December 11, 2016


Brassai, "Every creative person has a second date of birth, and one which is more important than the first: that on which he /she discovers what his true vocation is."

When making photos you must immerse yourself with your subjects in moments that last.  These durations build a relationship of trust.  If you allow ego to become the dominant force in this relationship then you will only express the commercial side of your mental makeup.

I am exhausted at the tidal wave of corporate and social media's daily assault on our senses.
Giving our minds a constant bombardment of extraneous banalities of our existence without any purpose or contextual story line, only fragments, purposes driven by shallow puppets, talking heads with shallow eyes reading the monitor without expressions, this is our new age of Reason.

We are on the verge of losing our will to become ourselves. To express genuine felt experiences not though social media but on a one on one dialogue between people. We see image creation as a billboard, a tool not to express a deep understanding of the nature of the human condition but as an ad for publicizing our pop up ads on our website.

We don't look for images we can connect with but the novelty image that will be posted on a social media site not to communicate  a new vision of a subject but to exploit the shallow existence of the unimportant event for a few more likes. People have lost respect for themselves and see only glitter instead of truth.

Frivolous excerpts from individual lives is not communication.  Those are mundane occurrences we all share but shouldn't be the bread and butter of the corporate media sites.  Why would we degrade the masses with shallow reflection of our stupidity.  Wouldn't it be much better to create images that show the strength and courage of people to overcome the obstacles of lies and expose the hidden truths necessary for our survival.  Your private photo albums that gives us only a surface reflection of your visual existence without depth of purpose should stay private.

Think of your social media site and the overwhelming amount of information and minutia of details you can find that really have no purpose for you or how you want to live your life.

Social media can paralyze you into non-action. Controlling how you perceive the world and how we change our interaction because of it to a quick surface labeling without thoughts of depth and contextual connections and then we glide on to the next post without feeling the under toe of rich information never reaching the surface because of media's control. 

Just as we are missing the contextual relationships of events that ad up to a willful truth we are imitating what we see on social media in our own lives and missing out on real conversations with little phrases that don't add up to anything but lessening the character of our lives.

There is a growing herd instinct, a need to be seen without continuity or a real voice but as always a quick post and retreat in the shells of compartmentalized existence.

Social media manipulates our future individuality, our very core identities, demanding we follow the pied piper, making us conform to the collectives predetermine script.

Facades made to look rich with purpose, busy bees moving in excessive traffic to get their stipend for a lessening of humanities disappearing self hood.

But any deeper look under the hood we see a herding of our individuality into a uniform we wear as we grow in acceptance of homogenized celebrity illusions and starry eyed hopes for stardom.

So we lose our desire to create a life worth living on our own but search in endless need to be accepted by strangers that we will never know or meet.

Media propaganda disorganizes the minds natural fluidity keeps us away from a stream of consciousness to a parts shop with no natural flow and understanding or workmanship but stops and starts of violent fears raining down without the ability to focus with purpose.

Social media fragments information, disrupts the natural thought process and interrupts a persons reasoning by using catch words that act like a narcotic to inject in them an auto response of shallow depth and structure so the person assumes even before the last words spoken, this must be the truth.

It is a bait and switch con game with the only purpose is confusion, fear and profit.

In today's greed fest we look to nullify our fears with side games that mean to distract us with repetitious movements of eye hand coordination where you don't think but just react.  This instills in you a necessity of quick reactions without understanding.  And because of this we separate our lives off to like minded people who react without thinking just like us.

This in turn diverts us from living a connected life to our now hidden talents, our truth lay abandoned because of our constant battle of survival as we work multiple jobs for less and less benefits.

The minds memory accepts repetitious patterns which inhibit the minds expansion to understand new perceptions by discarding old tired cliches. We need to think anew.  Work harder to understand the under currents of life's manipulations through words that seem to dig deep into our consciousness and obstructs us with triggers that block our will to overcome these structured views with our own intuition and break through ideas.

This limits ones ability to see the whole picture only a small tid bit of info that blurs the overall truth of our existence.

Bright lights, games of chance, mesmerize the inner eyes outward reach.  We find that the shallow truths become solid pillars that hold up our lives so we don't have to think much but stick to the script of others and keep our heads low to the ground working as a means of forgetting your inner truths.

Excited brains leave their will behind to follow the lit street of escapism in fast glimpses of someone else world not yours.

The need to copy an action is the cattle call of structured restraint and inner confusion and lack of confidence in your own views.

Living your own life with unique ideas and image creations is a necessary prerequisite to becoming a human being with individuality and purpose.

This constant looking outward not inward, taking your imagination and locating it on external facades of eye candy, fixing your perceptions on objects, not on your inspiring thoughts that uncover the real importance of life, is social media's addiction. It is better to be seen than to create a meaningful awareness of your surroundings.

November 20, 2016

How do your view yourself. A participant in your life or an outsider looking into your living moments.  Do you equate living with posting your life for all to see as an extension of who you are or who you want to be?  Is being viewed by others, the real manipulation of our growing shallow presence.

The image trend I see is for quick pics and quicker posts. This is not photography in a real sense of the word. It is becoming a life sentence of performances, your life is a screen play, a story board of inconsequential moments that have dried up your imagination. Instead of living your life you are selling your life through make believe realities that have nothing to do with real connections with others and especially with yourself.

Do you feel posting on corporate media sites is an act of renewal of your quest to create something meaningful through focus and awareness of your surroundings and connections that are calling for your attention.

The act of posting is not a purposeful response to your moments. Commercials of ourselves have become the new reality of our lives. And we don't even get paid to produce them, we give them away. I think by that very act of giving them away you have demeaned your life as trivial and have accomplished the ultimate media scam of crowd sourcing and free material that they then can mine for your ad enjoyment. A constant beat of buy, buy and buy some more.

Social media introduced us into the entertainment and commercialization of our lives for profit motif.  Not profit for us but for the information they gather on your wants and obsession and exploit those with targeted ads of stuff you would never care about if you were living your purpose and in tune to the intended distraction that inhibit your growth towards the rewards of self sufficiency and your true voice, your calling.

Corporate media's feel good moments and then quickly back to an over abundance of violence and suspicions that crime is always lurking in you present moments, keeps us in a circle the herd mentality.

Your precious moments are now overwhelmed with the fears that corporate media bombard you with every second of the day.  Is this a means to militarize the police under our noses to inhibit the true voices to surface?

Social media is undermining unique individual perceptions that flow naturally between nature and an open mind. Our differences are being homogenized into structured imitations.  Our images are beginning to look all the same, our feelings are being surrounded by look alike ads for instructions on how we must respond to external stimulus. Our vocabulary is diminishing as we use short letters and symbols to express our "feelings" as if that can sum up a human beings moments in their time line. Symbols are the collective media presence. They reduce our inquisitive nature and teach us to live on the surface of their created reality and don't even attempt to dig deeper underneath the false facade of their wealth and power.

