September 5, 2015

Images are created for what purpose, objective truth? I don't think so. Imagery is created to enhance memory of the present moment as it moves always past our greedy grasp.  

Imagery created with the desire to seek the essence of the scene, creates a distinctive photograph that respects the purpose of photography.  Photography used to be about expressing an inner unique voice, to create a scene with meaning that could influence a viewers perception of the world.  

Photography is not truth but a representation of the truth, seen through the eyes of the person holding the camera.  We never break through the barrier between subjective and objective truth.  

Photography is always evolving and changing it's desires. In the past it would be used to document life, then interpret life, then level the idea of beauty in life and now photography is purely imitation.  We now see photographs as the real deal and not moments passing in our lives.  The question is, do we need to live individual lives separate from each other, I would answer yes to this question. Or live our lives with the herd posting pictures to social media sites (common entertainment for the masses) for all society to see, as if these pictures represented our life?  

Images created to be posted on social media have a shallow surface, a gleam of an ego exposing itself.

Imitation is suppose to be flattering but in the case of social media it has become all about the look and feel of being seen.  Your private lives are shown for all to see without a buffer of purpose and a statement of originality.

Not everything is worthy of being posted on social media.  If you can become more selective on your subject matter before posting and have an individual intent and a reason for posting, the current bombardment of banality could be reduced.  What people have misunderstood concerning social media is that it is not a family album to be broadcast to the world.  What social media is is media. Sellers need consumers to keep capitalism growing. Corporation are always looking for personal information to sell products to you through the information you broadcast on their sites.  

By exposing those private moments to anonymous voyeurs you are intentionally creating a separate universe, a collective mind of social media.  You are not living your life for you.  You are not making choices for your own journey through your time line but allowing an entity outside yourself to influence your life and it's demands keep growing for more and more private images and private desires to be posted.  Plain and simple it is an addiction. 

By posting private memories on these sites you are disconnecting yourself from those memories and 

putting them in an arena of commerce.

What better way to have the populace feel like they have a stake in this society than allowing them to believe that what they are doing right now, posting continually to these sites is important.  All social media is is a distraction from living a life through your reaction to external forces.  By personally interacting with nature, not taking pictures of yourself in nature, you are in a direct relationship with the external world.  You can react immediately and enjoy the experience first hand not through a device that puts a barrier between you and the world.   

Good photography is just that, immersing yourself in nature with your subject and not thinking about you as separate from the subject but connected internally and externally, as an inspiration felt and acknowledged through meaningful photographs.

September 5, 2015


I have a favorite place I like to return to each year to make photographs.  The funny thing is that even if I didn't get any images I would still enjoy the wonderful environment that is present.  I think we all have our favorite spots that we go back to on a regular or yearly basis. Creating images is secondary, what is important is to be present in the moment and appreciate the environment that is so powerful and precious.

August 22, 2015

Time is an illusion if we are not aware of its passing.  When you are totally involved in making images with purpose then you have reached a different level of time.  Time seems to stop, as you build your repore with your subject and explore the infinite choices present to create an image with meaning and purpose. The true photographic experience for me is finding a powerful connection with a subject I didn't know very well before I began making images of it.  And then being able to say after the shoot where did the time go!

There has to be a link between you and the environment to create visually exciting images.  Without that link the image becomes a broken down recording of the same old same old.

Susan Sontag, "The photographer was thought to be an acute but non-interfering observer- a scribe, not a poet.  But as people quickly discovered that nobody takes the same picture of the same thing, the supposition that cameras furnish an impersonal, objective images yielded to the fact that photographs are evidence not only of what's there but of what and individual sees, not just a record but an evaluation of the world."

With social media we have the opposite evaluation of image taking.  We have the ignoring of our environment, our surroundings.  Our only goal is to put us in the scene as an impostor to to the visual stimulus that possible attracted us to the scene in the first place. Our being, our human nature revolves around the herd instincts.  Social media loves to corral us into the pen of ego.

