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A fine kettle

I'm developing a healthy respect for the people who do product photography. You know, the unexciting photos of items for catalogs and advertisements. It's harder than you'd think and you need a lot of technique, gear, and experience.

I don't have much of any of those and as a consequence, I've taken many bad photos of my old kettle.

I really like this old kettle, but it isn't usable any longer, especially since the cats knocked it onto the floor and the whistling bit (the cap for the spout) fell off and disappeared. We got a new (better) kettle a while ago and I've just been keeping the old one around because … It's really old. It's the kettle my family used since I was a kid, maybe even before, but I wouldn't remember that.

I like the shape of this kettle, a copper-bottomed, stainless steel West Bend. It's a simple, straight-sided cylinder, banded by two pairs of thin, decorative grooves. The sides bend inward a few inches up and rise in this low, perfect, mid-twentieth century curve to a flat top. The handle is a two-legged arc of black plastic, maybe bakelite, and is molded to fit my fingers. T-R-I-G is stamped vertically into the side of one of the handle's legs. This kettle is (was) a trigger model with a red trigger at the index finger position which, when pulled, lifted the whistling bit so you could pour water out.

Oz hated this kettle. The trigger mechanism was wearing out. The spout was the only opening so the kettle couldn't be washed out. He was convinced that the inside was all rusty and nasty. It wasn't. I used a flashlight and looked inside. Since the kettle was only ever used for boiling water, it was probably the cleanest place in the house.

And today I photographed it. And photographed it. I used different drapes, fiddled with the speedlight on and off the camera, held up a white sheet around the camera to cut down on the reflections, and so on. All to no avail. What I like about my kettle is not showing up in the pictures.

Now the kettle is sitting on my dresser. If I can't get a good picture of it, I suppose I'll just keep it and stick flowers in the spout. Someday I'll figure out how to show you what it looks like to me. If you can't wait, you can buy almost the same kettle, only in much better shape, on eBay.

[Also, since all the other kids are doing it: Kurt Vonnegut, 1922 - 2007. Lately I've been thinking about Player Piano. I read most of his books when I was living in Japan. As an exchange student, I couldn't afford to buy books so I was at the arbitrary mercy of the English collection in the third sub-basement of the Keio University library. Luckily I found lots of Vonnegut and an odd paperback by Kilgore Trout. Tokyo was surreal at the best of times. Tokyo on a Vonnegut bender? Think about it.]