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.

March 6, 2016



Emerson, (and for Thoreau as well), "each moment provides an opportunity to learn from nature and to approach an understanding of universal order through it.  The importance of the present moment, of spontaneous and dynamic interactions with the universe, of the possibilities of the here and now, render past observations and schemes irrelevant."

We have more connections, more access to information and personalities now than any time in our history. But what we really have access to is a collective mind, who's main goal is the making of money, shorthand for consumerism.  Capitalism rejects the individual and relies on mass incarceration with the flow of their information ( your gift to them without charge is your personal info but this is secondary) over their corporate owned monopolies in the media circus.

The selfie is a perfect example of the moral climate in this consumer generated society we live in.  We have become commodities to be sold.  We give freely away our private lives and the corporate media uses that information to regurgitate back to us products we don't need.  The means to success for the capitalist mentality is the money transaction, the buying of their products. Our lives are not independent, we have become collective cattle to be prodded for personal information and manipulated to thinking we make the choices when buying products we are somehow attracted to.

Just like in photography we live in a heard mentality.  We follow the ads and internalize them and make choices on what to shoot not based on our true desires and our true calling but a shallow representation of a life not worth living. We accept experience (our interaction with nature) now as an act of reflection through a past image taken not for anything deeper than to be doing something other than experiencing the moment with your full conscious intensity.

The act of reflection is a means of living in the past. Taking pictures is similar. It is a physical representation of a past time.  It becomes an absorbing repetitious necessity to take a picture which allows you the ability to remember not the present moment but a past moment.  This becomes your anchor to living what you believe is a full and meaningful life.  The snap shots are objects that seem to posses occult powers and are carried with you in your cell phone,  your very own talisman.

Lowering expectations makes it easier to achieve goals. But is that doing your best? Is that immersing yourself in your photographic subject.  Are your choices of what to make images of dictated by ease of shallow trifles of thoughts moving you away from concentrating on anything.  Are your thoughts and feeling continually moving past the now and making you fill your consciousness with anxiety and the inability to stop and really see your life.

Digging deeper into the scene and beginning to feel the empathy toward the world we live in, is the true purpose of image creation.

Is shooting what you are about to eat a real experience worth sharing? Common sense would tell you to "forget about it!"  Enjoy the food in the moment and then move outward through self awareness to find subjects with meaning for you and others.

The snapshot puts the present moment behind me.  I am separated from the event, my experience is the image taken.  We have transitioned from our own time line and made it possible to live our lives  ow through a mechanical device.  This device is tethered to social media and we gladly expose ourselves to the world, to the collective, to feel we are alive and part of something.   But all this time we are moving further and further away from our lives and the control we once had over it.  We now are obsessed with the game of likes and dislikes as if that will validate our inner mental states, as if that will be a true experience and interaction with anonymous people we have never met.  It is a false god we have become oppressed by it and if we want to get back to a true life, a meaningful life, we must reject this current monster, this leviathan of the look at me mentality.  Don't be an object to be exploited but develop your inner vision become your perspective and keep true to your beliefs and your moral compass.

March 5, 2016


Emerson wrote, "that men should break away from reliance on secondhand information, upon the wisdom of the past, upon inherited and institutionalized knowledge."

When making imagery one must let go of preconceived memories of what makes a good subject.  We are trained at an early age to fit our perceptions into neat little boxes and let go of the wide infinite universe that is waiting to be discovered.  We must open those little boxes and let them free.  Let them go and move into the experience of the now.  Take chances on your subject choices.  Experiment with different lighting and most of all make mistakes.  Mistakes lead to knowledge of yourself and your deep purpose.  Don't be afraid of failure when creating image.  In the film days we were happy to get three or four good images out of a roll of film.

I feel we take images to understand our limited ability to see.  By stopping a moment of time we have an opportunity to return to the image and study it.  This allows us to learn our technical skills but also gives us an insight into our life story.  Family photo albums were that connection to the past through the present image being seen.  But we can't get caught up in our life moments by continually snapping pictures and not living those moments full out.  First hand experience is the necessity for living a truthful life.  Without being present in this world we miss our connections that make us whole, who we are.

