All in the name of the family

I'm a third generation Frank, and the first of my line to not start a business with a storefront. Though he works in consulting now, my father owned an appliance store for 20 years in my hometown of Eastpointe, opening it when it was still called East Detroit, and rebuilding it from the ground up when the building burnt down following a lightning strike. Nowadays it is owned by a Physical Therapy company, but the building still stands, albeit redone in their style. I delivered appliances out of the back room of this storefront from the time I was 13 until I was in college.

My father is Jr. and I'm Frank III, but Frank Sr. has owned a variety of businesses in the City of Detroit. Among his first forays into business was dry cleaning. Here, on the east side at Hayes and Saratoga, stands the actual plant where cleaning was taken from a variety of drop-off centers throughout the Detroit area. 

My grandfather is 82 and decided to retire about six months ago -- to get him to that point, he had to become extremely ill. I know that he isn't missing the drive, but he loved the people. That's why he kept going at the Video Store, together with my grandmother, for as long as they could manage it. I spent a few summers working with him there while his wife underwent knee replacement surgery, and watched him interact with his remaining customers, knowing them all by name. I know it doesn't seem feasible that a couple in their late seventies would continue to work at an independent video store at Gratiot and Outer Drive, but they did until they couldn't.

The storefront you see here is actually a set of buildings, one of which was my father's first appliance store, and all of which once belonged to my Great-Grandfather Milo. Yes, he didn't have Frank for a name, but he started it all, and I can appreciate that. Milo dabbled in a lot of businesses in Detroit, being the first generation born out of Italy, but I recently found out about his first business of his own -- at the corner of Mack and Dubois, which I used to pass everyday on my way home.

It doesn't look like much, but this service station was once owned and operated by my Great Grandfather. You can miss it easily, but thanks to looking into everything I can learn about the family history inside the city limits, I'll never miss it again. As a matter of fact, I will go out of my way to pass by. 

I'm a schoolteacher, and I don't have much ambition to own a business or keep up a storefront. These buildings, though, are a part of my family history, and I will always remember them as being a part of me, and the reason that the generations led to me.

More printing projects

Recently, I tried out a few more methods for transferring my photography onto new ways of displaying it. Here's what's new.

These two I hand-transferred onto canvas using the same process I described before for transferring onto wood -- gel medium and a laser-printed photo (reverse printed), then the removal of the paper (but not the image) by wetting the paper and working/peeling it off.

For this transfer, I sepia-toned and reverse printed onto t-shirt transfer paper, then ironed it onto wood. After the transfer was complete but before sealing it, I stained the image and wood itself, and also highlighted a few of the lines/shadows with an extra-fine point Sharpie. It wasn't my best work.

This set of photos are all printed on 5x7" pieces of aluminum flashing, of which I obtained 10 for $2.77 at Home Depot. Again, I used the same acrylic gel medium as I did for wood and canvas, but on the fireworks (printed with colors inverted), I cleaned off the blank areas with steel wool to create a distressed look in the original metal, rather than depending on the transferred ink/image to fill in the area.

This whole process is enjoyable, and I'm getting to the point where I think I can print on just about anything solid. Oh, the possibilities.

-Frank

Downtown Clawson

My wife and I moved to our new home in Clawson, Michigan just about six months ago, and have loved every bit of this charming community so far. Today I had some time to stroll about the nearby downtown and take a few pictures. Here are some, with a link to the full album in my google+/picasa photos.

One side of Main Street, south of 14,

and the other.

I spent a little time in Flipside. It's the closest thing I've found to Melodies&Memories that I grew up with in Eastpointe. 

The southwest corner of downtown -- beautiful building.

Frittata - winner of my heart, and a hidden gem award. We have breakfast here once per weekend.

This is a brief collection of my Clawson photos, with more available here, and I'm going to keep expanding it both here and by posting to Clawson Patch. 

-Frank

We got a dog; I made a wood print.

I've been gone too long, and for that I apologize. In the month I've been off, my wife and adopted a dog. He's Trusty, and he's a hound dog. Basset/Beagle Mix. Anyway, I'm not going to post a bunch of pictures of him -- just this one.

He's great. Really cute, and friendly, and all that stuff. Adopting a rescue is something I advocate for people who can make the committment, because his anxiety issues have been a struggle during this month of adjustment. Anyway, great dog, and a photo I like, so of course I had to make a cool print out of it. 