Relationships between me and my subject.  If we only see through organized categories we loose the ability to be open ourselves to new ways to see and live.

When creating images you must get out of your tendency of abstract specialization that deter you from connecting your internal vision with your outer presence and then with your intended subject.

Don't rush along the outskirts of image making, immerse yourself into the flow of your time and interconnectedness that brings forth a worthy unique expression that seems to magically happen when you are listing to your inner voice say, "calm down and wait, this is your place and your subject will be here presently."

We all can shoot randomly and come up with acceptable images that fit the uniformity of our costume lives.  And with that uniformity there is a growing fear to be unique in your expressions.

Connecting with purpose and clarity in this moment gives you a certainty of expression.  By being present your are opening your mind to the moment and not the description of your moments.

If you over think a subject, bringing thoughts that hinder your natural immediate response to your theme, you will miss that split second composition that ties your creativity to the image just made.

If you are not in the same playing field with your subject, there is an imbalance an untethering of willful purpose that makes your attention disconnect from the visual clues of composition.

Social media puts importance on your posts that give them information on your background for more ads and on any conversations between you and others that gives them insights on marketing strategies.  If we would use those same techniques with ourselves and begin to understand what drives us we might break free from the trap of media's corrosive analysis of our humanity. for profit only.

We have to get back to one on one conversations, be present for others just as you need to be fully engaged and present when creating images.

When you are communicating through a mechanical device you are removed from the real world. Reality now has a short sighted vision, a narrow path to follow, which excludes the environment you are in by demanding your full focus to be looking at whats on your hand held screen.

Instead of an intimate look at the small details of nature that make up our own lives we sacrifice those connections by allowing a device to become a barrier to seeing and a barrier to living a connected life in the real world of eye contact with others and your individual surroundings.

Our sense of being present, a feeling of your will of purpose will begin your journey to better photographs.

When making photos you must immerse yourself with your subjects in moments that last.  These durations build a relationship of trust.  If you allow ego to become the dominant force in this relationship then you will only express the commercial side of your mental makeup.

Photography takes time to create an image worthy of your inner being.

November 20, 2016

Joel Meyerowitz was asked, "What do you hope for when you say the work teaches you?"

"Well, you hope that by working-working out, working toward that-you'll produce an opening, you'll stumble through your senses upon a photograph that's instructive-a doorway-something more than just beautiful, or well made, or a combination of those elements that are photographically interesting-something that you can't quite handle that posses you, something simple and visible but filled with mystery and promise-the mystery of "How did I know to make that?"- and the promise of a new understanding of photography and something about yourself."

Eternal recurrence, what a depressing shallow grave we would all live in. Recurrence of time amounts to a script from the past from which we cannot deviate from. Social media is that script.  It is not knowledge to inspire one to become more but to entertain and distant oneself from living a life of truth and purpose.

Listless knowledge giving fake myths of benevolent beginnings.

How do you resolve the paradox of being aware but detached, to let things proceed without interference, yet gain an insight and a willful purpose to time your exposure at the crucial moment of your seeing the possibilities.

Being present without pushing, pulling and over thinking but just being there and ready to make an image through connection not domination.

Detached but connected to the rhythmic currents moving through the beauty of nature and its importance to our mental health.

If we only take from nature and do nothing to give back to nature, we are missing a true commitment to openly interact with it as a subject of intense importance to our creative outlook.

But even further we will never assume a role of conversion from destruction to cooperation not only with nature but with our fellow human beings and our foundation for survival is in peril.

If we assume we are gods of some sort, then we have abandoned the the right of passage beyond this earthly paradise.  If we think we are going to be anointed by a benevolent god for our destruction of our earthly home then we are not only delusional but blasphemers to god's purpose.

If all we do with our brain is organize, categorize and institutionalize our responses to an outer reality then we are becoming herded beasts afraid of our own inner purpose.  We are beholden to the corruption of money and power who's only return is more greed and abuse of our civic duty too protect mother nature from its destruction.

The force of external distractions work hard to disrupt our inner insights by creating infinite barriers to self realization.

Place and time dictate our very life and it's goals. We are given our time in this present moment to become more than a collector of things.  If we allow corporate media to commercialize our lives than it will further fragment us into colorful cloth easily changed and transformed into the next greatest product.

Your inside force is being channeled by paths of external manipulation, as if social media was a cure all for one's constant angst at the new order of power and greed. We are expressing this doubt and confusion by shrivelling up our need to be ourselves and end up following the herded masses to a corral of complacency with little demanded and thus living our future in a poverty of mind and matter.

We live in this new era of instant knowledge threw hand held devices.  But this knowledge is not your expressions but the elites propaganda of their desires and destructive controls over a population getting get fed up with the shallowness of our commons being privatized for money.

It is better to express yourself as who you are and not as a character created through social media, where everybody is looking for instant approval.  Approval is your own inner self creating images with willful purpose.

You must fight through created barriers of doubt and confusion that hinder your ability to manifest your original internal landscape.

What if I leave myself in it's narrow view of this world, would I know the empty body left behind.

We all want to be somewhere else and not present in our now moments.  This constant drum beat to move on, never landing on something of interest for more than a few seconds is the new skipping stone life by which we never go to shore and stand in our own shoes but are conned to enter swift currents that we can't control and will never be satisfied with, where these rushing waters take us away form our true purpose and force us to live a shadow life of ourselves.

Our knowledge base is shrinking into a reluctance to seek beyond the cliches created by ad men and dig deeper into the substance of our lives and where you want to be and not where corporate media wants to put you by stereotyping your purpose as foolish and always asking where is the profit. Stick with your own intuitions and transcend the shallow representation of humanity that corporate media wants you to believe.

October 23, 2016

We are strangers in a wasteland of personal greed.

Social media does not connect, it separates us from each other.  It puts a barrier between friends and family and reduces one on one interaction.  With these hand held devices we begin the slow retreat into ourselves and lose the necessary connection to the external gifts of nature.

Social media is a created facade of interacting with reality whereby we engage in surface reactions to a deeper cosmology. Displaying our lives as a model of joyous shallowness.  All social media is a tool to sell to comatose consumers.

Instead of enhancing discussion and vital interaction between real people and ideas it reduces the intent of the discussions to an underlining purpose of extortion and trickery to get the herd to buy their products.

When we interact now we don't have to see and be present with whom we are interacting with.

We don't know what this present time means in our interaction to see and respond to a real live person's behavior, his mood and his frustration in living in this cocoon of information that doesn't begin to address the slow darkening, muddying the waters of the human species.

We text, we view, we post and we believe this is interaction now with another live human being.  We are putting our faith in a technology that doesn't care about us and doesn't want us to live in the present. Any post sent out to the vast universe of frozen eyes perpetually looking at a screen is a past moment.  It was repeated and repeated as if this past moment uploaded onto social media networks of vendor is a rapture of live moments.  By doing this we are constantly being reminded of the growing canyon between a connected life and a disconnected one. Our past becoming our present and our future undermined by an insistent call to consume.