In meaningful photography the image creator is looking out from himself toward his subject of interest and not the reverse.  Looking at himself( poser rock) in the environment to be exploited for likes on a media site.

Our moments in time are now realized through snap shot of our lives.  Life now it seems is to close your eyes to first hand experiences.  We live our time through second had jpegs held on a small screen for milliseconds.  We are closing our eyes to living in our world.  We are creating a chimera of our world, a show that supports our growing egos.

We have replaced first hand experience with a buffer between us and the real world.  This buffer (the snap shot selfie) allows us a feeling of control and also gives us something to do when we feel awkward in a social situation.  It is a prop we exploit to build an ego of celebrity.  After all just like chimps we love to imitate.

Photography's common language is memory.  We use photographs now to remember second hand our life experiences.  Experiencing something first hand, being in the moment of passing time, has been replaced with stopping the flow of time to get out your phone or camera and then taking snap shots of the experience, a picture of the experience becomes your manifested life. However, the true experience was cut short so you could interrupt the flow of time and take a few pics of the moments that now represent your forced experience.  But the image is a memory of a fragmented time line and doesn't represent the total scene.

You are the only one that needs to be tuned in to your relationship with your environment and to be able to catch the full force of living through experiences.  Not stopping your flow of time for trivial moments of selfish neurotic narcissistic behavior.

These pockets of moments make up your life history.  These seconds in time are not worth much when broken up into a picture outline of your life.  Separating your moments of life through photography reduces your life to a fragmented series of dislocated events that add up to a random and homogenized snap shot of your world.  Life is continuous motion and change.  In order to experience it fully we must be aware of times limits and gifts.

Frederick Jameson, " We are in the 3rd phase now in multinational consumer capitalism.  With emphasis placed on marketing, selling and consuming commodities not on producing them."

These new technologies make it easier than ever to exploit the masses for selling products.  The use of social media is not real and should not be considered authentic.  It is a means to sell products and ourselves (as commodities) in the corporate media market place.

We never fully grasp the inherent dislocation of self through image taking.  These seconds recorded are spirits that have been preserved for an analytical review.  Never to be touched or comforted on a personal level.

But now we are inundated with so much personal fragments of people's moments in their time line that it can be depressing thinking about all the minds vying for attention.  All the meandering away from living your lives and not broadcasting it for the masses.  The only thing in mind that social media does for you is get you a direct Ad from corporate media to buy their products.

August 14, 2015


Pressure of time.  To little when your are intrigued by your subject and fully involved in creating a meaningful photograph.  To much time on your hands when you are bored with your subject and you want to move on but something is there that you are not getting.  Why this scene, what has it got that I need to make an image of, I feel compelled to stand and search the details that are trying to form that will be an image made not taken.  Sometimes you can, other times you can't find the stimulus that forges you ahead to see the subject clearly.  That Aha! moment when the details gestalt and what was invisible to your senses now is manifested.

We are afraid of losing time.  We don't have much left as we get older and contemplate our moments rushing past in our own time line.  Loss of time means we can't do all we want therefore we rush through our life making half hearted attempts at success and then settle for the little gifts of pleasure created to sooth the savage beast in all of us.

Photography shouldn't be easy.  It shouldn't be quick.  John Ashbury said, "a poem is a hymn to possibilities." So is photography.

We search for experiences that fulfill our inner needs.  But how do we really know what are inner needs are.  Those inner needs we succumb to might just be desires dominating our personality in the present moment but soon will be replaced with something else that gives us pleasure.  Trained through our lives to accept things as they are we lose our energy for uniqueness.

Photography can be fickle.  There is so many details in the world, that it is hard to focus on your subject through your inner landscape.  Without reflecting on who you are and what you are trying to attain through your images then you will be adding to the tsunami of redundant imitations of lives frozen with their own ego of importance.  If everything is important to take a pic of then everything is reduced to a level of neutral grey.  We must have in our lives images that mean more than a social media post.  We need images with substance and power that forces the viewer to look deeper at the subject present and think about the artist's purpose.