What I did: First I sanded the wood, which has  a cool edge on it that my friend Kevin made for me. He does a lot of woodworking as a hobby, and if he had a website I'd link it. Just know he's great -- sold us this house -- and has given me a bunch of free scraps of wood that he cut to various photo sizes. You can expect to see lots of his cuts. Anyway, after sanding, I tried to iron a reverse-printed desaturated version of the above photo. IT FAILED. So, seeing the wood now ruined, I covered it up with an inkjet printed photo of the same picture. Mod Podge on both sides sealed it to the wood, which I then stained. Stain separates into a glaze and color when you don't shake it -- so I used the glaze on top with very little color over the photo, and the full stain on the rest of the wood. I let the stain dry, mod podged it one last time for a shine and a seal, and that's that. The wood is thick enough that I drilled a nail hole halfway through it so it can be hung.

The goal - make a photo that has some character, and is already in a frame by letting the mounting be the frame itself. Staining the photo isn't easy, which is why I glazed it first, but wiping the stain excess was the key to keeping it from overpowering the image. Also, printing the photo a bit overexposed is helpful, since the stain will dull it and you can control how much if you leave yourself some wiggle room.

I have several sizes which I will do this with. Why didn't I do the same wood transfer method as last time? That requires a laser printed photo, which I have to go out of the house to do, and this was an evening-at-home project while I was watching Battlestar Galactica. It's good to have an array of stuff to do. Thanks for reading, subscribing, whatever. Also, if you could give me your input on whether I should move BACK to tumblr, new format but old site, let me know. Thanks.

Frank

I still dig music.

Before this blog, or any of my photography, I used to go to a lot of shows and write about them, as well as scribble an album review here or there. I tried to do that for Absolute Punk a bit, and have some reviews there -- some I wanted to do, others they sent to me and I was honest about -- but it didn't have staying power for me at the time. So, I stopped doing that, and haven't been to as many shows as I did when I was a younger man. But nowadays when I can, I do. Last night, my wife got a call from our friends Pat and Anna, and they invited us to a local bar/pool hall/music venue called The Loving Touch. It's connected to and owned by the great folks of the Woodward Avenue Brewery, with a very open floor plan and never much crowding. I like it there. Anyway, Pat wanted us to come see Dragon Wagon, a "bluegrass folk" band, so we did. I took a few pictures with my 50mm f/1.8. Here are some.

I actually prefer to use this kind of lighting, so I didn't really sacrifice anything -- I didn't even have to deal with crowds, because the folks that came to see the show left plenty of space for me to move about. There were a good amount of people watching, but the venue allowed for me to get far and near as needed, since the lens was fixed. It seems that more and more cameras are allowed in music venues nowadays, so I will try to keep this up, especially since I want to be at more shows, and thus feel younger.

Creative Printing

Inspired by projects we'd seen for sale by artists in little markets about town, my wife and I decided to try out different ways of displaying photos. So, this week, I made a few things. 

This one is an 8x10 on a piece of wood. I used the process here, with decent results, to show off the front of our house and a picture taken the day we moved in. I'd say the ironing takes longer than 2 minutes, and the paper has to be peeled away slowly.

These are coasters, made out of a common 4x4 tile. The article has some easy to follow instructions, but I found using photo paper (glossy) instead of just regular paper was the way to go. Anyway, read about it here if you want to make your own.

Finally, the thing I wanted to do the whole time -- transfer color photos onto wood with full visibility. It went okay -- the picture of my wife's childhood home came out great. The others were much more difficult since rubbing the paper fibers is a delicate process, causing a massive gouge in the shot of Michigan Central Station. For the tree, well, it honestly looks better that way. Laser printing photos for this is a must, but I did it at Staples (3 on one page, $0.99) and made sure it was on a light stock. Anyway, the colorfully-written how-to guided me quite well.

I will probably use all of these methods again, especially the last one. I'll keep you updated on anything else I end up doing with the printing process.

A Visit to the Auto Show

The North American International Auto Show, or NAIAS, has been at Cobo Hall in Detroit all week. On the first public day, Saturday the 19th, I went down with my father-in-law, brother-in-law, and of course my wife (in law?). It was a superb time, and I really like how loose camera restrictions have gotten. I'll be submitting one of these for the contest at clickondetroit.com, but here are my finalists.

Detail of the Ford Shelby Mustang.

The Acura NSX, which was unveiled by my Uncle Mike earlier in the week.

Lincoln's new crossover, which seeks to bring in a younger crowd, had me pretty convinced. 

Pretty, but never has been my style. I suppose if they let me drive it, I'd see the appeal.

There are lots of better ways to shoot cars if you have control of the lighting, but I just used what was there, and tried to make myself move through the crowd with ease. I don't have a great shot of the new "Stingray" Corvette, because I have to crop out some bystandards and haven't done any post-processing on the car album yet. Anyway, that's my trip to the auto show. You really should go.