Being willfully present means you are connecting with your surroundings and are reaching out to subjects that appear in your visual language.  The bigger your vocabulary the bigger your resources for making great imagery.

When conversations begin now it is not verbal but electronic, a silence dimmed to understand the visual as an all encompassing fact or truth. This screen we are mesmerized with reduces our ability to verbalize and communicate our own views on subjects that need to be scrutinized.

How can we speak openly with our close friends if we continue to view media as our friends and not our beginning decline in human interaction.

How do we speak openly with each other if in the back of our minds is the very real possibility that someone will post our thoughts online, ready or not.

Our vocabulary is being shortened to pics and symbols that mean what we want to say.  These symbols and pics diminish who we are and our place in the network of life. We are being abandoned for a higher cleaner intelligence that will mold us all into a herd conformity of homogenized look alikes. These artificial intelligences need us corralled for ease of communication and the messy by products of individuality.

The computer mind will only deal with the present and the future.  The past is not nostalgic but imperfect.  Thus it will want to have us all live, a look alike life, of 1's and 0's.  The past will be a creation of the present turned to promote the new future of working gnats.

Relying more and more on an outside collective mind for answers and opinions we run the real possibility that we will not only lose our individuality but also our future happiness.

When you look up something now is it a partial truth bent to an advertising purpose to keep us complacent in questioning our growing fascist existence.

Our conscious mind and our unconscious mind is being moved away from intimacy to entertainment.
To a buying mentality to keep pace with the shortened lives of purpose and closeness with our family and friends.

Herded by the need to be seen in this Hollywood production of life this bombardment of superficial details erode our ability to step back and redeem our lives through hard work and self control.

The herded pen tightly squeezed into stereotypes and then acknowledged not by your unique perspective but by your likes and dislikes on a corporate media site. Then sold consumer products that don't solve any of the growing deeper problems that are festering on a wishful doomsday Dr Strange Love movie set.  We are prodded and stimulated relentlessly to buy at any cost products that will not help our ability to survive but destroy it.

October 16, 2016

Marc Riboud, "Taking pictures is savoring life intensely, ever hundredth of a second."

This haze of doubt and anxiety interferes with you living in your present moments.

Perceptual conformity through learned approaches to organize our external reality.  Your brain molded in a standard of a collective control.  When we react to external stimulus our brains search for a clear path of understanding to project on the external subject.  We interpret our world as either safe or dangerous.  Control over nature is only a control over fear.  And by relying on ingrained structures of seeing an external subject we limit ourselves to a dutiful life of stereotyping new and life enhancing experiences.

If you can break through this window with its blinds narrow slits of an approved way of seeing life then you will open up your view point and create a new visual horizon of visual content and new ways to make images of them and words to describe your new intuitive visual designs.

There is so much bombardment of information delivered to us in overwhelming amounts it creates a filtering system in our consciousness to judge quickly to ignore and then retreat to what we deem safe and secure in our singular perspective.  We like the warm calmness of judgments so we don't have to think outside our structured existence.

Thoughts are formally placed strategically for all to use and abuse.  No one can own a thought until that thought enters society as your own unique vision.  Whether it is words, images, paintings, sculptures etc... Once your thoughts are manifested then there is a little thing called copyright.

But until then if a thought feels right and it fits your daily needs make it yours.  Try on other thoughts always loosening your grip on a narrow perspective.  There are bright colored thoughts tailored for fun.

Racks and racks of thoughts to put on.  Dark, moody thoughts that can deter you from experiencing a connection with a new subject. Your perspective needs to be in tune to infinite choice.  Don't get uptight with over thinking everything. Relax, prepare and let go!

Do internal thoughts create feelings or do feelings create thoughts?  Do we get thoughts as reaction to external stimulus? Could it be simultaneous?  If you see something that doesn't fit your structured sight filters then do you automatically say no and then a feeling of calmness appears? Because you have denied access to a new thought or feeling that might create anxiety and worry of what to do now.  This feeling only lasts as long as you try and hold on to your past decisions but once you change your minds outlook the fears will dissolve.

We live in cubicles not of our own making.  We examine life through a media lens that gives us what we think we want to hear.

We are tame beasts of burden.  Our species is falling into a spiral of selfish persona's.  We are not together when we have social media separating us from our neighbors.  Yes, we are individuals but we are linked with everyone, it is called the human race.  Don't let a selfish ego determine your fate.  Open up to the universal.

Don't let media dull your senses.  Stop waiting to be told what to think and view.  It seems now all we do is receive select information from corporate media and we assume that that is the truth.  Seek your own truth.  Don't let corporate media tell you what to think.

Your mind thrives on balance both visually and emotionally.  If there is a disruption in the force of balance then anxiety and fear emerge.  And it is a question of flight or fight.  In today's culture of hand held devices complacency is becoming the new internal instinct.

We seem to relish in the past moments to justify our inability to move ahead.  We have to begin creating imagery from our own personal history.  Not a history given to us through generations of unquestioned behavior by the lords of money.

We have an intuitive attraction to the external stimulus in our earlier lives.  As we mature we lose our connection to the outer world and life takes us on it's own ride not our intended journey.

We begin to retreat away from the chaos of infinite space and time and close down our hearts for a safe structure of money and religion. As we build onto these limiting structures of illusions we create a canyon between our inner purpose and the outer flow of nature.  We lose fluidity of thought and action and our individual power is diminished for a TV dinner life of prepared responses to our changing world.

We have now memorized the names of things even though our lives are not as we were and neither are the objects you once defined.  You have cemented your eyes to one perspective which never allows you to feel your inner desires to make changes and attract your true self to become visible under your skin.  You have followed the standard walk of a constrained life and reduced your senses to the conformity of other visions of what life is with more power to control you and your fearful stasis.

We need to regain our own vision of awareness that doesn't allow fruitless acceptance of stereotypes.

We have internalized the structure of other's forms of behavior and sight and accepted the life as a casual historical story easily changed to fit the suffocating adherence to someone else's demands and through their narrow perceptions we destroy the very paradise that surrounds us. If we could only open our eyes and truly see beyond our filtered perceptions.

Your true calling is like a train speeding by on a track and we are expected to jump on and ride it to our true destination.  The problem is that we don't recognize the train as our true calling and we are afraid to jump and now we sit at the station waiting our whole lives to catch that train again. If you call for that train it will return again and again.

Photography can release your inner vision and take you to places you can only dream of.  Don't dream your future, make your future.  Flow in time and in your special space and accept your choices as necessary to get you further to the open arms of life and image creation.

October 2, 2016

Susan Sontag, "but essentially the camera makes everyone a tourist in other people's reality, and eventually one's own. When we are afraid we shoot but when we are nostalgic we take pictures."

A loss of wonder, old eyes closed, can't take in the whole scene only a narrow perspective.

