Monday evening I made it out to the building site. The sun sets so early these days that daylight pictures are hard to come by for a guy that is a bit slow getting started. So I must be content with taking pictures in the dark. To make matters worse, the work is all happening on the roof and I am allergic to ladders. So there I am, alone on the ground while the workers scamper about topside spreading tar paper and nailing shingles. So I wandered about, aiming the camera at the sky and into the artificial lights illuminating the roof for the shinglers.
Now I know precious little about construction, but I have played with photography a bit. I am amazed by the capability of today's cameras. I own a camera on which it is impossible to make a phone call. In spite of this shortcoming, it still rather amazes me. I know there are better low light cameras on the market but I really like the size of my camera. And besides that, I already own it and am too
It would not have been possible to take these pictures in the film camera days. The camera sensor is more sensitive than film was in those days. Also, the camera has electronic stabilization that allows me to take hand held pictures at 1/15th of a second, which is really slow, and only some of the pictures are blurred beyond recognition.
The roof is steep and the workers are always leaning into the roof. I imagine it gives the feet and ankles a good workout. Pictured here are Brian, Tim (I think) and Dan working on the entryway roof.
Note the color of the sky in the pictures. For a time after sundown, the sky is blue. As it gets later, the sky turns to purple and gets progressively darker. When it is totally dark, the sky is black. You can tell the timing of the pictures by the color of the sky.
It is hard to get the workers to cooperate with the photographer. They wander about totally oblivious to the needs and desires of the photographer. They seem to think it is more important to get the roof done than to look pretty in the pictures. There is some progress. You can see the bare plywood area shrinking.
Sometimes the guys are spread out
making for a poor grouping and an uninteresting photo.
At other times they are better behaved and they are clustered together and closer to where I stand. Then I get a photo in which you can identify at least some of the folks. Tom, in profile, and Markus are identifiable. Nate is standing with his back turned and I think Sam is semi-kneeling, but I really do not recognize him in this view.
Photographing in the dark with one, or in this case three essentially non-overlapping light sources, yields dramatic light with harsh, well defined shadows. With the dominant light source directly behind someone, you get an interesting halo effect, which may be the only way to get a halo on Tom, or any other mortal for that matter.
With the computer comes the ability to merge multiple photos to make a panorama. Three images are joined in the above photo.
The south half of the roof is nearing completion. Only a narrow strip near the peak remains without shingles.
On the north side of the building, Bob and Kevin get a start, but as of Thursday, only a start.
Shingling the roof is a big job. How big? I got some numbers from Sam.
There are enough shingles to cover 156 square. Square what, I ask. Well, a square is a standard measure in the roofing business. One square is 100 square feet. So, 156 times 100 equals 15,600 square feet of roof to be covered. To convert that to shingles, consider that it takes 3 bundles of shingles for each square. There are 22 shingles per bundle. Therefore, 66 shingles are needed to cover one square. 156 times 66 equals 10,296 shingles to cover said roof. Now, each shingle requires 5 nails, which means it takes a lot of nails, a lot of hammer strokes or nail shots to put on the roof. Like I noted previously, shingling a roof is a big job and it takes a long time.
Sam sent a picture to me at 8:07 on October 27 with the following:
"FYI. Last shingle of the 1st side was nailed 27 seconds ago"
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