To change direction in your photography is always hard.  To go from clicking the shutter at anything that moves is the beginners quest for meaning in his image creation.  When you begin to try new techniques, when you begin to feel a connection with new subjects that you seem to be drawn to then you are becoming a photographer and not a snapper.

You will find as you explore more of your relationships with the external world more subjects will become visible that intrigue you.

July 26, 2015

Authenticity is letting go of time just being in the moment without effort.  You don't need to pick up your cell phone camera to take a picture of something that is happening spontaneously.  Once you interrupt the flow of time to capture a moment in time then you have altered its authenticity. You have imposed your will to capture not the whole scene but a portion of the scene.  This manipulates the scene through your viewpoint and might not capture the true moment that was present.

What we have now in photography are passing moments of interest. These images represent little moments of stimulus, whether the pictures are of beauty, violence, anger, happiness etc... These moments captured make us feel alive. They represent our lives in this hectic fast paced extreme sport called living. They are our moments of still silence on a two dimensional plane. We now live through our photographic experiences.

These moments posted represent our overwhelming pressure to be seen by others.  They are an outlet for our lives to say, I did this and this is who I think I am. Photographs give an illusion of life manifested.  But this is not a true life lived.  They are our promises kept, secret but now easily exposed.  They are ourselves reflected in others eyes.  The power of photography is that it claims to be authentic because I have a picture of it, therefore it is real. But having a picture of something that has already happened doesn't make the content of that snap shot authentic. Yes, the people are there and they are smiling for the camera because they have been trained since childhood to know the correct response when a camera rises to someones eye.  Just like models in ads.

We learn quickly not to show our true emotions when interacting with others.  Put the facade on your face and say with a smile as you wish.  Another words a shallow existence.

We all feel the collective force on our behavior.  We are taught through our early lives the right from wrong, good and bad behavior, moral and ethical responsibilities.  This learning process was the responsibility of our parents, our family.  Without the family none of us would be citizens of our communities.  If we don't have a base of common sense and altruism then we would be accepting of behaviors that are damaging ourselves and our society as a whole.

But now we are allowing an outside force, the social media collective, to be our our moral compass.
We are being bread to consume.  We are being manipulated to believe social media allows us freedom of expression but all it allows is a mechanical mimicry which interferes with living a deeper personal life.

Business are exploiting these sites that have been created, by gather personal information and using this personal info gathered to sell stuff back to those consumers sharing their lives openly.  What a gold mind of information given away without a dime spent on paying for the content.

Instagram claims "that 63% use it to document their lives, making photographs no longer a part time hobby rather an important function of their daily routine, like eating and sleeping. They don't take images to pursue a passion but rather as an integral part of every day life."

But they will not be photographers but followers.  Herded by social media into thinking they are experiencing a life when in fact they are living a life through other peoples imagery, (and of course some of these authentic images will just by chance have the latest and greatest trends in fashion, imagine the coincidence), hoping to connect with a real live person but actually connecting with a screen with pics and limited words that express an impression and not a life.  A vaporous experience of fleeting moments, time ripped from its moorings to be presented on a social site as real and to be exploited by corporations.

Susan Sontag, "There is a rancorous suspicion in America of whatever seems literary, not to mention a growing reluctance on the part of young people to read anything, even subtitles in foreign movies and copy on a record sleeve, which partly accounts for the new appetite for books of few words and many photographs."  Also she wrote," Photography expresses the American impatience with reality, the taste for activities whose instrumentality is a machine."

Words take time to understand, images have almost instant recognition.  And instant gratification.  Pictures are easier to make quick judgements on with no need for long analysis. Words can fool you with misinterpretation.  Words can be used to manipulate you into believing in the opposite of what is good for you.  Words are symbols and sentences are concrete lanes to deception.  But mostly words take time and effort to understand.  You have to do your research and analysis in order to get to the root truth of words.