Approaching a subject through mental selective focus before you even sense the scene destroys connectivity and lessens the chance for a meaningful image.

Photography can become similar to a writer who doesn’t live his life but settles for words detailing his experiences and forgets that these details taken individually are moments of his life and what he has done and not done. 

These snap shots are only fragments of a life, parceled out in an objective voice and destroys the cohesive wholeness of the life your are living.

Living these details is less important than writing them down for others.  The people reading these words reap benefit from your objective self that can inspire them to listen to their own inner voice and express their unique vision.  

While you the originator, of their momentum, observe yourself every second of the day, ready to post anything and everything to the social media sites and add to the banal overflow of unnecessary trivia that now has replaced conversation about who we are and who we want to become.  

Photography today is embarrassing and vulgar.  Why do we accept the human predicament as a photo op?  Instead of a meaning revelation of the the destructive nature of media intent, to keep us off balance, afraid and living in anxiety. 

Desirability is enhanced by distance.  A natural flow of a growing relationship with your subject. Not an overpowering presence that overpowers any connection to your visual idea that has been brewing in your internal consciousness. 

The idea in photography is to connect the dots between you and your subject.  Not alienate your subject by your demanding presence. You need to step back and let the scene evolve and become an interaction between you and the scene and with growing intimacy you bring forth the fruits of your patience.  

Most photographers, and I am guilty of this myself sometimes, is to hide behind a lens as a license to barge into a scene and snap away and then leave without ever really seeing what was going on and missing the true moment with your back turned, moving onto the next exploitation of your next experience.

A photographer that has purpose will make images of himself objectified in the landscape he has been intuitively drawn to. With purpose you expose yourself through the details that combine to create the final image of the scene.

Your created image is a document of the power of being present, interacting with the scene on a personal level and as a human being, attentive to the smallest details that made you stop and look in the first place.

Are your barriers to seeing and living an open life a simple attachment of fear to an action?

Action contains in it a responsibility and new actions contain a sense of bewilderment, a sense you are moving out of your past shell and into a bigger world of oppressive information that you will have to sort through in order to focus your attention on your relationship with nature that is growing. And this focus is a self realization that can be scary at first.

Anxiety is habit, a continuation of your childhood defeats. This feeling of anxiety limits your ability to communicate with the scene. You must focus on the good things that brought you here. If you approach the scene in fear, your ability to express the growing connection you are having with the subject can be broken.

Honestly, we all live in constant anxiety but you have to will yourself, through the gift of photography, to allow yourself a safe place to explore your inner workings that are connecting you to a scene that has your attention. 

The ability to explore a scene even in trepidation shows your inner strength and each new scene will get easier to relate to as you control and ignore your anxiety on your way to bridging inner and outer realities.

Fearing life and not embarking on it. 

Go out and just look at the beauty that exists in every footstep you take.  Act responsibly but do not get overwhelmed by the negative energy that continuously surface through your past memories and present fears.  You must act with openness and purpose as you begin to find new paths that will move you to subjects that once seemed nonexistent but now communicate to your very soul.

September 3, 2016

George Tice, "As I progressed further with my project, it became obvious that it was really unimportant where I chose to photograph."

This need to fill our lives with anything other than ourselves is the ultimate existential experience.  Many have no understanding of why they feel this overwhelming anxiety and fear. Being alone in the universe with your actions dictating your life's progress is a great responsibility. We all look for distractions, the very reason we are not whole in our individuality.  Instead we are fragmented into many pieces and many visions of our living without responsibility.  We ignore the facts of this reality.  It is in constant flux and you cannot control your environment but you can move with it and glimpse into the dark manipulations we are being constantly bombarded with.

When making photos I lose my sense of time and I focus on my relationship with my subject and in these gifts of connection I do sometimes come away feeling whole and at peace.

When you reach the outskirts of the human potential then you must come back to your own individuality.  This none stop promotion of gadgets and games that can distract us from the real issues facing our lives and our planet is the work of con-men.

You must face yourself in the barren wasteland of the lies that are spreading over us and becoming barriers, structures of someone else's demands on our very existence.

Are you moving forward from a position of strength that will add to this world some goodness and tip the scale to honesty with purpose.

We can't sit still and just be. We must let go of the constant judging and feelings of helplessness. And through that letting go we begin to flow with nature not as separate but as one.  And in that realization one can find image creation a way into yourself and into nature, to begin to find your momentum to create images with purpose and meaning for your growing freedom from the construct of conditioning in a world of materialistic greed and the abandonment of human values.

Knowing yourself and your place (timeline) in the constant pushing and shoving of our external existence helps you overcome the natural tendency in humans to simplify your reaction to stimulus from outside forces. We want to eliminate the stress of reflection and pursuit of truth.  These are hard fought battles between the pursuit of your reality and the conditioning from the collective media mind.

We are becoming vagabonds in our own life.  Watching objectively a life that is not ours anymore.  But now only a reflection on a hand held device.

Self is now a product, posed for the camera to perfect your image and status.  The more tweets you get on any given day is your belief in your actions.

Nature, the external world is a natural force that acts in its own ways without or with you.  It just is.

As we watch our lives move behind us, getting further and further away from our original direction we are being put on a path dictated to us and not for our own fulfillment but the feeding of illusionary wealth as the planet dies. This lessens our will to pursue our individual expressions of our internal wealth of ideas and connections with others.

To explore nature unhindered without the structural conformity that is necessary to keep the populace in check is scary.  So many choices waiting for you, so many paths beckoning you toward them.  It can be overwhelming.

The way forward is not by ego but empathy and purpose through image creation.

Not settling for a quick snap shot.  This obsession with movement, of continually putting pressure on yourself to be all and see all is a wicked fear of facing yourself.  It is a timeline of death expectations and in this fear you settle for a fast paced snap shot, shooting away your life, as if by taking that quick glance at the world we have somehow captured it and now have corralled the external into a tidy photograph that now can be controlled.

Listen to your inner voice.  Recognize your need to dig deeper into your motives of escaping the battle between you and the man made outer chaos. Break through these constrictions that disconnect you from the world.  Begin to see the world you have been missing since early childhood.

How can you make images if all you do all day is constantly change lanes.  Never exploring further than a cursory advance toward change and then right back to your old habits of denial.

Becoming your passion breaks the structural limits placed directly in your path for a purpose.  To keep you guessing, never able to see beyond the gray wall.

August 27, 2016

Aaron Siskind, " We look at the world and see what we have learned to believe is there.  We have been conditioned to expect...but, as photographers, we must learn to relax our beliefs."

Displacement of purpose, the retreat to create a different reality is the purpose of the the new social media propaganda.  The media sites are our new home of expression without real human contact. A distraction from your necessary concerns.

Photographs exploit this need in us to use our imagination to create new selves (other worlds) beyond our short existence.  This wanting to be seen, heard and appreciated is a constant drumbeat of life's illusionary mystery.

