Orbs floating in air...

Its all about having fun with framing...when you don't have a client with a storyboard close by giving direction.

This image is from the grounds at the Clautiere Vineyard in Paso Robles.  We, the lovely Mrs and I, used this winery as our starting spot on our whirlwind tour of East Valley wineries at the suggestion of an old friend and his partner.  What a great place...fun wine, fun tasting manager and more importantly a tasting room done up like the mad hatters place on acid replete with adult playroom.  Too.  Much.  Fun.

In their courtyard next to the parking area and the tasting room there's this giant orb nestled under an old coast live oak.  From its branches are more orbs, some with dangly bits.  Its whimsy in the vineyards.  I could have shot this perfectly level or perpendicular but it would have lost its dynamic tension.  A careful step around and twist of the camera puts the orbs in alignment and everything else askew.  Better composition and just a little hint at the twist of things to come in the tasting room.

Traveling in the Ozarks

It's been a busy week. I'm quite literally battered and bruised. No, I didn't get blown up with LEGAL fireworks which really are a thing here in Missouri. It was a colossal slip and fall on wet grass. Who knew that was a problem here were it's rained at least once everyday we've been here. 

More to create shortly on the trip here and on the SoCalAutoBlog. Short version is in 6 days I put over 1k miles on a rental car and covered a lot of SEMO and SIL. In due time rest assured I blew stuff up, drank a lot and just had fun. 

Western 2/3 of USA. I. Own. It.

Create Your Own Visited States Map

Yeay baby...I get around.  check the geo tags on flickr as most will tell you where I've been over the most recent years since I joined in 2007.  Some prior I manually geotagged,  Dude, I do more than meander, I get around.

Sierra Madre Playhouse you're getting a lot of my time and talents

Its a reward and satisfaction thingy.  I enjoy putting my creative energies to use when I get reward and satisfaction out of it.  Or are the two the same thing?  Satisfaction is my Reward. could be but that requires an analyst to sort it all out.

Since joining the Board of Directors at the Sierra Madre Playhouse I like to think I have had a little impact.  Results are more immediate in some places than others.  The end result is I hope to reach the citizens of Sierra Madre and the San Gabriel Valley and let them witness the fun we are having, the most excellent productions and want to join in the fun.

We, the marketing committee had a brain storming session.  It started out with some grumbling that we aren't getting impact with our social media campaigns.   I pointed out we aren't using them at cross purposes and the MTV generation in particular loves visual/aural stimulation not just 140 characters in a twitter post.  I said we need to do more with the YouTube channel we have in place and do something often to keep it fresh and provide fodder for our Instagram, twitter and facebook accounts.

They listened, I with a DSLR that shoots HD video started shooting stuff.  Its too much fun putting it all together after we shoot.  I'm a noob and luckily Windows MovieMaker is a powerful tool thats stupid easy to use so I get quality results out the door.  Better yet, the Playhouse gets media to promote themselves and their productions at no cost other than some time.  Time well invested.

Do check in to the Sierra Madre Playhouse YouTube channel (And Mine).  Follow the Playhouse also on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Follow me on Instagram....

Yes, I don't do as much here as I like. I'm actually considering ways I can reinvent this blog and focus it more on my creative endeavors in the arts in general rather than just my personal art.  Can it be done, yuppers, just need time to sit and do it.  Being the @frazgo brand means I'm always busy...cars, food, the arts and time with the fam not much time left in a day.

Do follow me on Instagram. From the inane to profound to future posts on my various blogs I shoot a lot daily with my phone and instagram immediately.  Its a good clue to what you will see here next or on one of the many other blogs that encompass @frazgo.

Big shoots, big events, big anything that requires high res, high quality stuff is always on Flickr.  Its a great source for promoting my serious work.  It won't go away anytime soon.  And as I have a pro-account there, there will never, ever be ads to annoy you.

Lastly...I've ventured into exploring the options out there with video.  High quality stuff, not just from a flipcam.  My DSLR does HD video and I've been experimenting with it for stuff for the Sierra Madre Playhouse.  Follow my YouTube channel.