People would like to believe pics are real but they are not real. We are a scattered brain society that jumps from image to image, from tweet to tweet as if this documents our reality.  Yes, the youth are more in tune to the visual.  They have grown up with camera phones.  But these new ways to communicate only give the user a surface representation of the world they live in, a surface reality intended to keep the young eyes following the bouncing ball of consumerism.

Hart Crane said (writing about Stieglitz in 1923), "the hundredth of a second caught so precisely that the motion is continued from the picture indefinitely: the moment made eternal."

People want to live forever.  They have posited religion as a means for eternal life but god is subjective and others don't see my god and I don't seek theirs.  Photography manifests our lives and gives us the ability to pass our lives through pictures into a future without us having to be present.  Photography is now the new religion. In this reality we seek immorality through pictures of our lives for generations to come, to view us and think of us after we have past.  Which is appropriate since snap shots only capture a past moment not lived.

We are being duped and pulled from our lives by the drug of social media.  Photography is more than a click of a shutter without feeling.  Good photography comes to those who search and experience their subjects through feeling of connection.  Taking images with purpose slows down your need to take a scatter gunned approach to shooting anything that moves.

July 19, 2015


Photography is subjects framed in rear view mirrors. An infinite recurrence, a repetitious desire to reclaim our present moments through our growing past.

July 5, 2015

Susan Sontag wrote, “ To photograph is to confer importance.  There is probably no subject that cannot be beautified; moreover, there is no way to suppress the tendency inherent in all photographs to accord value to their subjects.”

Good photography equals good visual design. Those visual elements that  enhance the subjects possibilities and gives the viewer only the necessary details that make up your unique perspective. Your not going to confuse the viewer with unwanted details.  

A snap shot is a quick memory taken with no real dialogue exchanged between the photographer and subject.  

With a snap shot you don’t have to organize your composition all you need is a quick trigger finger and your ready to run and gun.

Photography is a visual concept.  Through image creation we discover the underlying reality in which our memories and experiences combine to create the ground work for expressing our deep feelings manifested through a mechanical conceptual device.  Photography makes real the unreal.  

What is happening today in this superficial climate of take any picture no matter what the subject, is that we are reversing our ability to differentiate good images from bad pics.  The camera today is used not to make the unreal real but to make the real unreal. 

The photograph used to command a respect for truth but now their are billions of so called truths all vying to be posted and exposed to an audience hungry for the trivial.  Moments in time should be respected and good image making does this.  What is discouraging in this frenzy of shallow breaths is the loss of oxygen feeding the brain.  We must as image makers slow down and take the time to look for subjects that inspire us and brings us an awareness of the present moment.  We must live in these real moments because that is all there is.  If we ignore the present by putting a small device between us and the current reality we are in then we are missing the opportunities that make up a well lived journey.

Everything can be a subject for image creators but that doesn’t mean you exploit the subject for personal gain. Respect for your subject distinguishes the frivolous using of a subject versus the empathetic image creators witness to human events.

It is the internal motifs of the photographer that lead to photographs with meaning and staying power. 

This techno collective is pulling us into a strange new world of shallow fabrications and making us ignore everyday moments of interaction with other human beings on a real personal, visual and vocal level. Where we actually look up and meet the eyes of strangers. We are losing touch with ourselves and our natural surroundings.  

It is so important in this climate of alienation and anxiety to focus on our individuality and express this through images with substance.  To create photographs that dig deeper into the human condition and go beyond this over consumption of physical things.  We are treating our time on earth not as a privilege to seek out and do our best in what we love to manifest for others but to dumb down ourselves like cattle and live in the unreal world of ego massage.  Don’t consume everything all the time.  Learn to produce something of value.  If all you do is consume then what benefits are you giving back to your community.

July 4, 2015

Ernst Haas, "There is only you and your camera. The limitations in your photography are in yourself, for what we see is what we are.”