Imposing your will on the landscape is a constant battle to control the media of external representation.  This need for humans to take charge over nature is instinctive.

To manifest your deeper purpose we must let go of the trivia of ego.  We must let go the need to project words on the external flux of space and time.  You could spend your whole life trying to rule outcomes of your behavior even thinking that you are in charge of your life and then bang something happens out of the blue and dislodges you from your perfect timing.  You can't limit the transitions with stubborn will but learn to accept your journey as your necessary path taken.

The acceptance is the internal fight to accept your place as an ever changing struggle to become more. No one should acquiesce to the dull throb of endless constraint.

You must have a strong vision to get the image you have seen in your mind but haven't been able to capture it.  This doesn't mean you limit your vision to just one particular object but you open your mind to the multiplicity of manifested subjects calling your name..

It is a battle of wills to push through the trilogy of defeat,  accepting less, taking the easy path, allowing the external world to create defeat even before the attempt to start is made.

Stifling oneself with a cascading rain of endless possibilities will confuse your internal purpose.  Your uniqueness needs to be expressed and you have the details already present that will make a clear vision of your inner landscape. You just have to be present and looking.  Not holding a machine in your hand looking down at it as if this was your life blood to the external world.  It is an illusion. You need to be looking up and outward.

In photography your life goal is not already predestined but continually in flux.  It is not prefabricated  through thoughts but is shaped by you as you mature and deepen your relationships with nature.  As you connect more with shaping the external world into an image with power and openness you will begin to break free from the standard conformity of the herd that structures your life's goals.

It is a battle of wills between your vision and the subject you are interested in.  You fight against the light changing, the subject not fitting into your preconceived script, the slowness of your reaction, the impatience not to wait but move on and then looking back you see the moment of your vision happen but to late for you to experience it as your own.

In those moments of missed opportunities just enjoy the spectacle and remember patience denies times momentum.

But next time pause your life for a few seconds, minutes or hours and let the image present but unseen reveal itself in all its connective force.

Your vision is to connect first with your subject and then with your viewer.  That relationship you have with your subject is the most important in order to allow serendipity to magnify your patience and relationship with the scene.

Bringing forth a new vision a new perspective that others can appreciate and take part in.

As adults we begin to lose our ability to stay the influx of defining words that limit our experience.

It easier just to ignore the undercurrents of a scene and just accept the surface cascade.  If you had to concentrate on  the scene you might have to dig deeper into yourself and to recognize your connection to the scene in front of you and maybe your fear of what it really reveals.

Children recognize an unblemished perception, a quality in the dialogue being presented, an interaction wanted, a feeling of acceptance of and a reaction to, that is natural and purposeful.  Another words a relationship that is real.

July 31, 2016

Keith A. Boas,"Photography is the ideal medium in which to challenge assumptions, because of all art forms, it is one people most expect to represent reality... The creative photographer grapples with these expectations, shaping or altering reality by the way he or she approaches a subject."

Imagery becomes another reality from experience. Like a talisman it is a good luck piece that gives you an illusion of connectivity to the real experience. But in short it is not a representation of that experience it is an antidote to your life's time line. 

It is only a memory in a physical form. A remedy for your willingness to pursue surface experience instead of the emersion in your life experiences. In a fraction of a second your experience was lost, you were separated from your real experience by eye candy as you automatically brought the camera to your eye and pushed the shutter button, but in that split second you lost the physical presence of that moment and how it would have connected you to the next moment (that would have led you to the real moment of exposure, a connection to your subject that was intense and deeply felt).  The true experience wasn't loud or obnoxious, it was just present waiting for you to discover it with intense concentration and an openness to your inner voice. It was calling your name but you limited your reaction by an uncreative snap shot that diminished any hope of you seeing beyond the social media conditioning of greedy eyes for the distractive representation of our human condition.

By not connecting to this moment passing you are now on different footing. A different path begins as you huddle around the camera to see your past moment but miss the explosion of color from a passing car waving goodbye to his love.

Another words you missed the true moment by taking the easy way around your perspective and settled for a quick fix to the continuing moments of distractions interfering with your momentum of creating meaningful images.  More and more experiences do not lead to better image creation. Especially if you are not on your true path.    

Just like a cloned mind one is following the leader down the rabbit hole of objectifying your life through snap shots that delute the possibility of living your own perspective and unique vision.

This conditioning by media to promote the mindless details of our lives and expose them to millions of people diminish the human spirit and destroy openness and acceptance.  It allows ourselves to huddle with like minded, anonymous people and laugh at others as if they were not laughing at you.  

Good photography brings people together and unites us, it does not separate us from our common spirit.

Just as we accumulate things in this buy and posses climate of material greed on steroids we are also losing our ability to recognize a phony life.  A facade put on to stimulate our shallow perceptions. A trickster waiting to take advantage of our hopes and dreams.  

We are losing our humanity.  A human species that doesn't look at the whole scene but settles for the easy slice of the pie as a doubt creeps in, that annoying feeling that just maybe there is something more present worth searching for than the bland homogenized copycat snap shots of an expensive meal on white linen. 

Opening your eyes to the world can feel like an overwhelming explosion of details rushing in on your senses. This creates a need for a filter.  A filter that can eliminate all the chatter and allow us to make quick decisions and judgments so our lives are normalized and conditioned toward safety and less thinking.

I am old enough to remember childhood, looking out at the world with fresh clean eyes of newness of the experiences you were having. We wanted to be in nature and explore and see new things not in a big sense of knowing but experiencing the present moments through the eyes of innocence.

Now it seems youth wants to live like their parents through a mechanical device and ignore the external world and only listen to the echo of words they know to describe the moments that are only there for the next snap shot or text.

These kids become adults and as adults they have learned to define their lives through words that label and diminish their experience not words that open up the experience to enhance their living experience. Adults look first through a reflection before they take action.

This pause is represented by the camera click the shutter release as you lose the intense moment of life for a snap shot of its memory and not the experience itself.

Adults project their inner fears onto nature, this allows the separation of thoughts of deep needs to a  physical reality we think we can control. 

Words establish ones place in the surrounding environment.  We define our world through words.  But words can never undo the fact that we are surrounded by nature.  A nature that doesn't know words meanings and doesn't care.

As adults we lose our ability to stay the influx of defining words of our experiences.  We don't just live the experience we must tweet it, face book it, look at me social media I am living the dream. 

It would be easier just to experience your life first hand and not distract yourself with a device that blocks your ability to become present in your moments.

But from childhood we have been taught to separate ourselves from the world.  Exploit it for it's rich information and then destroy it as an impediment to man living in cyber space.

We are now writing with light the details of a life like a writer who doesn't live his own life but settles for words detailing his experiences and forgets that these details taken individually are parts of his life.  What he has done is parceled out his life in fragments and not lived them as a cohesive whole for himself. 

