May 3, 2015


Photography is changing faster than the mind can adapt to the free for all content frenzy with no real structure to find a path back to a cohesive reality we all share in. Reality is being fragmented and destroyed by the ease of snap shot captures and then the ego posting of these images that you hope make you feel that you are alive and participating in a shared reality.  But you are being duped by the social media cartels. These snapshots have become emotional cushions to shore up an empty life without meaning.

The moment now is taken out of the real flowing moments of the present.  A time line that once had purpose because it gave us a cohesive perception of this shared reality. Is now a helter-skelter escape from time.  Everything now happens at once and at hyper speed.

We have become the objects in our life to take snap shots of.  The visual snapshot has become the source of our fulfillment. Experiencing nature first hand is forgotten, replaced by the obsession to document every second of our life through a mechanical device.

The picture now stands for our experience not words describing our experience to a friend.  Our vocabulary is diminishing as we rely more and more on the quick pic to be the only representation of that moment for us.  It is easy and cheap now to indulge ego, that all to common stride toward banal self indulgence.

We are becoming the Look At Me personalities, actors in our own lives.  Not authentic people but a series of posted snap shots of what we think others will like.

Erich Kahler, "What has happened is not so much a greater readiness, or capacity for understanding on the part of the public, but a radical transformations of art as such, an approximation of avant-garde work to the level of daily experience: our fragmented existence and its patent discordance's, the prevalence of life machinery over life itself, and hence its increasing mechanization."

Good photography is focusing your intensity on the subject not on yourself. I am not the physical subject of my photographs.  My feelings and personality show through when making images.  That is how I connect with my subject.  The camera is a conduit to a deeper reality.  Intense focus on your relationship with your subject is necessary in order to create an image with depth and visual understanding. When you see through focused attention your true subject revealed you begin to see the undercurrents of your life intersecting with your life's theme.

There is a purpose I seek in choosing this subject over another.  And as you dig deeper in the environment to select visual elements to represent your inner feeling you begin to loose track of time.

You are now fully involved using your chosen talents in the present moment not reflecting on yourself and then onto the subject.  But one with the subject you are creating.  It is a detective story of finding the scattered pieces of visually exciting elements of the scene and using your growing confidence in your abilities and putting the image puzzle together and creating an image worthy of other's attention.