Put down the cell phones and move away from the commercial life and begin living your life.  When you are aware of your experiences you will be able to translate those emotions and thoughts into imagery with intent and honesty.

January 30, 2016


We are displayed now as objects, exterior to our internal needs.  To have a cohesive self image we can not live outside ourselves through snap shots, we need to embrace our own inner time line that give us our unique perspectives. Center ourselves through our own views and break the illusion of outer exposure through social media as real.  

Fight to live your own perspective, through your own eyes and not through what others see you as.  Corporate media is a means of commerce, entertainment and violence.  This keeps us in constant stress and anxiety.  We don't look through our own eyes and see the world but we see the the world now through billions of eyes, exterior eyes that keep our lives fragmented with unnecessary images of desire, violence, opulence, hate and a constant police blotter.

We live in a constant badgering of images that make us want to pacify our anxiety with material needs, a buy, buy, buy mentality.

It also makes us susceptible to thinking that once we post our private thoughts or a snap shot of ourselves we must get a like,  an acceptance from the masses and if we don't we begin to feel bad.

This is not living in the world but living through a collective mind that entertains us and makes us feel we are contributing to society. But what are we contributing?

But in reality we are just playing at living through cyber space and this space becomes an extension of our thoughts and cages us in a unbearable necessity to view our lives through a physical exposure.

This has nothing to do with self image because once your image is sent into the collective it is seen as a small minute fragment of the whole and as such is only present for a split second and then reduced into the murky cosmos of information gathering that is mined for trends to sell more products to the masses.

The need to grasp at fame is an illusion perpetuated by the cult of the media adman.

When you focus all your energy to snap shots of your life then you have torn the linear fabric of your life into pieces with no cohesive bond between your moments.

Your focus should be on the relationship you build with the outer world.  Asking questions as to why I react the way I do in this situation and not others.

Why do I think first that a snap shot of an experience is better than to sit still and enjoy this moment.

The answer is Pavlov's dog.  You are being conditioned to use a mechanical device first and experience the moment in a future time by the past image.  Why do we do this?

Capitalism is the pure and simple answer.  You are being trained to think in a collective ad, your moments matter to everybody and should be shown continually.

You are also being dumbed down to think in terms of seconds instead of hours or even days.  This shorten time line speeds up your anxiety and you have to work and do more to keep up with the latest and greatest products that can enhance your status on these corporate media sites.  Information to the masses is nothing more now than trivial, banal sex and violence.  Our knowledge base is being eroded by distraction purposely manipulated to get us thinking in the wrong direction.

This connects all the Media Corporations together, shoot, post and buy.  A never ending circular loop of material that hits us in our desirous brain.  A hyper visual mind does not think but accepts images as a means of communication.  This is fine if you are creating an image with purpose to enhance and reveal your inner design so others can have their own experience through your photograph.

A relationship with an image is significant in that you as the observer have bonded with something in that photograph that means something to you that the creator of the image might not of intended.

But now social media is using this facade of authenticity to undermine the nature of image creation.  Images are personal and are meant to show others in the family, in society, in our culture how we lived, how we live, and we we want to live.

But perception itself is being transformed through manipulation in social media that makes us feel we are part of the show, an integral part of the media experience and therefore we are being acknowledged and accepted as loyal button clickers.

Our lives have been stolen from us and now we experience reality through a mechanical device that never says, enough! Never says wait, think before you post.  Always available 24/7,  always ready with a reply, an ad to soothe the savage beasts.

We are participants in a bigger whole in which we are being primed for buying into the madness of materialism.

What we have now is an all out assault on our human species.  We are being conditioned to think in isolated pockets without a true connection to others with a different perspective.  In my book this is called Fascism.