You will not get your perspective beyond your unique visual presence. Photographs exploit this need in us to use our imagination to create other worlds beyond our short existence.  Your gift at birth is a space to be in and a timeline to live in.  This gives you an opportunity to create an image worth discovering.  Not out of fear or hidden motifs but through genuine feelings toward your subject and others.

July 2, 2016

Forgetting to live your personal life.  Always on display.  Never a moment to become yourself. Away from the social morass of muddy information, meaningless to your real goal of self awareness and the creation of willful imagery.

Fearing life and not embarking on it. A lessening of your ability to act as an individual. Our evolutionary tendencies to follow not lead.

Think of your social media site and the overwhelming amount of information and minutiae of details you can find that really have no purpose for you or how you want to live your life.

Social media can paralyze you into non-action. Controlling how you perceive the world and how you interact with it on a shallow surface labeling.

To experience the world on a deeper level we must throw out these stifling stereotypes and open up our minds to seeing the world differently, with new eyes.  Wide open eyes willing to take a new step toward their interests and find new ways to express old ideas. 

Peter Galassi, "Alone, the Surrealist wanders the streets without destination but with a premeditated alertness for the unexpected detail that will release a marvelous and compelling reality just beneath the banal surface of ordinary experience."

We live under extreme pressure to conform to the status quo.  This wanting to be part of something is used against us and constrains our artistic awareness.

Just let go and move beyond your first inclination to take a snap shot.  Stay still and just look, let your mind meander through the scene looking for a movement of awareness, a feeling that something is present that needs to be explored not exploited.

Let all your senses reach out to find that stillness of sight,  that can create an image reflected from your inner core. An image that communicates to you that what you have found is unique only to you and your conscious choices you made connecting with your subject.

June 12, 2016

Words are daily manipulated to change the meaning of photographs.  To instill confusion of what you see and by doing this making it easier to use propaganda to convince someone something is happening in real life instead of a created existence in cyber space.  We are becoming a video game society easily tempted with bells and whistles to entertain us but not educate us on the true nature of social media's ever expanding role and control in our lives.

Joel Meyerowitz from an introduction to Cape Light, " All I'm trying to do is pass experience.  I see things-this is my life- I look: I make visual images.  It's the best in me- the only thing I can do.  It's what I've done since I was a kid, I feel things. We are emission centers.  We receive sensations and we put them out.  That's what artists do.  I can receive on any given day, more or less clearly, depending upon how in touch with the signals I am. If I'm in a good place, where there's a lot of visual activity, I become super sensitive.  I receive many signals, and I pick and choose among them.  As they get deeper into my center, to the core of this receiver, I feel more strongly about them, and I say this is the one that I am moved by. "

As a photographer are you receptive to the inner/outer relationship of creating good images by immersing yourself into your intuitive receptors.

Inanity, a lack of sense or ideas.  A stillness, a gap between you and the the world.  Humans are becoming inanimate objects.  Lifeless beings more concerned with their mechanical devices than living their lives present in each sacred moment.

There is a hallow feeling now spreading across the worried faces of people, as if they are aware of their lives changing but don't know into what.  This creates anxiety and a need to be seen and heard,  Look at me please, I exist!!

To take time to feel and truly see something external to their needy ego's demands to be seen is almost impossible when they succumb to the social medias betrayal of individuality.

This inner vacuum extends into their lives they are trying to comprehend.  Social media is becoming the new collective consciousness of the masses.  A chance to be seen and heard and appreciated for your efforts.  Except social media is a distraction from living not a way of living.  It is hollow and a cheap way to expose yourself as it sucks up your time, placates your inner worries with brief moments of likes and dislikes.

Where is your common sense and your purpose in life?  It certainly can't be re-blogging simplistic answers to universal and complex questions of our existence.  If it were that easy then we wouldn't need social media.  But if social media confuses you and separates you from living your life then you have fallen into the scam of powerful interests.  You are being exposed to fruitless hours of addiction to a screen that only limits your ability to live not enhance it.

We have finally been assimilated into the economy of the money transaction.  In the past we were outsiders in the deal making.  We had the ability to be objective and through this objectivity we had some power over the advertising agencies and their relentless aggression to make us buy stuff.

Now, with corporate social media, we allow them to collect personal information from us for free.  This information categorizes us into a caste system of potential product sales through targeted ads.

In the social media world the collective spurts out what is right and what is wrong instantaneously.  If it happens to sit well with you in these seconds of comprehension then you can like it and then forget about it and move on to judge something else in the collective spirit of cyberspace an external wizardly of smoke and mirrors.

In reality however nothing has changed nothing is accomplished.  It is a side show to get you involved in the trivial, mindless explosion of controlled entertainment, while the real movers and shakers use their slight of hand to take more from the suckers herded onto devices that are only used for confusing the truth.

A new religion is born.

Our lives are speeding up as we accumulate more and more frivolous snap shots and banal information to sedate us, as our society sinks deeper and deeper into a collective zombie mind without the ability to recognize the manipulation of our animal instincts to herd together for support.

And because of these animal instincts we are herded in to corrals of social hierarchy and ads are sent to you given your station in life.

Still images have a separate authority, a new narrative that living in the moment does not have.  That is the addiction to self awareness.  By constantly taking pictures of your life, you change the narrative of your moment and are actually imitating a screen play, a movie of someone, a character in your own narrow reality. By stopping time, it might appear that you have empowered yourself and your future narrative by projecting through social media and to the world your cubicle of time/space.  And by doing this one is being mislead.

You are actually creating a likeness of yourself and this objective life you are leading becomes a new likeness to what the collective dictates as acceptable behavior and you are literally immersed in a fake life that has no ultimate significance, while the real world politics is being centered under a different reality of collective minds manipulating the masses.  We now listen for shallow words, one word summaries of our lives, maybe a half sentence to describe who we are.

May 28, 2016

At one time photography held a higher ideal of life's values.  Images were seen representing a real scene perceived through the eyes of a talented image creator.

Now photography is a disappointment, a homogeneous replica of a fragmented society with nothing better to do than live our lives in snap shots and sound bites without depth of thought, feeling and insight. What we take pictures of now are banal expressions of an objectifying existence.  An all seeing inner eye watching us from the outside.  This outer eye reveals the shallow objects of peoples lives and the longing for immersion in their truth but they can't seem to break free from the monolith structure of materialism and greed.

We have been turned into copies of each other, trained to look outside ourselves for answers.  The answers exist but only in our capability to recognize our truth in ourselves away from the mass incarceration of our minds by frivolous needs. 

Snap shots have replaced the immersion of yourself in your life and in nature.  When we see anything now we tend to bring up the barrier between the subject and your vision, the camera phone.

This is a safety blanket that is used for distraction and conquering the scene before you by placing it in a frame and once captured and published on social media, the potential that was present was never realized because of this urge to move past not with your time. Images have become a skin deep means for you to ignore the scene present in your inner landscape.  Just conquer the external world with a click and your illusion of unessential reality is preserved.