Who are you Oscar or Felix?

A little something I've been doing of late.   Video.  More precisely promo video stuff for the Sierra Madre Playhouse of which I'm on the board now.  Busy guy?  Mais oui.



So...subscribe to my YouTube channel...see all my cars ala "Blair Witch Project" and now higher quality stuff for the Playhouse.

Dusting off the password...a bit of celebrating today

I suppose tis quite the accomplishment to do that in 8 years with just ART and "blogging on the fly..." stuff as opposed to porn.  I don't kid myself, a friends ex specializes in raunch porn his trying to pass off as vintage and he does a million in 3 months.  But I took the higher road and did it my way, the way I always do.  True to myself.  True to those that follow me, never raunch for sake of views.

I'm still blogging everywhere, but here.  I do shoot often, love my newish EOS 60D from Canon, it does some pretty amazing stuff, but its still just a tool that enables me to create images.  I know when I resort for techniques sake things suffer.  In the end its about stunning images, not how you got there.

Recently we took the fam down behind the Orange Curtain for a day of whale watching.   Something you just can't do here in the SGV.  By far my favorite tour company for that is Dana Wharf Sport Fishing and Whale Watching in Dana Point.  Their crew works well with other boats to  ensure you see a whale, or two, or dolphins to make your trip memorable.  Often they have a Marine Biologist on board and they give you a ton if information and trivia on what you are seeing to make the trip even more fun.  Worth the trip.  Been with them twice now and both times were pretty amazing.

To follow my daily adventures, or my adventures with commercial stuff and CARS follow me on flickr. 

Henry Fords Office and other cool stuff

By now if you haven't figured it out, I'll soell it out. Blogging leads to notice which leads to adventures. My current adventure is courtesy the good folks atFord  Motor Company who gave me this trip to Detroit. No strings, all opinions are my own.  

Last night we got a real treat. Dinner out at the 1903 Piquette Plant where Henry Firs built his first cars. There's even s recreation of his office. 

Only 97K and change to 1Million visits

It wasn't that long ago I hit 500K views and thought that was something.  I'm plugging along. Taking pics, mostly light commercial stuff for a local marketing guy for his clients web sites.  Tons of cars for SoCalAutoBlog.  That's whats really driving my stats these days.  That and the B2 Bomber fly over on the 1st of the new Year.

How long to I hit 1Million views...about 3 months at the rate I'm going. Of course that is subject to how many hits I gather next week as I post stuff from the North American International Auto Show in Detroit.  That could quickly accelerate the popping of champagne and tossing of confetti for the 1M mark.

Don't get me wrong, I really do like the numbers stats.  I suppose I need to figure out to carve out more fine art time is all.  And quit neglecting this blog.  We'll see what 2015 has in store.

Maybe I'll start tearing up the pixels with shorts of Los Angeles and document its history.  DK, you tell me what you want to see.

Stuff People Say To Photographers

And folks wonder why I stopped, with rare exception, doing weddings and the ilk and settled on tamer commercial work and my landscapes/florals/cars



Love you all...

God is in the potmetal

Pardon the play on words, but Mies Van der Rohe would have said that if he worked in the auto industry up until the 1970's.

Up until then cars used a cheap cast alloy called pot metal that was chromed and affixed to the cars. It was more than just the name of the car or its submodel.  It was about casting the illusion of grandeur, power or who know what.  Manufacturers used real typography and created fonts to tell a story.  None of that ariel or helvetica plactic clued on crap they use today.  It was real metal, dipped in chrome and affixed to the car with nuts and bolts.

The need to reduce weight put an end to the creative use of potmetal back in the 70's.  Blandness ensued wih the malaise era cars and continue to day with simple nomentclature made of plastic.  Shift from names that told a story to alpha-numeric soup makes me batty.  I really hate it.

Here's just a couple of examples of potmetal art from the 29th Fabulous Fords Forever show that took place this last weekend.  Good stuff maynard.

Stuff...random and unfocused

Its Monday for crying out loud...expect a miracle

Crazy busy weekend and a few ruminations after its all said and done.

