iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Eric Lubbers @brofax.com · 20/09/2026

They’re doing some genre-defining work in the field of repulsive AI food renderings at the New Mexico State Fair.

Just the most godawful AI image of shiny cookie butter oozing out of a loose seam resembling the disgusting mouth of a hagfish in the side of a hyper detailed sopapilla covered in what resembles potting soil.

Eric Lubbers @brofax.com · 28/04/2026

Some other single panels I’ve saved over the years, including the Greatest Panel’s spiritual sequel. @nancycomics.bsky.social @cashbrowns.bsky.social

A Nancy panel featuring Nancy holding a gun (punchline: it’s a squirt gun) walking with purpose toward a door. Sluggo is in the foreground, facing away from us (we’re looking over his shoulder) as he looks at Nancy. His speech bubble contains a single question mark.

This is basically a Twin Peaks tableau.

Nancy says to Sluggo “DON'T STAND THERE, SLUGGO-THE F.B.I. WILL GET YOU”. Sluggo, confused, looks over his shoulder and realizes the sledgehammer he’s carrying for some reason is lined up with a poster for Garden Implements that contains a handheld sickle, forming the symbol of the October Revolution and thE Soviet Republic.

The spiritual sequel to the Greatest Panel features Nancy this time, also laying on her back in “midair,” also saying a single “NO”, while she is tucked in to sleep in a dresser drawer.

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Eric Lubbers @brofax.com · 28/04/2026

Nearly 20 years ago (?!) I ran the second panel through a rasterizer and used the copiers at the Rocky Mountain News (RIP) to print all like 30 pages. Just to hang in my apartment because I had no other idea how to decorate. I painted over the pixels with tempera and just … hung it up. Sluggomaxxing

An idiot 20-something with few discernible life skills sits on the floor of an apartment he could barely afford, painting over the pixelated outline of a Nancy comic strip panel featuring Sluggo floating on his back in mid-air, with a speech bubble reading “NO”.

I first saw it on a Boing Boing post calling it the greatest comic panel of all time and it has really stuck with me through every season of my life since then, evidenced by the no fewer than seven copies of the image I found when searching through my photo library.

Yes, I’m in my early 40s now and yes, I’ve considered getting a tattoo of it several times. Is that a crime now? Are you going to arrest me for thought crimes?

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Eric Lubbers @brofax.com · 12/02/2026

Benny, fresh haircut. Unflappable. Ignorant of most, if not all, of the evils of the world.

Just a cartoonishly cute Schnauzer with a fluffy haircut, sitting with grace, wearing the shit out of a blue bandanna. And like that isn’t enough, his tongue is sticking out a little. Yeah, I know.

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Eric Lubbers @brofax.com · 06/01/2026

My photography has been digital since my photojournalism days & I can absolutely do vibe-ier and more legible art photos with my Fuji than I ever could with film. You nailed it with “experience,” because I *shoot* digital with film techniques in mind but I could never get back into that film grind.

A cactus with vivid orange and red flowers caught in a sunbeam

People pose for a selfie in front of Multonomah Falls (no faces are visible)

Mannequins in a thrift store window stare out at the street while the glass reflects bright clouds and a blue sky

My father-in-law demonstrates how he would deal with a hangover if he access to a cold plunge like this one at a Japanese-style onsen in New Mexico by dunking his whole damn head in.

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Eric Lubbers @brofax.com · 26/09/2025

One of my fondest memories of my early days on The Denver Post’s online team was getting to see this come through the CMS: www.denverpost.com/2015/01/20/p...

A screenshot of a Denver Post headline reading: “Puddle of Mudd frontman arrested at Denver International Airport, according to police” along with a really intense mugshot of lead singer Wes Scantlin

Text reading:
“Puddle of Mudd frontman Wes Scantlin was arrested for allegedly riding on a baggage carousel at Denver International Airport, according to police reports.

Scantlin was taken into custody on Jan. 16 after he was seen running “behind the large-item baggage carousel” and then came “out of the secured area through an alarmed door” and walked outside, according to a Denver Police report.

Scantlin is under investigation of trespassing. The charges will be determined by the Denver District Attorney’s Office.”

