December 8, 2021
Photo Blog
We are coming apart without an honest vision of hope, separated from our unique inner life through manipulation, our addiction to material gain.
This is our new ritual of living a life under the thumb of mega photo agencies that don’t care about higher prices but rely on bulk sales, for volume is their key to success and our demise as photographers able to earn a decent living.
When you look at the mega agencies and there dominance in the stock image business you begin to get nervous at your inability, your silence to demand higher prices for your hard earned travels, making great images now are basically worthless, money for-profit only photo agencies that take the money from the photographers that submit their images that sell on these mega-agencies websites by using RF images as their con-game, their bait and switch, as if RF is superior to Right Managed for the photographers income, it isn’t even close!
The new photographers are just trying to get on board with any photo-agencies not realizing the scam is already in place, for your images will sell for pennies on the dollar, think about that, your image prices are meager and are sold in bulk, which means you and other photographers are being scammed, for you receive individually small token payments of your image you worked on for hours while the agencies make millions off their bargain basement volume sales, leaving the image creator broke without a chance of making a living off his efforts, for the photographers are just pawns in a chess game easily taken and abandoned for the investors and the corporations that use stock images feel that photography is no longer respected as an art but now looked upon as a product, a commodity to be sold in quantity and of course your paychecks reflect the disintegration of a once inspiring way to get your images on the cover of magazines, ads, newspapers etc….and make a decent living off your original photographic creations.
We all seek these precious moments that enhance our ability to see a potential images and to be attracted to the overall scene with purpose as we transition from novice to a professional.
The close relationships between experienced photographers and those just starting out is such a positive influence on your ability to make images more powerful and unique.
But ultimately all photographers need to be independent, seeking their own unique sense of style and visual purpose.
What our inner eye is demanding is for us to wake-up and investigate subjects with curiosity,and experiment with what could eventually be your unique style.
Not all image creation is based through your inner perspective, sometimes a subject just appears as a blessing from nature and your instinct takes over to capture the scene in front of you.
As an intuitive photographer you must be prepared to free yourself from the boundaries set up to exploit your talents by the photo agencies telling you what you should shoot and upload.
You must seek more than just a snap shot of the same old subjects that slowly take away your versatility, your visual awareness of what your senses are telling you is a subject worth exploring.
Free yourself from the barriers that are forming, surrounding you with conventional society that exploits your ability to break free from the copycat club and begin experimenting with different subjects in order for you to find your rhythm, your versatile anticipation, your inner reflections of how a scene looks to you, your vision that sees beyond the cliche and digs deeper into the undercurrents of your unique ideas to be expressed through a photographers strong emotion as he experiments with new subjects of importance.
Yes, we have other duties in family life that will interfere with your need to make imagery as much as one would like to but if you are a father, a mother you must separate yourself from your over active instinct demanding you leave for a month long road trip to Arizona to create images of the beautiful red rock formations in Sedona and just be present when your family really needs your presence the most.
Through practice you will enhance your ability to form a frame that will give the viewer of your photograph a new visual insight of what your true interests are whether they be nature, sports, people, clouds, mountain climbing , etc.,. image creation is what your life is all about.
Human beings want to be accepted by the pack animals hiding from their own unique talent. What we think we want is to be part of something bigger than ourselves but you won’t experience your own style of making great images by following the herd.
What we truly seek is freedom of expression, and we must fight the desire to give in to the ant-hill of working a job that leads you nowhere but moody, angry at why you couldn’t break free from the daily grind of a working stiff and move your life beyond money and in to a realm of life experiences, where you are the creator of your outer world expressed through your unique inner vision.
Photography is not a game but a demanding desire of creation by making something of beauty that others can enjoy.
Break free from the cliche’s of stock images and focus your mind on subjects that appeal to your senses, your uniqueness.
But we still fear the powers that be, that want to exploit us for our hard earned efforts. And we allow ourselves to be manipulated by the photo agencies that keep taking more and more of your hard earned efforts and because of the over abundance of new photographers that don’t think it is important to come together and stand up to these men and women of wealth, for they are barriers to our fulfillment of our youthful dreams to be paid a good living wage for your images appearing in well known magazine, newspaper, billboard, sports, architecture, etc ….
Photographers back in the hay-day of unique image creations, their personal images that expressed their inner vision accepted the agencies 50/50 split when selling your images but that was back when the photo agencies were friends and trusted but now there isn’t any chance of having a photographers union that would protect our image creations with a good price demanded by the photo-agency that is selling our work and not leave us standing their in disgust as our photographs are sold in volume to companies that pay in bulk and have access to your work for peanuts.
Barriers to our purpose, joining sides as if this was anything else but a deceiving shell game, the carrot in front of distracted minds, come join our photo agency and earn a good living, yeah right!
The powers that be move in the shadows making what sounds like a good deal for sending your hard earned imagery to one of these mega agencies, but in reality it is just another scam, a used car salesman promising you good returns on your travels, the wealthy take from the poor and give back to their selfish selves.
And as you are assimilated into a facade of hope you realize your intuitive knowledge of what makes a good photograph is someone else’s intellectual property, always check the fine print. Don’t ever give your images away for free!
But without experience young photographers give their images away because their egos just like seeing their own photography used in an ad! an ad that once was worth thousands of dollars and now goes for a whopping $1.00, wow what a sale!!!
What a good photographer needs is an intuitive perception, an understanding of how this wave of stealing money from new artists is the new norm of multimillionaires paying almost nothing to photographers for their hard earned search for that person, place or thing that made the photographer stop and then immerse themselves into the scene before she found that perfect once in a lifetime composition that satisfied her individuality, her unique perspective and she was certain in her efforts to explore the subject from all sides and choose which angle would make her master-piece.
In today's cell phone camera explosion everyone is a photographer looking for a quick buck and that is what they will get a quick dime for their efforts, these newbies are of course the new wave of talent that thinks these small payments is the way it has always been until they talk with a photographer that have been around the block and lets the new kid on the street know that he and all the other photographers are being taken for a ride where you won’t be able to earn a decent living creating photographs as your main means of income.
But you must keep making images for that is your personal instinct, your well being, which is seeing potential in a scene and then exploring all your possibilities of the subject chosen, for what would a good photographer do if he stopped making great imagery he is proud of, you must always deeply feel your individual hope, slow down, stop and explore a new subject through concentration and vigilance, your never ending desire to keep making photos no matter how bad these agencies steal your hard fought efforts.
Image creation is both visual and personal, it is a means of exploring life first hand, up close and personal, the life you were destined to make.
As our lives move forward and fears grow over the collapse of our entire planet we seek a distraction from our sense of doom but photography is more than just hiding oneself behind a camera, we must also fight the controlling force of a stagnant mind that has lost incentive to dig deeper into mother nature and fight the destructive force of the wealth’s power over us and be willing to fight for your freedom to breath clean air, drink clean water and enjoy nature’s beauty and not her wrath.