The future is only endings of moments in the now. We are constantly reacting to stimulus from nature.  This creates our life as we age.  This interaction with the outside world is vital in living a full life as a human being.  It is necessary for us to live in the now and experience this reality through our unique voice.  Make are own imprint on this world and not allow our true lives to be stolen from us by a hand held device.

We are in a regression to a more caveman like experience of reality.  We are being trained to fear the world as a bad place therefore it must be destroyed, not protected.  We are being forced to live our lives through machines that dictate to us who we should be and should want to be.  All glitz with no substance.

Stop, look around, slow down.  Create an image in the slow recognition of your internal landscape that can be perceived with focus on the beautiful world that surrounds us.

January 17, 2016


Sontag, "A capitalist society requires a culture based on images, it needs to furnish vast amounts of entertainment in order to stimulate buying and anesthetize the injuries of class, race and self.  Cameras define reality in two ways essential to the workings of an advanced industrial society.  As a spectacle (for the masses) and as an object of surveillance (for the rulers). The production of images furnishes a ruling ideology, social change is replaced by a change in images."

The mechanical sight of a camera is a curtain that feels nothing and chooses nothing.  But can bridge sight into a narrow frame that can become an image worth making.

The camera gives human beings the ability to judge others.  It is amazing how many people expose themselves to mindful tyranny under the social media's facade of communication. Social media is exploiter under the guise of community.

It really is a way to advertise your life and state this facade is who I think I am.

Images advertise our internal needs.  They announce our current self image, that is always changing.  Social media analyzes people's trends on their sites and use these trends as suggestions for consumer ads.  The hook is always deeper in the mouth if you think someone likes you as you are.

We have accepted the social media dictum, all is seen, observed and judged, as cameras proliferate our society, spy on us in streets, homes and buildings.

We have given our private self to the masses through corporate controlled media.

We look past our social and political needs, to instead, move more toward narcissistic entertainment. We begin to rationalize the continuous brutal greed as necessary to fulfill our wants. Instead of a real dialogue with others we put a barrier between us and them through image creation or should I say image facades.

We are under the spell of material objects.  Not a relationship built on trust with the external reality but now subjects to be exploited in a status driven grab for vanity.

Image proliferation will only grow in magnitude as we become gold miners in a false pretext of authentic subjects none of which has importance or value to enhance the lives of others.

In today's market place image creation pacifies the crowd to partake in an activity that has value not in what is produced (as a representation of an emotional connection) but in what is said about it.  If it gets traction on social media then it is worth the exhibition of internal self. And for the ad makers, it is a gold mine to be exploited and continually duplicated until the water faucet of hits and sales dries up.

We lose sight of the real game of corporate media, the slight of hands as they feed us dopey humor or tantalizing mayhem, to keep us in an abnormal state, sedated with images of possibilities that we will never experience.

We objectify ourselves in photos, present ourselves to the outer world, and at the same time we subjectively wish we could connect with something real.

Our feelings shown in exaggerated theatre, exploited by media to further gather unlimited amounts of information on us to exploit us like cattle in this ever expanding consumer society.

Images are not real, they reflect, look back on our present experience. The future is only endings of moments in the now. What kind of feeling can you have in the present if all you are thinking about is the image you created during the first hand experience.The aftermath of an experience is the end not the beginning of the actual experience.

It would seem we are satisfied with a copy rather than the original. We have entered Plato's Cave and it appears we are satisfied with a shadow of, rather than the real deal.

January 10, 2016

We misinterpret the camera's ability to isolate and suspend time.

The image is not real, it is an imitation of a fragmented moment that has passed.  It is only a piece of a bigger picture.

But because we want to believe an image has magical powers, and we desperately want that image I  now hold in my hand to be a past memory brought to future time it must then represents a truth, a person or an object as they were, a thing as it was but no longer.

We want to find continuity in our lives and the substitute to living fully in each moment is to live through moments captured by a mechanical device that has no other power than to freeze fragments of our sight as if this constitutes a real entity.