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Eric Lubbers @brofax.com · 22/03/2025

Meanwhile, in Albuquerque

A poster with an image of Shrek in rave gear. The poster is for an event called, you guessed it, Shrek Rave.

Taglines:
It’s dumb just come have fun!
Cool is dead!
Who cares?

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Eric Lubbers @brofax.com · 04/01/2025

20 favorite photos of 2024. 5/5

Thick snow sits atop the long, thin and dense spines of a desert cactus in Santa Fe.

A large, vibrantly painted statue of the Virgin Mary (complete with a golden halo around her whole figure) on a star-shaped pedestal, seen from behind. The head and halo of the figure is in the center of a small cloud in the sky as the sunset glints off the golden highlights.

A densely foggy view of a soccer field with patchy, wind blown snow. A goal sits in the middle distance, between two giant light poles that are increasingly obscured by fog.

A public pay phone, missing its handset for who knows how many years, sits covered with a tapestry of intricate graffiti, overlapping stickers, 90s phone company graphic design that has been blistered by the Santa Fe sun and a fine layer of dusty grime. On the bottom well of the enclosure sits a half-drunk cup of green juice, abandoned after a brunch at Cafe Pasquale’s.

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Eric Lubbers @brofax.com · 04/01/2025

20 favorite photos of 2024. 4/5

Two small figures are seen through one cell of a chain link fence over an arroyo between two interstates lined with graffiti. I call this one “A stroll through the gallery”

A hand is ready to slam a glowing MAX BET button on a slot machine.

An endless yellow grassland with a few round bales of hay stretches toward a cloudy blue sky.

A huge red flower bloom from the garden at Ten Thousand Waves in Santa Fe

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Eric Lubbers @brofax.com · 04/01/2025

20 favorite photos of 2024. 3/5

The sign for 4 Queens casino on Fremont Street in the bright midday light of Las Vegas

A Virgin Mary statuette is lit by red faux-neon Zia symbol lights in an otherwise darkened shop in a closed mall.

An Acoma dancer in a pine needle mask and elk antlers performs at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center in Albuquerque.

A row of streetlights in which the first has been bent backwards to a Dutch angle by some long forgotten collision.

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Eric Lubbers @brofax.com · 04/01/2025

20 favorite photos of 2024. 2/5

The stark white stucco of the El Rey hotel in Santa Fe at twilight

A spectator at the Albuquerque International Balloon Festival is dwarfed by multicolored hot air balloons on their sides rise around him

A pigeon peeks out from its nest between two interlocking yucca plants.

A bridge is reflected by the water of Barton Creek in Austin.

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Eric Lubbers @brofax.com · 04/01/2025

I took 16,040 photos in 2024. I edited 3,315 of them. And these are my favorite 20 of the whole year, with a 3,295-way tie for 21st. 1/5 #albuquerque #abq #newmexico #streetphotography #artphotography

A stop sign that had been spray painted entirely red before someone wrote “stop tho” with a yellow paint pen where STOP would normally be seen. This is at a post office and hasn’t been fixed for months and makes me smile every time I see it.

A basketball hoop in dark twilight stands between two houses while the sun sets through a massive Eastern Plains rainstorm, making the sky look like it’s on fire. Taken across the street from my childhood home in Yuma, Colorado.

A small flock of ducks walk across a green lawn through sprinklers that are raining down on them, looking like fireworks at the very crack of sunrise.

The ancient volcanoes west of Albuquerque on the horizon seen through a gap in a chain link fence next to I-25.

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Eric Lubbers @brofax.com · 07/12/2024

I’ve been wanting to get a shot of this place since the first time I drove through Albuquerque. I need to live in the world that the phrase SOUTHWEST CYBERPORT whispers and the typeface promises.

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Eric Lubbers @brofax.com · 06/12/2024

Feel free to keep this one handy to send back when someone starts emotionally unloading on you and you don’t have the bandwidth to deal with it.

A sign reading “ABSOLUTELY NO DUMPING” sits atop a hill of sagebrush as the sun sets behind it.

