Allweather Wood: From Tree to 2x4
Allweather wood, along with most of the Redwood and Douglas Fir products that you purchase from Home Depot and other lumber yards, comes from somewhere in Northern CA. Humboldt and Mendocino counties are the motherlands for premium choice redwood from Humboldt Redwood Company and Mendocino Redwood Company. The HRC and MRC forest lands are heavily monitored and provide homes for all sorts of endangered and non endangered wildlife and plant life. From the forests, the trees are harvested, loaded on trucks and brought to the lumber mills in Scotia, CA and Ukiah, CA. During the month of July, I was hired by Allweather Wood (part of HRC and MRC) to update their photography archives. We toured the Ukiah facility as well as the Scotia facility and photographed some great people along the way.
The amount of energy in both man power and energy power is high to run these facilities, however, they are are highly regenerative. The lumber by-products (saw dust, chips, shavings) are all used to power the mills. They are loaded into these large ovens by tractors and stoked by hand during the hours of operation, creating the energy needed to run the saws. So much so, that the scotia mill produces enough energy to sell some of it back to PGE which helps power the rest of the town.
It is a incredible process turning a redwood tree into 2x4 boards. There are so many moving parts to a lumber mill. Safety and precision is key, and the men and women that are working at the mills have grit, tenacity and expertise in their very specific trade. The photos I created at both Ukiah and Scotia will be used for tradeshows, annual and quarterly reports, marketing, and recruiting for more employees (along with whatever additional uses that the marketing department sees fit).
In two full days of production, I delivered nearly 500 edited images. Below is a collection of images that I found were most impactful.
Scotia Mill
Ukiah Mill
