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Me and Dad
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I was born in Washington DC on July 19, 1948 -- one of the hottest
days on record.
I was a bouncing 6-pound baby boy, born, unfortunately,
with a cone head.
When I was four, my dad confided in me that I had the hardest
head he had ever seen. I believed him, and routinely
showed off to my friends, running headfirst into immovable
objects. They were always VERY impressed.
At four, I wanted to grow up to be a windmill, or a cup of coffee.
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Me Mum
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A road warrior
wanna-be by the age of four.
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My first topless
birthday party,
I'm the blonde.
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When I was five, my family moved to South California.
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Breaking
in Dad
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Me
in my "ME" shirt, Little David, and Brian
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Every summer we would drive cross-country to
Washington DC and stay at my Grandmother's house. Route 66,
I remember it well. Two lanes for 3,000 miles, motels shaped
like Indian teepees, gasoline $.45/gallon.
Drive into a gas station, and three uniformed men ran out. They pumped your gas, and checked your oil, and washed all your windows. Before leaving they would give you a momento, usually a coffee mug, or drinking glass.
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Route
66
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I got a Howdy
Doody camera when I was seven. I knew then it was my destiny to
be a photographer. Making actual photos of Mr Bluster. My first photographs were "sun exposed" pictures of Buffalo Bob, Clarabell,
and Flub-a-Dub.
I had a 12-year perfect-attendance pin from the First Baptist Church
of Lakewood in California. Not because my family was religious, but
because it was the very early 1960's. We were Ozzie
and Harriet, it was something you just did. That was when littering was the Nation's most pressing
crisis. This was before Zip codes, stereo, color TV, and integrated washrooms.
Bongos ruled; we called each other "Daddy-O," and said "See ya later
alligator" a lot.
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1965 --
I'm the one with the pin on his lapel
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I spent most of the next ten years doing homework, and getting beat-up
at the bus stop. Bad acne made me invisible to girls. Worst of all,
the running into fence posts with my head trick didn't work anymore.
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9th
Grade Photography Class, wearing surfer Pendleton.
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In the early 60's, there were Gremmies, Hodads and surf-bunnys.There were
peroxide-bleached forelocks, Pendelton shirts, white Levi's, baggies,
and huarache sandals. The dance we did was called the Surfer Stomp, and dances became rites of
passage.
I built my own surfboard using casting resin instead of finishing resin, and said "cowabunga" a lot. Everything
was "boss."
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Grouped
with cousins Richard, Lynn, and Laurie. Clothing is mid-1960's
chic.
Shirts are madras, pants are high-water. I'm sporting a dickie.
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I graduated from Western High School in Anaheim California in
1966.
At graduation, I suddenly realized I needed to figure out the
meaning
of life. After all, how else would I know what to do? This
was to become a lifelong quest.
I spent my first year of college at Bethel College and Seminary
in St. Paul, Minnesota.Where better to learn the meaning
of life?" It was to be a lesson in "trees for the forest."
I mostly majored in cheerleaders, and not many of my credits transferred. |
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Topless
in 1965
Babe magnets. Cousin Richard
(currently deceased) and myself.
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Then, with a bang, it was the early 70's, and time to do your thing.
Depending on your bag, everything
was "groovy". "Turn on, Tune in, and Drop out" was the manifesto.
We kept on truckin.' I loved the early 70's.
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Mid 1970's
-- My groovy family
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Some people would claim I was a hippy draft dodger, and that
I had a Hunter
Thompson-esque approach to the flower-power years--but they
are all damn liars!
Amidst all the distraction and protest of the early 1970's,
I managed to get married to Frances
Smolenski -- a great artist.
Picture
on the wedding invitation
I did four years at California State College
at Long Beach. Using an "eclectic" approach,
I chose a different major and minor every semester.
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Freshly
shaved for wedding,
Frances' first.
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Early playing with light -- keylight through Venetian blinds.
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| My last year in college, I had a Radio Television &
Film major and a Home Economics minor. I had already tried
Microbiology, Business Science (hah!), Drama, Industrial
Arts, Archaeology, Graphic Arts, Life Drawing & Painting
(hey, live nude models!), Greco-Roman History, and History
of the Ancient Near East.
The one major I didn't take was photography. It was
only fitting that photography would become my 20-year
profession, and my raison d'être.
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Remember the wild and crazy egg & carrot
parties of the early 70's? Looks like Easter to me!
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I
am the eggman.
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5:00
am. Grad Nite at Disneyland. Looking likea popcorn
vendor, the shooters and their rigs. This was the night I set
the park record.