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Eric Lubbers @brofax.com · 06/12/2024

Somehow this is the photo of mine I’ve been thinking about the most lately. Head to the alt text for more on why it’s been stuck in my head

A light pole casts a shadow over the center of a stop sign, and the combined shadow of the two objects falls right in the center of a wooden panel in the background.

This photo really hit me because it kind of represents the reasons I actually take pictures in the first place.

If I had anything like an artist’s statement, it would be something like this:

"Eric Lubbers is a photographer who collaborates with the rotation of the earth, the contents of the atmosphere and the power of the sun to acknowledge the fleeting presence of joy and symmetry whenever he's lucky enough to see it."

Like an Incan observatory, this might have been the only moment of the year that this pole cast its shadow at this particular angle, connecting it to its environment so neatly. I stopped in my tracks to just bask in it, knowing I would never see this moment, this convergence, this organized beauty in the same way ever again.

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Eric Lubbers @brofax.com · 06/12/2024

’tis the damn season* *in which golden hour is at, like, 4 p.m.

A snowman made out of tumbleweeds faces an interstate from its pedestals. The curves of the snowman’s three sections are illuminated in a gentle orange-and-blue hued sunset.

The sky over Albuquerque at sunset, with long, thin, almost streaky white clouds radiating from horizon.

Some of the peaks of Albuquerque’s volcano field on the horizon are framed inside one diamond of a chain link fence, with a busy interstate rushing by in the foreground

A roadrunner proudly perches on the roof of an adobe home with turquoise trim features.

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Eric Lubbers @brofax.com · 21/11/2024

Today’s pre-dawn dog walk layers included the only two garments I’ve continuously worn since high school (22 years ago, my god)

A doofus holding a small lamp in his right hand to get better lighting takes a photo of himself in a mirror while wearing a shirt that reads “Colorado Is For Hustlers” with a little red heart in fading velvety lettering. He’s also wearing a big winter hat.

The same doofus as before is in essentially the same position, but now wearing a light gray hoodie that reads “YUMA TRACK & FIELD XXL” on it. Ironically, it is only now — age 40, two decades removed from this sweatshirt’s first wear — that the XXL is an appropriate size. He’s still wearing the hat.

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Eric Lubbers @brofax.com · 16/11/2024

I call this one “a stroll through the gallery.” ABQ, New Mexico

Two figures framed by a cell of a chain link fence look at a fresh piece of graffiti on the wall of a long drainage arroyo running between two corridors of interstate. I call this one “A stroll through the gallery”

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Eric Lubbers @brofax.com · 16/11/2024

Albuquerque sky showin’ off today.

A distant airliner is visible between power lines in the foreground descending in front of a low mountain range colored pink with the setting sun.

Another airliner flies over the pink Sandia mountains with a road lined with warehouses in the foreground.

The setting sun lights the western clouds with pinks and oranges over a parking lot, empty but for two Dumpsters.

A bright moon shines through high, thin clouds over a field of grass lit by a spotlight.

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Eric Lubbers @brofax.com · 14/11/2024

In 2011, in a very “broke in my 20s” move, I painted that first frame on a bunch of copy paper taped to a scrap piece of plywood I found in an alley to decorate my terrible apartment.

A sad little man sits on the floor of an apartment he can’t afford, painting a large comic book frame on some paper he taped to the plywood. He also has a lot more hair on the back of his head than he does now.

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Eric Lubbers @brofax.com · 13/11/2024

“A Stroll Through the Gallery” Albuquerque, New Mexico, 2024.

A view through a chain link fence of a drainage arroyo between lanes of an interstate. Two figures are framed in one cell of the fence as they stand back to look at a fresh piece of graffiti among many others along the wall.

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Eric Lubbers @brofax.com · 11/11/2024

I know a soft desert plant covered in gently frozen dew as the sun begins its slow rise through the clear Albuquerque air hate to see me comin’

A silver leaf nightshade (sometimes known as a tomato weed) covered in frost.

Crystals of frozen dew on the bark of a log in the early morning sunlight

A cluster of green leaves covered in ice crystals

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Eric Lubbers @brofax.com · 11/11/2024

Moving to New Mexico was the best thing that ever happened to my photography. These four photos were taken about 10 feet from each other in Santa Fe, including my new favorite piece of found text.