But it isn't time itself that has been captured, the image created is in time and ages just like we do. It is propaganda, looking at life disappearing can bring anxiety, we need to be sedated by distractions that keep us from inevitable truths.

A photograph is a means to abate time's awful march toward death.  As time passes by, we need a means to draw comparisons with times illusions.

We need to be able to compare the present with the past to give credibility to the life we are living.  Memory is itself a trap of the minds need to feel time passing.  We are now in a stage of obsession with time through image creation.

The present only exists through comparison.  A linear time line that we hold onto in sinking water.  Time eventually catches up with us and our ending begins to be seen. How do I want to be remembered becomes the mantra of more images being taken to fill your life with artifacts of your aging.

Images are made to consume without ever having to worry about running out.

This instills in us an obsessive behavior to create a separate reality for ourselves. If we take pictures of our lives then we will become immortal.  We will live in a past, created for no other reason then to live beyond our individual timeline which is unknown and is fear based.

The future is not known but the past can be represented through snap shots that will outlast our mortality.

In a real sense we are trying to be gods with supernatural photographic powers.

I annihilate the very purpose of living in the present.  I disrupt the unity of my life with nature.  I create a third reality that is false and extraordinarily disruptive to living a good life and that oppressive reality is consumerism through entertainment.

January 10, 2016

Cliches are correct views for the narrow minded.  Photography is a monologue between you and nature. If everything can become a good image then why focus on your relationship with the outside world at all.  Just click and move on.  Every once in awhile you might get lucky and get a picture that has some meaning but the overall result from shooting without thought backed up by intense feelings for your intended subject is drudgery and a simplistic view of your discord with nature.

Without relationships we falter and lose balance.  Get caught up in the show of self and not the revelation of self through inspiration from others and purposeful image creation.

Do you feel comfortable dealing with external stimulus in the present moment?  Or before you relate to what is in front of you you choose first to reflect on the scene and then make decisions on how you want to photograph the present subject before you even bring your camera out.

Both of these means to an end can and will create good images.  One method is anticipation and readiness for action from the get go.  The other is a more analytical dissection of the scene and where you want to put yourself when shooting to get the maximum inner representation of your purpose.

There are times when I use both methods.  When you come on a scene already in it's full glory you better be fast and nimble making instant judgments on composition, angle of light, lens selection etc...

What you don't want is to be so deposed to over analysis, looking over every lens before you shoot, determining whether this one or that one would be better.  Sometimes just shooting is a way forward, getting your photographic eye immersed in the scene and then through a growing inner connection with nature you locate your intended subject.

December 20, 2015

What is your attitude toward image making?

What are you demanding from the scene that doesn't allow you to get close to the subject?

What is inhibiting your connection to your subject?

These questions need to be answered given the proliferation of images that overwhelm the senses and look and feel like so many others.  Originality is lost through the marketing of corporate media the billions of images now rushing into cyber space to catch a few eyes.

Our lives now seem to go up or down with likes and dislikes.  We are becoming Bi-Polar in our acceptance of outside forces messing with our confidence and purpose in manifesting our inner vision.

Praise easily given.  Not the purpose of the image.  How the photographer made a conscious choice to examine the scene and look for a composition and light that would express his feeling toward the subject and give the viewer a look at another perspective they didn't see.

We must tame the beast, this nature that surrounds us, making us fearful to live our lives independent of the recognition game.  This obsession with celebrity and the quick viral image of likes. We are caught up in the media spin of celebrity and flesh.

Now it seems, we must document every moment taking place within our own ego.  As if our disconnect from the outer world is confining us into an internal drama.  And we feel compelled to expose ourselves to the world of greedy eyes.

We are at a transformative stage in human evolution.  We see the coming annihilation of the earth and this makes us more intense to document our lives for others to witness.  It makes us feel like we are somebody in this human train wreck and thus we feel acknowledged by others.

We exploit the external for a visible extension of our presence in this ever exploding world of eye candy.  All of it distractions, slight of hands, cliches to suppress the masses,
drawing our attention away from experiencing the world as an I and not an object in time and space to be viewed by someone on a social media page.