First up I served as a photographic judge for the regaional NAACP ACT-SO competition on Saturday.  Amazing talent and body of work presented by the students.  Great variety and vibrancy to it all. It was a richly rewarding experience, one I wouldn't trade for anything.  Read all about it here.

What struck me funny about the day was the amount of black and white work being done still.  Sadly, its done digitally and desaturated.  Something gets lost in the translation when you do that.  There's still something to be said for crisp black and white on old school Tri-X.   There's a crispness and depth of black you can only get with film.

My question to the mentors of the young folks I judged is why not teach old school black and white.  Cost isn't much but the final result is spectacular.  In the same vein the rush to automate and  left most of these kids with a narrow understanding of the fundamentals of exposure and composition.  Rule of Thirds...that understanding was lost on at least one of the young adults we talked with, yes it can be violated, but you need to communicate why you did it.

Sunday was the 29th Annual Fabulous Fords Forever car show in Buena Park.  IT was fun.  Great collection of cars.  Certainly more than a few were real attention getters.  The lack of manners by photographers to one another is pretty amazing.  One dolt had no problems with cutting in front of others to get a vantage point ruining that of the one he rudely butt in front of.  What's up with that. We all get our turn, certainly a parked car isn't going anywhere fast where you have to worry about catching a fleeting moment.

A ton of photos from the event in my flckr album

Totally unrelated to photo, is my video work on youtube.  I've been working in the vein of the "blair witch project" on purpose.  I enjoy the feeling of the vid appearing to be from a players eyes rather than rock solid recording of action.  I've used for years "Windows Movie Maker" which Microsoft in its infinite wisdeom dropped from the lastest OS.  What to do.

Actually, I learned about an inexpensive program called TrackAx that is supposed to be a nearly foolproof as WMM and offer up more powerful editing tools.  I'm going to check it out soon(ish).

I miss my che-ez snap toy camera

I miss my che-ez snap.  It was really a horrid little device that made .2, yes POINT 2 megapixel images.  Grainy as hell, edges blurred, under exposed and contrasty.  It was a toy camera.  I adored it and the images it produced.  When others around me were busy with cell phone pics and using their big boy cameras I had that with me to take images as well.  Hundreds.

You see, that simple fixed focus, pinhole view finder 1 inch by 1 and a half inch camera made wonderfully artsy images.  You can spend hours trying to duplicate in Photoshop, but why do that when the camera does it all. All you have to do is concentrate on composition.

Sadly my last one died a horrible death...battery overheated in recharge and its been out of production so long can't even find a left over on Amazon.  If I could find one, I'd be all over it.

The self portrait here, actually my first selfie was made in 2003 when I got the first one.  What a fun toy that was.  More images in my flickr set.

I'm so glad that I used the zone system

And good old Kodachrome 64

This image was made summer of 1981 while I was living in Death Valley.  I drove up to Dante's View a few thousand feet directly above Bad Water, the lowest point in the USA.

I rememver the evening vividly. Yes, it was hot out, well over 100 but oh so gorgeous view.  But I digress.

To make this shot I spot metered the dude on the rock. The closest ridge and the distance.  I knew I wanted detail in both areas so I shot mid point. I love this image looking north into Death Valley, the dude ads scale to how big that place is.

This is what a drought looks like folks

This morning I was all set to walk along the San Gabriel River.  A lovely stroll along the river is what I envisioned.  Didn't happen.  The Azusa River Wildnerness Park in Azusa was closed because of mudslides 2 weeks ago, and to add insult to injury it was a high fire danger day so they didn't want us anywhere near the brush.

But I did take a drive into the canyons along the river today.  I was absolutely gobsmacked by how low the waters was at the dams.  One day in particular, the San Gabriel Dam, an earthen dam, was so empty all that was left was muck, flotsam and jetsam and general debris in the bottom.

For those of you not in the Los Angeles Area, or California, you probably aren't aware that we are in a severe drought.  Its been several years since we've had "normal" rainfall and our dams are really showing it.  This year we are down something along the order of 2/3 of "normal" rainfall which explains the pathetic condition of these dams.Doesn't bode well for us down the hill that rely on this water to recharge our aquifers.

