Cottonwood Popcorn Bowl

[Doug Herzberg]

This is from that big cottonwood I cut down 5 years ago or so. This is the shape I roughed out back then. I probably should have cut down the rim to remove the pith and improve the proportions. Also, the curve has some flat spots and wall thickness isn't too even. There are better examples of the wood from this tree in the pipeline. I'm getting eager to get some of them finished.

I got a new camera and I've been experimenting with depth of field and lighting. All of these have tungsten floods with a diffused flash assist. Despite shutting down the F-stop, I'm not getting much depth of field with the camera up close to the subject. I'm going to try backing up and zooming in next time.

10" x 6" Watco DO + Minwax WOP, waxed and buffed. Thanks for looking. C&C always welcome.


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[Eric Gourieux]

That's beautiful wood, Doug. The shape is nice, but I agree with you on the height of the rim. It will hold more popcorn with the taller rim, though.

[David Delo]

Certainly has some interesting grain patterns. Never turned this but from the pictures looks a little bit like gum stained cherry.

[Bill Jobe]

I gotta find me some cottonwood. Those are pretty bowls.

[Robert Marshall]

Good-looking bowl!

What are the dimensions (height, diameter)?

Thanks.

[Bill Jobe]

Certainly has some interesting grain patterns. Never turned this but from the pictures looks a little bit like gum stained cherry.

Perhaps a result of tungsten lighting?

[Doug Herzberg]

Perhaps a result of tungsten lighting?

The tungsten lamps definitely warm the image, just as bare flash tends to wash out some of the color. People have speculated here that the color comes from minerals in the soil and many have said that their experience of cottonwood is that of a bland, boring wood.

The image on the left is the one I originally posted and more accurately depicts the actual appearance of the wood. I modified it with the "I'm feeling lucky" button in Picasa. The image on the right is what the camera recorded. The camera was set to auto white balance. The exposure was long enough (1.3 seconds at f5.2 and ISO 200) to allow the tungsten lamps to affect the color, despite the use of flash, which was a diffused Speedlite knockoff set to auto, mounted in the hot shoe and pointed straight up. My experience with serious photography was back in the film days of the 1960s and early 1970s, so things like auto exposure, auto focus, auto flash, variable ISO (which we called ASA back then) and adjustable white balance are new to me.

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Thanks everyone for the comments.