find the map to be really nice. Sure, I'd like a 2048x1532 sized close up of the handle and hilt assemblies, but I also suspect that would be easy enough to do if it was needed.

Kevin- I spend a fair amount of time, off and on, looking at your information on various forums, but it is hard to collate everything sometimes. I don't think you go into too much detail, though I do think you need an editor and a publisher (yeah, i'd love to see more in depth coverage of a few things peculiar to my knifemaking, but it's not what you do. It's hard to not think of you as an inifinite resource sometimes.)


As far as photos go. I'm up in the air about it. remixing is an artform in itself, but protecting your work is also important. Fortunately, for those who care to take the time, there are various licenses that can be attached to photographs. Creative Commons, for example. It's important to pay attention to what is assigned to a photo, but it's also important for that to be made clear by the publishing party.

 

[Kevin R. Cashen]

If the composition is crowded I will take full responsibility for that because of just being cheap and wanting to fit as much in when only buying one photo. Just to document things I will attempt pictures on my own knives but not my own swords, they just require too many skills and resources I do not have. Swords are a real &$%@ to get pictures of and almost require multiple exposures for details because by the time you get the entire thing in the frame you are too far away to see things. And then you have resizing for internet applications which loses even more. I was going to post this on the ABS forum but with a 50kb limit so much was lost in the image that I decided it would not be worth it.

Koyote has a good point about making the copyrights obvious, but it is a sad state of affairs our world has reached that just helping oneself in order to benefit from other peoples creation or work is not simply a matter of common sense. Recently when I found an entire web page created by cutting and pasting my stuff, without my knowledge, I had to lay down specific guidelines on how I was to be credited... and I was somewhat chastised for not clearly posting those guidelines on all my work. I was naive enough to think that it would fall under common courtesy. Linking to my website seems fine but having saved copies on another server without my knowledge seemed like much more a violation, I know it is all just electronic ones and zeros, but it jsut didn't feel right. From this I also found that electronic media has not only blurred the lines of image rights but also ones words being cut and pasted about the internet. If something is a quote it needs to be in quotes, and if you are going to reword things to make it look like yours, you need to totally rewrite it so that you can take the credit for all the information, including the errors you add.

Digital media sure did complicate things over having to actually exchange a physical object, I think those of us old enough to remember the world before there was an internet will always be kind of grumpy and set in our ways about what is our property.

 

[koyote]

I don’t want to sidetrack the whole thread, but the ideas of copyright, fair use, and the “digital age” are pretty big deals anywhere artists are online. I spent a lot of my life behind a keyboard or climbing through racks of routers and servers, and I've paid some attention to this.

Most of us are old enough to remember the “Hey Khaddafi” photocopies stuck in the back windows of millions of trucks and cars in the US- with Mickey Mouse flipping the dude off.

Whoever started that could have been pissed that everyone “stole” his artwork. Disney could have, too. BUT - it was fair use. A vinyl sticker guy making a ton of money off of it would NOT have been fair use.

The same basic idea often applies with digital media- in fact, most of this was, in some sense, covered by 1982. making a mix tape for a friend, and NOT selling it- legal, moral, ethical. MAking a photo album of artwork found on the web as a gift for your girlfriend- FINE. making that mix tape and selling it int he parking lot of Dead shows? NOT fine. Taking that album for your girlfriend and publishing it..... uh oh. complicated. Are you deriving money from your website? no? but... still, you have published in a broad sense, and your host- the people giving you blog space for advertising use- they ARE making money.

Applying this to a website for a knifemaker, it’s twofold- on the one hand, it’s a business, and taking ad copy, information, whatever, and presenting it as your own, is bad. On the other side, it may not be making money directly, but in the same sense a peer reviewed article that pays zero still adds to your career standing, it’s a professional piece of work. Quoting from it, satirizing it, all the regular fair use policies apply, but plagiarism is plagiarism.

How far should you have to go to protect this? Well, that’s complicated, too. A copyright notice on a website covers all the content of the website, so it’s easy on the one hand. There are tons of boilerplate copyrights for people who are wanting to share- such as the creative commons, “artistic”, mozilla, GPL, and BSD licenses.

In much the same way it’s just common sense for a published book to have a basic copyright notice, it’s a good idea to put something, like “copyright, contact me for re use or distribution information” in the footer or header of every page on a website.

Photographs are harder, there IS a fair use element- like back with the mickey mouse artwork (not a photograph, but visual art). But there are limits, even though not everyone agrees on what they are.