June 28, 2015

When you begin your approach to a subject you want to photograph do you feel intimidated at first because you seem to be floundering for a visual design to magically appear and compose the scene perfectly for you.

If your looking outside yourself for something to compose the image then your not listening to your inner landscape, your unique perspective on the world.  Your time line is yours and yours alone and serendipity can sometimes create an obvious composition that stands out and begs to be created.  But most often the composition you choose needs to be worked up to and explored before you can link it up with your inner focused attention.

The downside of consumer generate images, the mass produced nonsense that floods the market on a daily basis, it creates an atmosphere that plainly states that image creation is easy and anyone can create a good image.  The problem with this approach is that yes anyone can create a decent image that looks and feels and looks like all the rest of the images uploaded to social media.

We might think we are above the herd instinct but we are still relatively new on this planet and we often, when taking images settle for the ordinary and frivolous instead of tapping into our inner visual design and express something we feel is a truth for us and just may have interest for others.  In order to see the details that make the subject intriguing you need to have a sensitivity to your individuality.  What interests you and how to create an image that reveals your inner sight.

The superficial image creation going on in today's photo stock market place inhibits the work that is needed in creating images of substance.  Are we that shallow to think that all we need to do is point and shoot and the snap shot taken now has significance beyond the mundane existence it came from?

What makes a good stock image.  I have given up trying to guess what a photo editor is looking for. As a matter of fact I really never allowed an editor to dictate to me how to create an image for stock photo purposes.  Good, thoughtful imagery will always be in demand.

With the over abundance of imagery being taken and the willingness of the herd mentality to give these photographs away for free, the main problem is not the creative images being made but the competing with the crowd sourced imagery that is given away for nothing.  If these images actually represented the authentic and natural organic flow of new unique expressions shouldn't they be worth their weight in gold.  But they are not unique they are trivial and dumbed down expressions of lives longing for exposure.  And they find their image exposure through businesses exploiting the availability of snap shots and feeding the masses with wonderful applause at their willingness to give their snap shots away, as if these copycat images had any true depth of the real human condition.

We hear pundits talking about these new trends of the real and authentic imagery.  Of course a business is going to praise the image taker and call these images authentic representations of their buying customers.  They are making money on the backs of image takers that don't see the value in their work.

But really all these images represent is an ego thrust outside itself, giving their snap shots away for the thrill of posted exposure on social media.  This is not real life, this is  strictly business. If you didn't have to pay for your hamburger wouldn't that be a heck of a lot better than forking over a few bucks.  Of course it would.  The mind is easily duped by praise and vanity.

The real problem today is can artists make enough income to generate a livelihood that is sustainable.

June 20, 2015

Susan Sontag wrote in the seventies, "From its start, photography implied the capture of the largest possible number of subjects.  Painting never had so imperial a scope.  The subsequent industrialization of camera technology only carried out a promise inherent in photography from its very beginning: to democratize all experience by translating them into image."

Decades later we now have the digital revolution and with it the explosion of imagery on the Internet.

And this exposes the Pavlov's dog mentality of photography in today's waste land of fragmented realities.

Sontag wrote, "A way of certifying experience, taking photographs is also a way of refusing it-limiting experience to a search for the photogenic, by converting experience into an image, a souvenir.  Travel becomes a strategy for accumulating photographs. The very activity of taking pictures is soothing, and assuages general feelings of disorientate that are likely to be exacerbated by travel. Most tourists feel compelled to put the camera between themselves and whatever is remarkable that they encounter.  Unsure of other responses, they take a picture."

We acquire products everyday.  Homes full of things that make our lives seem more weighted with memories and objects that represent where we have been and maybe where we want to go in the future.  These short-sighted products represent acquired memory, a wishful fulfillment of our desires and our dreams and gives our life a manifested purpose.

Our excess, our obsession with accumulating things is because we live in an age of anxiety (W.H. Auden) and are unable to live with our subjective consciousness, so we live through the external objects of attraction and possession.  We seem to never question why we are drawn to certain external stimulus over others.