We substitute images now for the loss of community, of eroding cultural values, of human decency gone awry.

A picture now stands for an active and involved life.

The new mantra is, at least I have been noticed, looked out and perceived for good or bad by a simple click of a mouse.  Not by my own standards of behavior.  But instead, relying on the judgement from an anonymous other.

Our images are like any product made that can be exploited.  In nature, redundancy, doing the same thing over and over again,  leads to an end of that species.  You must adapt in order to survive.

As photographers we must bring to the internet table a feast of personal work that stands out from the proliferation of image fatigue.  That weariness we get when we see the same repetitive images over and over again.  This has to effect the psyche of photographers to join the masses but resist this impulsive behavior, stand your ground and create images worthy of your effort.

November 15, 2015


Susan Sontag, "Photography is a mass art form.  Photography is not practiced by most people as an art.  It is mainly a social rite, a defense against anxiety, a tool of power."

We take an image not to relate to nature or other human beings but to capture them in moments in our time line.  We bring into our space and time images from another's moments and this increases our sense of domination.  We attack nature in order to capture for ourselves this feeling of superiority.

We have gone through many manifestations of what photography is and should be.  An art form always.  A means of documenting the ever changing lifestyle of of society, yes.  A way to express the inner landscape of the individual in this ever changing world we live in, of course.  Photography has exposed the horrors of ego, power and greed through out our history and those continuing forces are being photographed as I write this today.

The history of photography is laced with ideas and subjects that have lead us to this point in our photographic story.  We have seen photographers that tried to express their vision through creating the perfect image through visual and technical perfection.

This perfection was seen as a  mental construct of how they wished to impose their will on the external subject. It didn't always lead to a good photograph.

We are now in a more organic form of image making.  Where we approach the subject in a more awkward, self protective mood.  Where we are hesitant and naive in our ability to capture the subject present before us. These images have a more natural feel to them and because of that they appear more authentic.

This informal photography is exploited on social media.  It is the same concept of authenticity that is never authentic.  When your subjects are wearing apparel that is paying the bills on the photo shoot then we have a big problem with real lives, living a life without consumerism as a back drop.

The new editors (beholden to the homogenized outlook of corporate media) that give out assignments are not always looking for original imagery with power and purpose but images from photographers who have a following on social media.  These photographers have an already built in audience to be exploited by advertisers looking to sell products that have that  so called natural, earthy appearance.

This new age of photography is exposing the inherent dilemma of picture taking and picture making.

What is a worthy subject to make images of?

Susan Sontag, "But it is now that there is no inherent conflict between the mechanical or naive use of the camera and the formal beauty of a very high order.  No kind of photograph in which such beauty could not turn out to be present. An unassuming functional snap shot maybe as visually interesting, as eloquent, as beautiful as the most acclaimed fine-art photographs.  This democratizing of the formal standards is the logical counterpart to photography democratizing of the notion of beauty. For photography there is finally no difference, no greater aesthetic advantage between the effort to embellish the world and the counter effort to rip off its mask."

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

When we choose our subjects to make images of are we imitating others or are we seeking our own unique visual voice?

If everything makes a good subject to take pics of then what criteria is used to edit out imagery that doesn't hold meaning or purpose for the viewer?

Do we say if a photo has an audience of one, two, ten or more then it made a connection with someone therefore it is worthy to be called a good photograph?

Thank goodness we are all different.  Even though in today's corporate media it is hard to get individuality in ideas and in imagery reported on.  

But because we are still different from each other and we have different desires, goals, feelings and obsessions, I think we all inherently know what makes a good image and what makes a bad image. 

There cannot be a universal objective standard to judge what constitutes a good image.  We live in a subjective universe and as such, we are in tune to ourselves and our own personal visions and not someone else's.

It is when the mass herd instinct kicks in gear and decides for us what will be acceptable and what isn't,  then we have a collective entity forcing itself upon our uniqueness.

