So, that happened.

Have you ever summited something to a contest and the announcement date was so far in the future that you forgot you ever participated? Yeah. Me too.

Back in 2019, after having some of my Mobile Photo Manipulation pieces in art shows, I saw a post about the MPA, Mobile Photo Awards and I put some of my work in because, why not.

After a pot of coffee the other day, I ran a search of my name online. Which you should occasionally do because weirdness gets attached to your name when you’re “out there” in cyber world. I’m not talking about you Grizzly Adams who lives off the grid to hide from the brain frying 5G emissions that can penetrate your tin foil hat. And Griz, you won’t read this post anyway, unless you log on at an internet café that lets you skulk around on Torch to see if your ex has posted any of “those” photos from back when you were entwined. I’m talking to the rest of you, Google yourself and laugh, cry or be freaked out by what comes up as parts and pieces of you.

I digress. So, I Googled myself and a couple pages back there was this link to winners of the MPA 9th Annual Awards with my name connected. WHAT THE FRACK? Click….. scroll… WHAT THE ACTUAL FRACK? There it was.

One of my photos was in the Honorable Mentions Visual FX category. 5,700 entries total. Each of the twenty categories had one grand prize and 30 honorable mentions. Not gonna lie. That was pretty cool to be recognized amongst that giant murder of Mobile Photographer crows.

I never would have known if I hadn’t consumed mass quantities of caffeine and had some free time to waste. Really, they didn’t call. Didn’t write. No flowers. No fruit sculpture deliveries preserved with chemicals to keep them looking “fresh” for weeks.

Had to laugh because it was my photo I had done from an Architectural Boat Tour of Chicago in Spring 2019. I had photographed the Trump Tower and then transformed it into a graphic novel style image I called, Fortress of Evil. True story. There it is-

I’ve got poems and writing that I have sent to competitions in Ireland various and sundry sites now awaiting judgement. I should probably keep track of that stuff. Like a lot of creatives, my super power is in creating and not in organizing and following up. S’pose I should work on that. Soon. Ish.

Here’s the link I stumbled onto in my navel gazing web search-

Visual FX Winners | 9th Annual MPA

Stop what you’re doing and open up another tab to Google search yourself right now. Tell me the weirdest thing associated with your name.

Not you, Griz. I don’t have enough bleach to clean my eyeballs after seeing whatever the heck that was in your photos.