I'll try next week to take a walk along the river in the Azusa River Wildnerness Park.  Again

These images were shot with my EOS60D.  They are photomergrned into panoramas with the help of CS5.  They click to embiggen.  If you want the full megapixel view check out my SGV & SGR set on flickr.

The day we fight back approaches...

Hell nearly froze over

Its been a gut wrenching few weeks.  Ever since I was told by a major auto manufacturers rep that they weren't interested in car review as much as cars in lifestyle posts I've been reeling.  It really came down to "I can't do it".  Lifestyle bloggers take perks and write what they are told, not what they honestly believe.

Add in the perfect storm of google ads not paying the way they were supposed to and a huge increase in hosting fees I had to step back and do the "WHOA baby, this is insanity".  I killed SoCalAutoBlog as I couldn't morph in good conscious into a "daddy blogger" or similar life style.

So...though I'll still do cars, it will be for the art and documenting a piece of history.  I can't change the fact I love cars and all they've symbolized, good, bad and indifferent to our culture.

On to the art...

500,000+ flickr views

And I did it all without porn!

Well no girly porn at least.  Lots of car porn as that is mostly what I have shot of late.  Los Angeles Auto Show press days (2 days worth), 2015 Mustang Reveal and a Ford Open House all made for lots of photo ops with cars and it drove the traffic to me.

2013 L.A. Auto Show
2015 Mustang Reveal
Ford Open House

Of course in all of that there was a lot of  blogging in all of that, mostly on SoCalAutoBlog and on blogging.la.  Speaking of blogging.la, I broke 1000 posts a short while back.  Not sure where I am right now but it was an important goal for me and I did it.

In the end I do a lot of fun and more creative stuff, but not always with my art in mind.  Life gets in the way of passions and there are only so many hours in a day.  Maybe 2014 I should resolve to spend more time on art than commercial and photojournalism?

Road Trip fantasy

Interesting challenge was given to us in the post a day challenge.  Road Trip Fantasy with a cast, linked too of course.  Many of my choices are dead and so long so they don't have SM or URLs to link too.  But I have quite a few interests and a cast I've always wanted to have on a road trip so here goes.

Envision a nice RV like my folks had so we all can take turns driving and sitting around the table kibitizing.

First up.  Mario Batali.  I like him for a variety of reasons, being a great chef is part of it but he's also an excellent teacher, loved his old show "Malto Mario".  He's also one of the hosts on ABC's "The Chew" which my wife and I tivo and catch up on so I know he's both entertaining and engaging.  A must to moderate the group I have put together.

Cars. What a passion that is.  I'd love to have Alan Mulally the head of Ford on board along with drifter Ken Block.  Between the two I'd learn a lot about the future of cars and performance cars.  To round it out my absolute favorite writer editor, Jean Jennings.

Laughter, I love lots of it.  I'd toss in Robin Williams, Whoopi Goldberg, and author PJ O'Rourke.  They would be the icing on my cake.

Of course I'd shoot it all.  With DSLR and flipcam...for one of my "blair witch project" YouTube videos.

That my friends would be my ultimate fantasy road trip.

falling off the grid

And it can't happen fast enough

Yes. Those are solar panels.  Yes,  Those are installed on my roof.  34 total generating some 11KW peak during the course of a bright summer day.

I didn't do it or environmental reasons. I did it to keep as much green as possible in my wallet.

Seriously, this year has been a wild one for us SCE customers.  We got hit with a huge rate increase and rate restructure that if you run much more than a 'fridge you are going to go into tier 4 at 34-freakin'-cents per kilowatt hour.  July, August and September fully 2/3 of my power bill was in tier 4, and I did it without trying.  Actually short of turning off the air we tested our mettle with much higher than usual temps in an effort to trim the bill but it didn't make much of a dent.  Solar was the answer as we can get our juice for a bit over half of what those turds at SCE charge.

If you want details or a referral to the company I went with drop me a note.