Not every picture snapped can be a worthy image.  There are cultural and societal standards of behavior and expression that is there to protect the innocent from exploitation.

When a photographer has an intense desire to show, through a mechanical device, a unique expression, by building a relationship with the subject and eliminating all the unnecessary details that will detract from their photographic vision, then I feel that is a good start in determining what makes a good image, the photographer's individual purpose.

However, most subjects chosen in todays camera/phone explosion don't meet the standard of a good image. As we move forward in this explosion of snap shots I feel social media is catering to the masses, exploiting their ego's, patting them on the back and reducing the integrity of the photograph as an art form. 

What we see on social media is the collective mind dictating to us what is acceptable and what isn't.

And that is where social media is a detriment to photographic purpose.  Everybody posts everything, creating an effect without purpose and a Pavlov's response to copy and upload to the growing redundancy of life and in so doing creating an atmosphere of human boredom.

Be yourself and explore your own inner landscape to find your path to good photographic expressions.

October 31, 2015


Eugene Smith, “Search with intelligence for the frequently intangible truth.”

Technology now dictates our behavior and because we can't break away from the small screens mesmerizing all our interactions, a magnet of mimicry is created.  Especially with the younger generation, it dictates their perceptions of the world, how things should and must look if they are perceived to be genuine.  We lose our ability to see our inner landscape manifested.

Do you remember the pics of your experience or the experience itself?

Do you need a snap shot to express your feelings as the memories disappear?

Once the pic was snapped did you feel that that was enough, you captured the scene and now you can move on.  The picture once taken disconnected you from full immersion in a scene, ripe with external meaning to you but you failed to grasp the signals being shown and allowed technology to interfere and push you away from relationship building you need to create good images. 

This drive to always think of the next greatest scene is putting barriers between you and living a real existence.  We have somehow incorporated this need for something coming down the road that doesn’t exist with a real experience that will never get here.  It is now, in the present that you live your life.  And as a photographer you need to be present in the now, fully open to the external sources that can enhance your life if only you are open to them.  

Take your self out of the equation just for a few moments as you look over the scene.  Release the anxieties if any and focus and concentrate on the subject in the present.

Don't think of putting anything in the scene that will distract from its initial drawing you in attraction.  Something wanted you to stop right where you are at.

Focusing on your self will destroy the budding relationship with your subject.  Concentrate toward your potential subject away from yourself. The subject is worth your full attention especially when you first notice a possibility, a potential image.  

But paying attention is not forcing your subject to conform to any preconceived notions on how your subject should look. Open up your mind to accept new ways of composition that reflect your subject in a new light.

October 18, 2015


Susan Sontag, "As Wittgenstein argued for words that the meaning is the use-so for each photograph."  And it is in this way that the presence and proliferation of all photographs contributes to the erosion of the very notion of meaning, to that parceling out of the truth into relative truths which is taken for granted by the modern liberal consciousness."

We have through photography a vast library of images both personal and historical.

Through these shared cultural memories we see a depiction of humanity both good and bad.  These captured moments leave us with a foundation to build off of and grow as a culture and a human being. We evolve through our cultural memories, passed down through the generations.

Historical memories can be ugly and violent yet show us what mankind is capable of and this can instill in us a need to change the images to a better purpose.

Image creation is part of our shared past.  Iconic images that define us in space and time in those rare moments beyond change.  These images are powerful examples of the plight of our culture and humanity, a long distance running to a shared reality of acceptance, responsibility and the possibilities for change.

Family memories were centered around your personal memories and relationships with your home life.  These memories gave each family member a unique place in the family dynamic and also built continuity through the years, a stability of your families time line and its influences on you and the community in which you live.  These images were created originally for family members only and these private images became icons of the family history, a prideful knowing of your past.

Memories become us, we can accept or deny them but either way we incorporate then into ourselves as sign posts to follow or veer away from.  These images are a foundation, a stepping off place to create and perpetuate the family history for future generations to build off of.  These memories, on two dimensional photo paper, drive and motivate family members to be more like a favorite cousin Bill or Uncle Harry and instill in the family a cohesion of forward thinking.