During the decade of the '70's I photographed
1,000+ weddings and 500,000 senior portraits. I probably
still hold the park record for most couples photographed
at Grad Nite at Disneyland. I shot 2034 couples in
ONE night! (Reloading the 70mm long roll Camerez Classic
like it was the pit stop at a Grand Prix.)
I was stationed outside the "It's
a Small World" ride. It is not possible to determine
just how many times I heard that theme song. To this
day I convulse, when ever I hear that music.
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1973
shooting movie trailer for Times/Mirror newspaper on 35mm film.
Left to Right: Bill
Wertz, Larry Hathaway, and myself.
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1973
Started Gotham
Cine
film company with Thom
Eberhardt
Arriflex 16mm with motion compensating (fluid-filled) DynaLens.
The ineffable Thom Eberhardt .
I also flew in the Goodyear blimp,
doing a marketing film for the Long Beach Independent Press
Telegram newspaper. In a wind storm, as I remember.
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I got a divorce in 1976. That was so long ago, I can't
remember the reason. Probably because Frances
did not want to live out of a suitcase, wanting instead to be her
own person. (She became a well-known artist.) She married my two best
friends, Jim Mozingo (currently deceased), and Jim Pyles. (Not at
the same time though.)
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Circa
early 1980's. Pyles Christmas card.
Jim Pyles, Frances, and Anne Marryie (currently deceased)
at their home in the country;-)
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A
life less ordinary 1976
I started on the road in 1976, working for Los Angeles based Elson–Alexandre
Photographers. They did pictorial mempership directories. I spent six-months in Chicago photographing the
13,000 members of the Chicago Medical Society.. The first six months of "road work" seemed so glamorous.
In the next nine years, I lived a
life spent in 2,000 motels.
I had a Chicago girlfriend and a Lincoln, Nebraska girlfriend.
They both got to go to Disneyland.
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Fun on the
road with Cruel Shoes
Buffalo, New York 1983
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Cruel Shoes 1979
I
practically lived out of the back of my p.o.s. 1979 Oldsmobile Custom
Cruiser diesel station wagon (AKA Cruel Shoes).
I remember driving off the lot in a brand new 1979 Family Truckster, and blowing a head gasket. Just a fluke, Mr. Goodwrench said.
By 1981, most of it's moving parts ceased functioning, eight blown headgaskets in four years.
In 1984, I abandoned Cruel Shoes in a large pool of oil and water in a hospital
parking lot in Tarrytown, New York. I will never forget the overwhelming sense of relief I felt watching it
getting smaller in the rearview mirror of my rented car.
I drove 20,000 miles a year -- from hither to yon and back again, many
times over.
Executive Portrait photography took me all over the country. I specialized
in photographing mostly rich people--doctors, lawyers, and country club
members. I photographed
lots of famous people, to include Mel Torme, Robin Williams, Lee Trevino,
Tony Lamas, son of Ansel Adams, son of Steve Allen, etc. One of my favorites
was Eugene Cernan (the last man to walk on the moon).
I worked mostly
on the East Coast, and allegedly became one of the top Executive Portrait photographers
in the Country. Which, unfortunately is not the same as making lots of money.
Bentley Portraits
In
1981, Ed Comstock and I started Bentley Portraits, based out of Oklahoma
City, OK. We specialized in Executive Portraiture. We produced pictorial
membership directories for dozens of organizations; medical societies,
bar associations, and country clubs.
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On
the road with Bentley Portraits, leaving Clearwater Florida circa
1982
Left to right: Unknown booker, Jennie Toledo, Ed Comstock, and
me as a blonde.
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| Notice that the top of the car only chest high on me. I stand
an imposing 5'6. This car's shocks and springs are at maximum compression--I
figure a thousand pounds over maximum recommended load. We're on
our way to photograph attorneys in Arlington, Virginia in a Ford
p.o.s "driveaway." |
For nine years I did not have a home address. I would wake up in strange
places, and not know what city or state I was in. I lived out of a suitcase
until 1985. At that time the Mormons vandalized my lighting equipment
in a locked parking garage in Salt Lake City. (Salt Lake City has the
highest rate of smash and grab in the entire world.)
I have worked in most of the lower 48 states. When the time came for
my weary bootheels to stop wandering, I settled down in the best place
to live in the USA. I built my fortress of solitude in Washington State,
near the State Capital of Olympia, on Summit Lake.
25-year intermission
Sometimes a person thinks they want a career and fame, but it turns
out all they really wanted were paychecks.
I bought my first Macintosh in 1984. It was a 128K Mac. It cost over
$3,400, but it was worth every penny. I paid $500 extra to get an external
400K diskette drive. I still use that computer . . . as a door stop.