Images are the hip thing to acquire and quickly become passé as we move constantly toward physical experience on a shallow level.

This superficiality gives us the illusion of stability in our lives but it is an illusion of the present becoming a past experience.  We can never be satisfied trying to stop times forward motion.

We are always trying to duplicate a past experience, hold onto it especially if it brought us pleasure.  In photography we repeat composition and exposure when we are satisfied that the snap shot taken represents our forced perception (prejudices) on the subject.

We want to posses things.  We want to define what something is and not have to think any further on the matter.  This drives the proliferation of imagery.  We are on constant capture mode, we don't have to think anymore concerning what we are interested in taking pics of because now everything is photogenic.  Everything is an expression of my outer facade.

We are a species that imitate behavior.  The images being created now represent our surface connection with our memories over our present moments in our own lives.  We seek memories over infinite choice.

How scary a new subject can be and also frustrating when you have to interact with your subject, exploring the many choices you need to make in order to create an image worthy of your time.  You will have to choose your composition, light, perspective and the most important question, why choose this subject over another.  What does this particular subject have that the others don't?

Sometimes you can't answer that question but you just know intuitively that there is an image present and with time and effort it will manifest itself to you.

Are we seeing the end to purposeful image creation, of course not but social media is making good images hard to find.

We herd easily, wanting to be driven along worn paths that end up getting us nowhere near where we want to be.  We constantly put barriers up between us and our environment.  We settle for a relationship with others through a hand held device, not of intimacy but propaganda.

We fear the world and its burgeoning technology and its complexity, so we look for the easy way to go and the camera now is a comforting action that allows us distance from the subject and gives us a "work to do mentality" to take pictures of and not interact with our subjects.  We are becoming reclusive, apart from living in the now and losing touch with our communities.

Stop the constant head down, looking at a small screen.  Look up into this world, interact with it on a personal level not through corporate media sites.

Each of us is unique and we will approach our subjects differently. A one size fits all never works in creating good imagery.

June 7, 2015


Summer is finally here!  I took this image of a friend kayaking on Lake Cassidy.  The morning light was great with Mount Pilchuck in the background and the misty fog filtering the sun.

May 24, 2015

Galen Rowell, "The best photographs speak for themselves.  Attempts to analyze their meaning invariably detract from the special quality that is beyond words in the first place.   The photographs that move me the most propel me into an emotional realm where my experience is no longer verbal."

We live creating memories. These memories are our life’s story, our created truth that we were here on this planet and we lived and we died and the only way to preserve them is through picture taking, writings and visual art. These become the artifacts left behind of me and my time here.

In photography, before social media, these images were in family albums and picture frames hung on hallway walls, a shrine to our living in this time and space and our recognition of the continuity between generations, as new images were put in the albums for our family members to see and appreciate especially on holidays.

What is different today in this explosion of social media sites, is that we don’t have a unified place to see our family history but have individual sites that broadcast our memories not just for family members but for the whole world to see, read and judge.

Our real families are fragmenting, growing apart from each other and now correspond in public view on social sites.

We now have an audience other than family to entertain and show our personal lives to.  We also have an audience for our on going personal memories and we get noticed, rewarded, and of course we get sympathy and condolences from strangers on theses media platforms and our immediate families are becoming secondary.  

Our private inner world is no longer private for family and close friends. We have given access to our world to everyone. We expose ourselves for all to examine, not only our personal thoughts but of course the images we create. We are not ourselves but living a life as a public spectacle.  We are becoming actors looking for attention and are reacting to our budding created lives and not focused on truth of memory.  We are not allowing things to happen naturally in the moment but instead forcing things to happen for a larger number of views on social media.  

We are living our lives through social media. Our personal fragmented truth is a facade of spectacle and not necessarily true to who we are or who we want to become. Social media is a distraction from living life to it’s fullest.  

