Ahem, Boomerang's Photo Parlour
no, kidding, kidding....
Photo-go-Boom!
This naming stuff is hard.
I was out goofing off today trying to clear my head and something interesting happened.
The space we are looking at is a big warehouse type thing. I had been thinking that it would be pretty cool to have someone come in a do part of a wall with graffiti but I didn't really want to lurk around downtown trying to find a tagger for the job.
So I'm at this nutty store downtown and notice that the building across the parking lot is covered with amazing graffiti. I wander around to the front side and discover it has been turned into a little shop. I ask them who did their graffiti and lo and behold they went to the back and brought one of the guys out!
He works with a team of five other guys - all who do a different kinds of work.
Cool, huh?
Perhaps my graffiti dream will come true after all.
My head still isn't clear though.
Must be time for a wee cocktail.
One of my pals up here is a guy who, among other things, has a "crew" of young people do lively 'murals' around town. (Duane Flatmo is the fellow who did the Red Tale Ale label, and lots of other art jobs.) Also went to China about a month ago to participate in one of those crazed construct-a-vehicle-out-of-junk contests. Past all that, he's a wonderful sculptor and a funny guy.
I guess I'm pushing it, he's not my close pal, but his wife, also an artist, shows with our gallery, and this town loves and appreciates both of them.
Glad you found your crew, Boomer.
Me, I have mixed feelings about graffiti, murals, and trompe l'oeil (sp?). But I like some of it in some places...
I had a soft spot for the (real) graffiti at Venice (CA) pavilion.
also have a friend from LA, originally and I guess still French Basque, who did the delicate hand painting of flowering vines, etc., around the Las Hadas resort in Mexico years ago, and does that kind of painting, quite olde and weathered looking, on various estates...
These guys seem to be pretty "real". You can see some of their stuff at
www.nacstyle.com - you have to click on the image, click on gallery and sort through the photos.
Let me try to post one....
Seems real-ish, to pick nits. Has a certain prettiness. Not to cast aspersions, I don't mean it that way. Venice is mid some of the original gang families, or was. Now it's made the jump past occasionally trendy to Real Estate. I'm sure I have a pic of that graffiti, but won't dig it out tonight.
This link represents graffiti rather late in the day, from my experience, as it is from the nineties and somewhat ok'd by the city.
http://benefitnetwork.org/GraffitiGallery.htm
Interesting thread. Havent really got much to add. Reminds me of when our organisation was changing names tho, after some twenty years, two years ago, and we had a little internal working group brainstorming about it for a while. Exasperating - much, much harder than anyone had thought.
In the end an external agency came up with the new name I think. Kinda unclear - it has "media" in it and a word that does kinda evoke some kind of exotic association - but nothing that alludes to the fact that our prime cause is inter/multiculturalisation. For that, now, the tagline is used. All a bit awkward I find, but many of the names that had been proposed in the process were much worse still.
The worst are a) the ubiquitous plays on words that are immensely fashionable and IMHO immensely lame, as the test of time will all too soon show I believe; and b) the trendy names. I mean, come on. Does one really want another organisation with a dash or slash in its name? Or with some allusion to the Internet/virtual dimension?
One existing project was given a name that neatly combines all my pet hates - I'm so glad I don't work for them. Its a research project on media ... and, inspired, I'm sure, by the sun-thing that summer, they called it E-clips. Gettit? Eclipse? E- and "clips"? ... yuck yuck yuck.
Nod at the one-word thing being trendy right now. We have (finally) a few of those hip loungy places opening up in town that, you know - have the 70s/80s retro look while offering state-of-the-art finger food and the (by now rather tired) Kruder & Dorfmeister trip-hop thing going on in the background - or thats the idea, anyway. Three of the four names: Lust, Le:en and ... Goos, I believe.
Le:en is far too contrived to my taste but for the snobby crowd there probly works splendidly. Goos has a connotation between old-Dutch and vulgar-Dutch that makes it totally cheesy. But Lust is brilliant, I think, for that kinda place. Its so packed every night, they've been faltering under the stress apparently, quality falling just cause of the overload.
Wow! That stuff is cool, osso. I would love to see that.
For my situation, "pretty" isn't too bad though. I'm looking for somewhere between "edgy" and "funky". In the portrait business, you never ever ever want to alienate the "suburban moms". You have to find the happy medium between what the kids will accept and what the moms will accept when aiming anything towards the younger generations.
It most certainly is harder than anyone thinks, nimh. I know that there are companies dedicated solely to naming things. (Personally, I always wanted a job naming makeup colors or nailpolish.)
Our brainstorming sessions start off with some interesting things and then devolve into "Butburger".
Yuck, yuck, yuck.
Fabulous thread. I'm not worthy to post on it...yet...still growing I hope...
Just got an email from c.i. - the pix on it were from a website called
worth1000 . com
Gotta love that.
Not sure I'd take kids or dogs to have pix taken there though. I've been mulling this over - realized that while some non-name studio titles are interesting, the people I know who are willing to spend serious money on studio pix want the name of the photog in the name of the studio. It's a status symbol to have that TonyX or WallyY or NattyZ on the little tag in the corner of the pic.
My long silence was due to a power blackout, not lack of interest.
"SNAP: Airbrush Memories.
Hmmmm.....
Maybe I should call it "Dominion Studios" as a reminder to hold mine.
I'm glad the powers that be power got you back up and running, Noddy.
Thanks, Boomer. I missed you all--more than Mr. Noddy missed his weekend football.