I couldn't find work up here as a photographer, so I my brother got me a job for the
State of Washington in 1985. I type very fast, so I got a job as a Word
Processing Operator for the Washington State Department of Transportation
(WSDOT). This was in the days of $20,000 dedicated Xerox Word Processing
machines. Do you remember 10-inch, 100k floppy disks?
In 1986, the department bought a ton of Macintoshes, and I was
promoted to a Computer Information Consultant. I was the MacExpert.
Those were the days. Three people supported all the hundreds
of Macs in the agency for several years. We used a product called Timbuktu,
and I could remotely operate any Macintosh on the network -- to do everything
from showing the user how to do something, to updating software. We
rolled out a non-mainframe based email, and maintained a dozen UNIX
based Macintosh fileservers. This was WSDOT's golden age of computing.
The users loved their Macs.
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Fear and Loathing
at WSDOT
In the early 90's WSDOT got a new Secretary of Transportation
who was (let's say) not the sharpest knife in the drawer. I won't
mention names, but he's an ex-Republican senator. If you look
up moron in the dictionary you will see his picture.
The words feckless, benighted, and chowderhead come to mind.
The first thing he did was to get rid of all the Macintoshes,
(with the blessings of WSDOT IT) and replace them with IBM-type
machines. He called it a "no-brainer." It cost the taxpayers
millions.
If you look up no-brainer in the dictionary you will also see his picture.
Remember, this was before Microsoft Windows. On the PC, everything
was Command Line Interface (no icons, no mouse). There was a 640K limit
on PC memory, and most horribly, 8 characters was the maximum
length of file names. PCs were unstable,
difficult to use, and had a life span of 1.5 years. The PCs were
nothing but problems, and the users hated them. The more problems
the users had, the more the Computer support costs grew.
It currently costs the Agency $44,000,000 a biennium for Information
Technology (IT) staff, and there are more problems now than ever.
Let the computer support mavens say what they want about Macintoshes,
but they are bullet proof, easy to support, they last twice as
long as a PC, no viruses, and the users love them.
All our Macs were busted up and thrown into dumpsters (IT said
there would be too much paperwork to surplus them). Half of the
Macs were less than 6 months old, some were still new in boxes.
It made me furious (and embarassed).
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Picture
from Dictionary
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1999, remodeled my 1983
manufactured home (Bank flabergasted!)
Fun
with Wine and Cats in New Kitchen
That was when my job switched from computer support, to database application
development. When the Internet came along, I also became a web page
developer. It was around this time I started a business named Armpit
Press.
Into the new millennium.
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Fearless
Leader
Doug MacDonald, Secretary of Transportation
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In the year 2000, we got a new Secretary of Transportation. This
time we got a good one. He's a Harvard MBA magna cum laude, and
also has a Harvard Law degree.
Also in the year 2000, there was a paradigm shift and Digital
Photography came into its own. I had not taken a single photograph
for almost 20 years. My boss bought me a digital camera, and all
of a sudden I was back in it again.
After 911, WSDOT implemented security measures and required all
employees to have photo ID badges.
I took this opportunity to dust off my Norman P800D studio lighting
kit, and proceeded to make ID Photos miniature portraits. Not
many photographers use a five light setup for ID Photos. So far
I have photo'd 1100+ people. Everyone of them looks like a movie
star.
Below are samples of the type and style of ID Photography I've
been producing.
I am an alledged Adobe Photoshop master, and all the ID Photos get fully
airbrushed and retouched. Compare these to your Costco card
photo.
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Actual
ID Badge Photos
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| To complement and preserve the digital photographs,
nothing works better than a frame. My house is now frame city. |
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Frame
City, Summit Lake
The
man behind the camera
Digital means never having to say you're sorry.
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In recognition of the amount of database applications I was developing,
I was recently promoted. Now I are a Information Technology
Application System Specialist 6. Sounds important, eh?
My
personal computer is a Mac Pro Dual Quad core with 16 GB of RAM, 4 TBs worth of internal drives and a 1 TB external RAID storage. I still have memory slots
I haven't used yet. Two years ago, this was the fastest computer
money could buy.
At work, I now wear THREE hats, and drink way too much coffee.
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Mother's
Birthday Party December 8, 2002
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In conclusion, let me leave you with this thought. They say you should
live your life like you would want people to describe you in your funeral
eulogy. I hope that after I die, people will say of me: "That guy sure owed me a lot of money!"
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When I die, I want to go peacefully in my sleep, like my grandfather--not
screaming like the passengers in his car.
No adult supervision since 1976!
Life is good.
G. |