We are becoming passive sponges of infinite details and pictures that mean nothing.  What is real and what is make believe are now interchangeable.

These devices we hold in our hands are overpowering our need for intimacy and privacy.

We look at the screen and the eye candy window opens up and it is powerful and stimulating and new, with excitement more real than breathing and being present in your life.  We are swept up in a fantasy world of stunted words and triviality and it seems we have found a home in the collective hoarders home.  As more and more windows open we fall into the rabbit hole and land in a world of distortions and distractions.  

We are exposed to an overpowering mass propaganda machine on steroids, 24/7 a continuous bombardment of foolish and useless information. The illusion is strong and we seem to think we are connecting with someone beyond us but really we are connecting with ourselves innocently exposed to the world.

Picture taking, takes the present from your view and keeps you in memory mode.  By taking pictures instead of experiencing a moment you are blindly removing yourself from the experience and later reminding yourself of what happened by looking at a snapshot of that experience.

It is a struggle to live in the now and not be pulled back into the past by an overstimulated need to take pictures of, instead of enjoying the moments unfolding.  You need a willful purpose to become yourself in the present deterioration of our human thought communities.

When you make photographs you are in the present focusing your mind's vision on your potential subject.  You are aware and excited as you structure your design of the scene in unity with your internal sight and the intensity of connecting with your subject.  

When we go places to experience first hand the wonders of this world we feel jaded because the actual real subject doesn't look as good as the travel ads you saw. The good thing is you acted and listened to your inner calling and made an effort to travel.  The bad thing is your expectations were already firmly seeded in your mind of what you wanted to see by an external presence, someone else's view of your travel destination.  Instead of traveling to this place with an open mind and to discover for yourself your own internal, image visions. 

The photograph takes from us our feeling of being present, the first hand experience.  It seems to take away the anticipation of a scene especially if we have seen our subject through countless images manipulated in photoshop to enhance the second hand viewing experience. We seem to like the second hand experience more than the real deal.

Why can't we sit still in our lives just be and soak up the moments presented to us.  Not with fear and anxiety but with a truthful respect and a deep connection to our special place and time in this world. We seem to always push ourselves beyond the present moment. As if there is something more important just coming down the road.  Just one more curve, around the bend and all will be OK.  The problem is we take ourselves to this new place without changing our inner baggage and expectations.

We have replaced our quality time (our true moments of discovery) with what we do to survive.  This makes it harder once you get off work to focus on your true calling. What happened to your dreams?

And as your true path of discover begins to fade from view and you see those dreams you had dissolve into what ifs, you begin to look for distractions, a compensation for that loss of purpose so you put blinders on by turning from meaningful experiences to limited perceptions of fantasy and amusements.  These  remove us from our hectic pace of life's ever changing power to divert us from our real nature. Corporate media exploits the herd instinct of cautious behavior.  Fight or Fight.

By continually making life look violent and the continuous sounds of more wars, the propaganda machine wants to scare us into complacency and quiet desperation.  And this scheme they have used through out our history is a big money making scam. They can easily sell things to the cattle if they are pinned in with others of like minded fears, imposed on them by corporate ad men selling protection and pleasure.

We have a growing impersonal technological automated system of feeding the populace new commodities of cheap, over saturated accessible products.  We are no longer producing anything of substance that really matters to our whole being.  We take and take hoping for those little moments of self awareness that at least for a few seconds make us feel alive and in tune with ourselves.

Here in social media land you don't have to think or be responsible.  All you need to do is click your mouse and away you go down the distorted hole of unreality and lost purpose.  Keep moving forward through fenced corrals toward a better future that never materializes.  Don't stop now the media exclaims! The game is yours if you can take it from our iron fists.  These are the carrots put in front of your greedy eyes.  What you clamor for is their illusion of success.  Real success is creating your will to explore your inner world reflected in nature.  If you don't live your moments then you are being duped to live someone elses.

Think how easy it is for corporate media to isolate you from the things you want to do.  You must be strong and active in understanding that you control media, you can easily influence what information is presented to you through your media device.  To allow the media to choose the information you receive is like preferring static to music. 

                              

May 15, 2016

Photographs are a memory enhancer.  They remind us of our past, our family, friends, events and the things we shared when we were together.  These were personal relics of our past and they had meaning and purpose when we took them.

We take pictures to remember our lives.  Images give us a sense of power.  An immediate reflection of an event no matter how banal and this inspires us because we have taken from our perspective a moment and now have that moment forever.  Pictures are an objective means of analysis.  They are themselves really stepping stones through the space and time we travel in.  Image authenticity depends upon the closeness you are to your subject.  If it is a family member then in all probability you will assume the snap shot represents a true moment captured of your relative.  It will be put in a scrap book and forever more you will remember that moment through the image you are viewing.

Pictures do not stop time.  It is a copy of a moment in time, the expression captured was just a quick facade for the camera. Images are just surface reflections of our internal wants.

What distinguishes us from the herd is our individuality.  And what we photograph, to have meaning for us and for us to share a part of ourselves through our images, is purpose and connection with external subjects.  By having a need to take pictures of something without empathy or interest for the subject means you are just snapping pics of things.  These things have no ultimate meaning or purpose but imitation.

Our family memories, our friends memories, our personal memories are not our own anymore.  There is break away from private moments and public moments.  We have now moved over the line of intimacy with our close friends and family to an all out deterioration of the family unit and our private moments of living who we are.  We are now spectacles to be posted and ridiculed on corporate media sites.  We are reduced to posting our lives in seconds instead of cautious reflection on what we want to present and say.  Everything is speeding up beyond our control and as we get caught up in the tidal currents of celebrity and needy likes, we lose the footing of willful purpose and creating images and words that have special meaning to us and hopefully to others.

The way around this merry-go round of manipulation and surveillance of our lives is to stop and think what am I really doing to our community of people that I share my time with.  Am I going to post something of values or am I going to give into the herd instincts and follow them down a path of exploitation and alienation through focusing my life through a small screen with no connection to who I am and no caring about what I want to express that really matters to me.

Being heard by others is necessary for our ability to feel needed. But we are not heard or listened to
in the important sense of friendship and family but now as strangers posting on other sites with limited words. Social media is an addictive force in our lives.  To be seen, to be seen and heard, to be seen and heard and liked that becomes your center of the universe.

To be part of this abstract technology that allows corporate media to gather info on its willing participants is unnerving.

Social media is self gratifying.  It reduces your world to a screen and that becomes your relationship with the external world.  It is your best friend, all your information is inside this small device. We are being absorbed in this social media collective as if this is living a real life.

Once corporate media gets a whiff of a trend which is so much easier nowadays, because of the amount of free information we give them about ourselves, they can easily make these trends into a selling and buying opportunity.  The great American exploitation of our exposed wants to buy products with hollow meaning. They know our income levels, they know our mental states, our emotions and these are easily manipulated into material needs of safety.

