all I wanted to be was googleable...yes I made a new verb

It was a silly midlife crisis thingy.  I wanted to be googleable.  Its that insecure time in a guys life when you realize...oh shit I'm how old and what mark will I have left on the planet other than a granite marker on a plot of land.  

For kicks and giggles I googled my real name, my email name "frazgo" from an employer at the time and virtually nothing.  Random stuff, little had to do with me.  I had a couple of little web pages or blogs before then and had sorta stopped fooling with them as my cube job was demanding more of my time as my responsibilities increased.  

2oo2 was the year I decided I could either work myself to death in a cube knowing if I dropped dead they would just roll me off the chair into a bucket and have someone else there before the seat was cold.  Or...walk out, retire with what little I had and start a new life.  A new me.  One that would make a difference with the fam, the kids in particular and give me a chance to do some thing that made my heart sing.  I went back to doing my photo.  

I started using "frazgo" at the suggestion of an old friend from college who just liked the ring of it.  All of as the cube warehouse knew each other by our email addy's and even took them to our personal emails.  I already was known as frazgo by many and when it came time to set myself apart from the past I grabbed the handle and ran with it.  It took.

Today I took part in the google battle.  Damn...the number of hits for frazgo and fraz were amazing.  I know I can get a million hits on the real name, the nom-de-plums...in the mills also, but to see it in smiley faces left me gobsmacked.  Of course the "fraz" are all over the board, but "frazgo" is just me and that is even funnier to know some gabacho with a keyboard is able to leave a mark out there.

Take the test yourself at googlebattle.com  Let me know your results.

Word of caution watch the use of your real name as even that query will be cached and visible until the last electron flows and the last server on the planet dies as the sun finally fades away.  Pretty permanent mark.  I like it.

A happy accident: the unintended results from an intentional act that work

Every now and then something happens that shouldn't.  Something that you could not have done if you had tried.

This image is a couple of accidents in sequence that I wish I knew how it happened.  Briefly I accidently clicked on one image from a series of 3 exposures.  The "wrong" image was of an entirely different subject matter.  Photomatix doesn't allow out of sequence images to be opened and blended to create an HDR file.  When you use something out of sequence you get an error message from the program advising you that all images not the same or different enough in exposure and you have to reload the files you want to use.  It stops you dead in your tracks.

Here it had not only an out of exposure sequence image, but one not even part of the xif tagged sequence yet photomatix accepted it and blended the 3.

When the HDR image file opened imagine my surprise.  I haven't had that happen since back in the day when I would sandwich slide fill and print it on cibachrome, or purposely double expose an image before advancing the film.  Here I did it and can't duplicate it!

Anyway I took the file, tone mapped it and ran it through virtual photographer.  Now if I knew how to duplicate this I would as I really do like the results.  

Donut Derelicts - classic car cruise behind the OC

I shot this while visiting the Donut Derelicts weekly cruise in Huntington Beach this morning.  The ornament is from a 40's Caddy.  I just love the polished chrome on that art deco hoody.  Since this was an OC event I couldn't very well cover it on LA Metblogs so the city captain there worked it out and now I post on OC Metblogs (guess that makes me bi-city).   You can read the full post on OC Metblogs HERE.

I'm hung at Focus One

Its official.  I did it on Saturday morning.  I was hung at the Focus One Gallery in the lobby of the Focus One Credit Union here in Monrovia.  Two sets representing different paths I continue to meander down in artistic exploration.  The first series is an HDR exploration of diorama's and the other is impressionistic Orton style imagery.

Clockwise from upper left, "Duck and Cover, #1-4" - and exploration of the world as if caught in the first flash of a nuke.  These are done using HDR technology.

Clockwise from upper left, "English Rose Bud", "Maw of the Magnolia" and "Apple Farm in Spring" all done in the Orton style.

An opening reception will take place and I"ll announce the date here.  All would be welcome to attend.  Until then you are free to visit the Focus One Gallery in the lobby of the Focus One Credit Union at 404 E Huntington Dr (at the corner of California Ave) here in Monrovia.  

Title inspiration from the strangest places

The video from YouTube is what gave me the idea for the title, a little explanation after the vid.

Note the image above, its part of the "Duck and Cover" series that I will be installing 1/3/09 at the Focus One Gallery here in Monrovia.

I wrote about this image and a few others in the series a while back.  I accidentally started a series of HDR photos of dioramas that I worked into very surreal images almost refreezing the moment.  Shooting it I knew that the spots and floods used were all different colors of light which I used to move it further into the unnatural.  I did that by exaggerating the color shifts.  They may have started as a photograph but the quickly morphed into something other than a simple recording of a scene.

There was a quality to the images that I wound up exaggerating that reminded me of the pictures of the A-bomb tests from the Cold War era.  I have to admit I struggled with what to call the series.  

At the risk of severely dating myself there was event in particular that struck a note in me when I was in Kindergarten.  It was the Cuban Missile Crisis.  I don't remember much of the details but I remember being in South Dakota at the time visiting my great-grandmother.  My Mom's cousin whom we stayed with and all the adults were glued to Walter Cronkite and the TV and worried aloud what it all meant.  Thankfully history records well how it ended.

In the weeks after that I have memories of being told about "the bomb" and how to "Duck and Cover" to save ourselves in the event the bomb came.  (Reality check, in the UP of MI at the time we were well outside of striking range, and if we were hit we'd be a glowing ash regardless if we did the duck and cover or not).  Many years later I watched the film "Atomic Cafe".  Watching that film I remembered that video from my childhood.

I did a quick little YouTube search and found the video that matches a sound track I had found a while back.

Duck and Cover the series will be 4 images.  They will be framed and matted artists proofs, done as if on old fashioned deckle edged glossy photo paper, just like you would have found the pictures done up in your granny's photo album back in the day.

Once opening reception details are ironed out, I'll post here and you all will be invited.

Happy New Year!

I could not resist it.  For the New Year am feeling kinda impish verging on prankster and then I stumbled across an old book mark to make this sign.  Pretty cool...your own alteration of the Hollywood sign without going to jail for vandalism.  Make your own HERE.

I have less than 2 days until I install for a 3 month show at the Focus One Gallery here in outer monrovia.  Part of me wants to be really daring and put up a few pieces of the "Atomic Flash" series I yammered about a while back.  Another part says play it safe.  Maybe I can knock out the mimosa funk from this morning and make up my mind once and for all.

Stay tuned for my decision very soon.

BTW...HAPPY 2009!