I would consider it fair, for example, if I saw a picture I wanted to share on a blog, to post a thumbnail of the image with a LINK to the original photo, and website.

 

[deloid]

As a professional photographer, if someone were to take one of my photographs and alter it and post it on a forum I would prosecute for copyright violation. Beyond insulting, it is actually illegal and actionable without written permission.

http://www.copyright.gov/title17/

-Page

Page,

I see your apology in the subsequent post but I want to set the record straight.
I am certain that I have been involved with a wider realm of photography (tintypes/large format/digital) and for a longer period of time. I spend an excessive amount of time on professional photography forums and I know very well what is considered appropriate use and what the norm is.

1 You do not understand copyright law.
2 You do not understand that even when there is a true infringement there is usually no remedy except in big budget settings, commercials, movies, books. Even those are expensive, time consuming and questionable in outcome.

What I did was fair use under the protection of critique and educational intent. I withdrew the photo because I worried that this forum might not understand this common form of use AND outside of the world of photography it could be considered rude.

As a photographer I am surprised you have isolated yourself to the extent that you don't know about the copyright discussions and the constant manipulations for educational purposes (in the pro photography forums).

You had raised my ire in the first post and now it is tempered but I do want this audience to know there is a different world out there that I deal with (Photography/Professor/legal advisor) and I was correct in the framework of a photography forum or teaching format but, as my gut told me, treading on landmines by transferring this use in this world of steel.

Let's drop this topic now, can we?

 

[sunshadow]

Actually digital media didn't complicate anything legally about copyright. The creator of the image owns copyright of that image 100% unless they are an employee of someone else and taking photographs is part of their work duties. Kevin, when I gave you the files on those images that you have from me, I granted you the rights of reproduction to use and publish them as you saw fit, and asked that where possible I got a photo credit, understanding that it is not always possible.

Photographers photographing a product as part of their business are not employees of the product owner, therefore the photographs the product owner hires them to do are copyright the photographer with whatever license delineated by the contract given to the product owner who contracted them for the job. Copyright is absolute from the moment that image takes tangible form whether that be stored data on flash media, or latent image on silver halide. The record companies were able to prosecute file sharers for copyright violation for every illicit download of their intellectual property they could track until they realized that while the legal and ethical battle had been won in the courts, they were loosing on the PR end of things because of multimillion dollar judgements against families whose children had stolen thousands of songs and movies and shared them that the news media got hold of and sensationalized. Copyright marking has not been required to maintain protection in over 20 years as copyright exists as soon as the work is created..

Sadly the culture these days seems to be that "anything that can be put into electronic format should be free" mostly promulgated by the armchair slackers that have never put the work into anything necessary to actually create something of value, and don't really care that the people who do put the work in to create things have to eat too.

Deloid, your post came out while I was writing this. We could get into a pissing match about who is more old school in experience (dye transfer, Cibachrome, large format including 20x24 polaroid, 8x10, and 4x5, scan back, three-shot and single shot digital,) but that is largely irrelevant. No I do not hang out in the photography forums, so I do not know what is currently going on there.

-Page

 

[koyote]

If someone wants to discuss this without bombing kevin's thread, I'll be happy to receive a link to a new thread. "100% copyright" without provisions for fair use, educational use, etc. are too simplistic to stand- and any application of even just fair use demonstrates a wealth of complicatiosn with the invention of the photocopier, tape recorder, video recorder, and computer or "digital" media.

 

[rhrocker]

Kevin, thanks very much for your input on my question #49. I was delighted to read the way you handled it, and the reasons therewith. I feel the same way as you about the so called "trade secrets" that seem to be out there, although I do think that they are very much in the minority now-a-days. Like you, I get flustered when someone with a knife or two to his credit is suddenly the expert, make that a copy and paste expert. That's probably human nature also, as I've seen it in lots of differient types of forums.
"Pattern welding" sure works for me as far as calling some pattern by a specific name. I sometimes wonder if "Turkish twist" isn't an Americanized term.
I appreciate also the information about the edge treatment. I've been scratching my head for hours, playing with clay and sketching things, and couldn't figure it out. Once you explained the process, it fell into place and made perfect sense.
I'm thinking about practicing the steps simply using non-pattern welded bars. This way I can learn to close up that triangular rascal with a minimum of time and effort involved.
Ok, that's about it, I'm heading for the link you posted now. Appreciate all you've done for me over the years, and all you do for the various forums.