Intimacy through privacy allows us to connect with our loved ones on a one on one basis.Without this we lose our personal past and the ones we trust.

This tsunami of imagery is overwhelming our senses. We are losing our ability to recognize good meaningful photographs.  We don’t have the stamina it seems to study an image and enjoy the stillness and calm reflections and interaction we once had with the subject photographed.  All is becoming quick and easy surface reading with no understanding or reflection on what we see.  We are herded down a narrow path to what is the next and greatest novelty.  Not what connects with our inner landscape, our visual talents that reflect who we are.    

Photography is becoming a scrap book of forced events posted on social media to make ourselves look more important than we are.  This is a false illusion of who we are as a society.

We have elevated the trivial to a stature way beyond understanding and we are missing intimacy which is necessary for relationships to grow and mature and have meaning and purpose.

We are dumbing down our mental chords, as well as our vocal chords by allowing our lives to be hijacked by media outlets which collect information about us in order to sell things to us  (just as our imagery is becoming things to be exploited) when we should be interacting with each other and exploring and creating images with focused purpose.

May 17, 2015


Ralph Gibson wrote, "The content of many photographs is often centred around an event. To make 'event' photographs the photographer must align himself in place and time with the event.  One minute late for the execution and his shot is missed, as it were.  I'm not interested in recording great moments in history.  For me, the great event is when my awareness has risen to the point of perception, a brief but intense moment.  At such times one could photograph almost anything... a corner, or a chair, a detail of something normally insignificant, etc.. I crave this feeling because of its greater clarity.  One day it occurred to me that it was no longer a question of how to photograph but rather of what to photograph".  Ralph Gibson wrote this in the early seventies.

The words of Ralph Gibson have become universally true. We now live our lives through social media. What to photograph now means indiscriminate shots of every little detail of our personal life.  It is, as if we have become personalities in our own little life movie.  Our snap shot mantra is, these have to be shown to prove that I am living and enjoying my time on earth.  These mundane images validate our existence to others.  We need this attention from the social media sites because we have become fragmented in knowing who we are and what we want to become.  It is easier to take pictures of your life because it gets sticky to examine yourself and find out what really matters to you.

Life's journey is no longer a deep exploration of our inner world along with our relationship with the outer world.  The outer world it seems is where the attention now is focused. It has become a distraction from asking hard questions concerning our life. Better to photograph anything, than to think and focus on anything for over a few second.

Our fascination with decontextualizing the world, taking objects, ourselves included, out of context, to be seen by eager eyes on social media sites only enhances the obsession with the now.  Since we are wanting our personality to be seen, we are imitating each other, as if we were stars and all eyes were looking up at us.

When you are connected with your subject and exploring the opportunity to compose an image with purpose then you are creating and making a personal statement. These images will show your personality in an honest and unique way.  

Remember that when you are creating images it is not only you coming through in the final image but the subject as well.  If it was only you, then we would be back to creating more of the over saturation of me photographs.

May 10, 2015

Freeman Patterson, "A photographer should resist every temptation to codify the principles of visual design or create pictorial formulas, because such attempts will stifle intuition, reduce emotional input, and put technique ahead of expression".  

The redundancy in image creation is stifling original ideas. 

Take for example the selfie.  This mundane snap shot, which belongs in a family album, has now infiltrated the consciousness of our youth.  It is a separation from, not an invite to participate in the life environment, we need to create original images.  If we are only looking at ourselves in a scene then how can we explore our external subject when we are selfishly becoming an object to ourselves.

You know that the selfie is corrupting our ability to interact with nature when the ad agencies are now imitating this as a way to sell products.

To experience the world on a deeper level we must throw out these stifling stereotypes and open up our minds to seeing the world with fresh eyes.  We must be willing to take a new step toward our internal interests and find our individual creative spirit. 

Social media can paralyze your perception of the world and how you interact with it. Creating shallow moments not of insight but of obnoxious self interest.

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.