Do we even have a cultural memory now?  When we forget something we just ask our device and this becomes our new memory separate from our own consciousness and others.  Our memories are now being deposited on these devices so we don't have too use our own brains to remember.  That would be to much work, lets just ask social media for all our answers and we happily accept a summary of events instead of remembering our own moments we have lived through.

We don't use sentences to express our feelings, we use short symbols that speed up our thinking process which in turn reduces our ability to use whole sentences with thoughtful responses. Instead we use cliche's and symbols that have taken over our need to compose our own individual words and respond in a reasoned way.

The screen opens, eye candy for the senses. We now can hear, see, and react spontaneously to an outside web of mass propaganda.  The window lights up in your palm, music plays and like Pavlov's dog you react immediately to the hand held device as if it is your creator.

An alternate world draws you in from the outside, the cold world you have been struggling in. It appears benign and you get some likes and start to feel better about yourself and the collective mind begins to dominate your life, hindering understanding with propaganda of wealth, fame and exploitation.  Social media keeps the masses placated through vicarious moments of others continually separating you from your real life experience.

May 8, 2016



A good image doesn't always happen right away.  You have to work at truly seeing your chosen subject in different lights, perspectives, compositions and more.

We look for instant gratification. We don't want to work at anything over a longer period of time.  Just look, snap a pic and your gone.

Interesting people pass us by on a daily basis and we don't acknowledge them at all, we just keep our eyes glued to a small screen.

Our photography is getting cheapened by the need for speed and exploitation to post at once.  This leads to a break down of our communities as a connected group of individual people.  We are poised now to just skip over surfaces without looking underneath the subject or scene.  Surface details it seems now represent the truth of a chosen subject.

We are being trained as cattle not to dig deeper into the subject of your image creation.  Don't get to close to a new understanding of your inner landscape but just hurry by your life, pass it by, by not listening to your inner desires for more than just a cliche ad for jeans.

How many times have you gone back to the same place over and over again to get an image that really gives your viewer a sense of the place you know and are intimate with.  This shows your focus and willingness to make time to express an important internal purpose about the subject you have chosen.  Recurring attempts to make images with meaning gives you a feeling of empowerment, a willingness to slow down and take your time by making time to slide out of your fast paced time line and enter a slower more aware sense of seeing this world.

As social media dominates our lives more and more we lose sight of the world in the present tense.
We need to reclaim our lives.  Our lifetime is blossoming before us and yet we treat it as an artifact of the past.

Life is happening in your presence and your willingness to stand still and see through your own eyes and not through a mechanical device to exploit the scene for social likes is the redeeming of you life.

Giving your life more value than a twisted snap shot that can and does sum up your days in needy praise.

When did we lose sight of our internal strength to see beyond the frivolous and dig deeper into the world we are creating and not the world that is being created by media to entertain you and distract you from truths being hidden under the guise of communication?

 A slight of hand to keep you distracted as your lives are displayed as ads for the next big trend.

The only trend you should be following is the one that makes your life meaningful not by the money transaction but by a personal real world involvement with your subject and an empathy to create an image that will satisfy your hunger for originality.

April 10, 2016


The beginning of anything worthwhile is never to settle for a lazy conceptual eye.  I am guilty of taking images and not looking more intensely at the subject I chose and creating an image.

When you get caught up in the more equipment mode of shooting, you are on the endless treadmill  of relentlessly putting off your recognition of subjects that attract you.  The equipment is not creating imagery you are.

If all you needed was a good camera and all your images were masterpieces, then what are you there for behind the camera's view finder.

You create images not the machine.  You work alone to create your visual world, your own personal vision not by thinking in terms of camera speak with f/stops, iso, and shutter speeds. Some of my best images have been created by being in the moment and reacting quickly to a scene developing and just going with the flow and taking the shot. If what you point your camera at has a purpose, then you are on your way to making better images.

This frivolous means to an end, where the image creators think only in the past, creating billions of images that have the same mundane look to them.  It gets very hard to distinguish personal lives from all the other redundant snap shots that are posted continuously on social media.

Life now is a continuous distraction.  We don't react to an action taken in a particular moment, time or specific place,  whereby you are conscious of your motifs without reservations or reflections.

What we see and feel now is a displacement from our reality, a barrier now is growing and making it harder for us just to live in our own moments.  We are continually bombarded with corporate medias deliberate purpose of creating fear in our lives, that we are missing the overall moments that are being taken from us.  The ring in our nose is dragging us toward a social dulling that is becoming an entity outside ourselves that we habitually look too for comfort or information to validate, to acknowledge, we are here, look at me please.  Instead of self reliance and living our lives free from social medias tentacles of self absorption.

We are bombarded every second with worthless information, little gnats buzzing around our ears. Our wills are being tempted and then controlled by technology to move off your connective path, your new mantra becoming I must document me in the scene which will make the picture seem more real.

Your goal now is not to experience your time and space in the moment but to seek the easy passing of your life, nibbling on the edges of immersion with your moving fleeting time.

Taking pictures now is a betrayal of your conscious will to create images of meaning and purpose.  We are getting more fragmented in our subjective and objective lives.  The cohesive nature of our being present in our witness to our moments, is being eroded by this obsession to think of ourselves as an object in our own reality.  This is what Camus and Sartre expressed as the great malaise of the existential experience in modern times.

Social media uses this growing obsession to be seen through posts as a way to gather information from us and then to sell back to us the very materialistic world we want to escape from.  Products don't create feelings of empathy toward the outside world but the opposite, greed.

When making images, time seems to disappear as we connect with our subject.  As we concentrate more and begin to find deeper meanings in the subject we finally begin to shed this social craze of wanting to be seen and to allow the subject to become the objective means to our internal vision.

How do you find your passion when your time is eaten up by corporate media. You can't, period.  It seems that you are connecting to the masses of like minded people sharing your inner world.  Corporate media is there to dominate your lives, herd you into a corral of image taking, of info sharing that exploits your personal lives for profit.

Instead of living a full connected life to your surroundings you begin to live a visual addiction to someone else's consumerism.  Dreams vanish as you become obsessed with communicating with others anonymously over a screen in passing seconds.

Human beings are very inquisitive.  When we don't understand something, we become determined to find out why this is the way it is and not some other way.  Social media is like this.  It is a new discovery.  It sounds and looks good on the surface and it does work for certain limited things.

But we are slowly getting to a point where we are seeing what it truly is, an ad for consumerism.  Just like we discovered cells, the law of gravity, dark matter in space etc.. we are now becoming aware of social media stealing our time and our lives from us.

In photography when we don't notice our surroundings, when our perceptions are limited by our daily routines for survival, we try and mask our frustrations with distractions like hand held devices.  It is time to step back and refocus your inner strength and begin again to focus on subjects that have meaning for you.  Concentrate on staying power.  The power to let go of this hectic pace set in place by busy corporate bees and force yourself to relax and truly see your subjects with fresh eyes and purpose.