Blacks Nest: October 2017

Thursday, October 26, 2017

First Furniture Market

A view inside what IT calls the "Bat Cave"

Well, I survived my first High Point market. We, the IT group, moved into the "Bat Cave" at the showroom in High Point on October 4th and moved out on the last day of the market, Oct 18th. It was a good experience. Many issues came up or were discovered and resolved, making the applications better and stronger. There were quite a few points of high stress with missing orders, likes and mismatched customers, and several nights past midnight to fix code or clean data.

I look forward to opportunities to improve processes and software that will make these markets less frantic, less hours and more smooth sailing. I made good progress toward that goal a few weeks leading up to and during market, but there are plenty more opportunities for improvement.

As a guy that lives in or near High Point, and knew very little about the furniture market, the Market was a bit of an eye opener. It's not so much just furniture, (chairs, dressers, couches, beds, etc), but furnishings in general. Indoor and outdoor furnishings... fabric, lighting, silk or fake plants, decorations, through rugs and more. And the Market isn't so much for the end consumer, as it is for the big furniture stores across the country and around the world, and for designers (room and furnishing designers) looking for what is new and up and coming for their clients.

One thing that caught my eye was the mechanics they can now put into dresser drawers... I guess any drawer really... gone are the days of pushing the dresser drawer closed to fast or loudly. Watch this video... it may take two or 3 times to catch what I am showing you.

Below are some pictures and video of the showroom.

Monday, October 16, 2017

Concert Photography

A few days ago a co-worker was describing a concert he had been to and they used pyrotechnics, with flames shooting up, and was amazed how he could feel the heat even across the arena, "can you imagine how it felt for the viewers up close to the front row". I recalled to him an experience I had with a concert, pyrotechnics and being on the front row.

In 2008 I won "WinterJam Super Fan" front row tickets to WinterJam concert from a local Christian radio station WBFJ. Skillet was one of the acts, and I can tell... WOW is it a blast of heat when those things go off. But... front row seats with good DSLR camera (Nikon D50) was a lot of fun. The "Event" photographers even let me walk up to the stage and get some great shots.

So I went back, found my photos from the event shared them with him and wanted to share them here.

Concert photography can be a challenge with the extreme contrast in lighting. But that also adds to the uniqueness of the image you can capture. Low light means slow down the shutter speed, but not too much you need to zoom-in to get a good picture, and the rest is adjusting the ISO to as high as your willing to go and live with whatever grainy detail you get. I love the lighting effects, how the light beams can be seen via the smoke/fog that they use. I used a small zoom lens, like 35 to 70, or something like that.

This was a once in a lifetime opportunity... but given the chance again, someday, to photograph a concert like this, up close, I will take it.

Skillet