Social Media has construed to take our shared memories, both cultural and family and exploit our shared memories for profit.  Explode them into individual fragments of time, pieces of our lives once shared with meaning and identity but now as entertainment.  As distractions from creating memories that help society move forward and escape the traps of ego, greed and power. It seems now our prime directive is to snap a pic of every moment and post it immediately on a collective display, losing the connection with your families shared consciousness.

We are becoming a shallow minded population of ego driven trivia hounds that are being exploited for commercial profit by giving away our personal content for free and vainly exposing ourselves to the collective consciousness of externalized greedy eyes. In the short scheme of our lives we are becoming our uploaded posts. We are living not for intimacy with others but as a performer on a social media stage.

Now in this banal photography explosion of senseless mimicry, we are not growing in purpose, striving to be more observant of what is really happening with the exploitation of nature, and the exploitation of our own living moments as objective content for profit. We are being trained to escape from our real lives and live our moments through cyber space, exploring the minutia of frivolous details posted on media sites, that hungrily demand, the look at me everybody I am here, I exist!

Cartier-Bresson, "To take photographs is to find the structure of the world-to revel in the pure pleasure of form, to disclose that in all this chaos there is order."

Yes, now the chaos is the explosion of images being transmitted every millisecond, expanding not our understanding of order, of uniqueness, of originality but all the same babble, as the talking heads we see on TV.  No depth of feeling or a need to express some inner longing, to share through purposeful image creation a uniqueness of insight but now a free for all, where any hollow image becomes a viral look at me ticket to your 1 second of fame.

Nothing is original that is done with shallow eyes, that force themselves onto any subject, whereby the image created is a reaction to the camera.

Good image making is building that relationship first with the subject, taking the time to relate to the scene and create an atmosphere of shared empathy and through that relationship good images  will follow.

Shared cultural memories are important for a society to function. By fragmenting our lives through social media we break down society into separate parts with no cohesive identity.  This allows a wedge to form, an us against them (created) mentality where we fight in the big muddy of social entertainment and not with the issues that need a cultural solution a unified voice for change now.

Susan Sontag wrote, The camera is indeed the instrument of "fast seeing"as one confident modernist, Alvin Langdon Coburn, declared in 1918, echoing the futurist apotheosis of machines and speed."

My advice is to slow down and enjoy your moments and your relationship with nature.  Quit passing up important moments of revelation by a quick pic and then head bent toward a screen.  Look up into the eyes of others.

October 11, 2015


The mind in solitary confinement, unwilling to see details that make up a whole.

You must control the need to over think, create mysteries where there are none.  We have now externalized our active mind, created a smorgasbord of distractions in order to help dilute the overpowering changes that are happening on this planet.

We are not focused on these precious moments of the now.  Experiencing the world as a unified whole but have become strangers to ourselves and others.  We have allowed our external reality to be fashioned on entertainment and not meaningful productive and necessary action. We are hiding in social media to make believe we are living a productive life.  Where are the real, live voices taking the time to talk directly to each other? Instead we use these hand held devices which move us further  away from experiencing reality first hand.  Instead we experience it through a technological, mechanical collective.

We give free content to multinational corporations so they can tag us like cattle and force feed us consumer products they know we would like to buy.  We express our inner revelations like theater popcorn to be easily disposed of by the next greatest butter toppings.

Social media is corporate media.  It functions as an open mouth piece for all who enter. But really it is an ad gimmick to exploit the herd of those that want to become instantaneously famous without the hard struggle to find a unique voice and a special calling.

Disinformation is the name of the game.  Slight of hand tricks, thinking you are free to be yourself  but finding out you are like all the rest, needy to be seen and heard, not by intimate friends you can trust, but by a vast arena of voyeurism.

Greed capitalism will do and say anything to get a buyer.  And once it has hooked you on one of their info gathering sites your personal info will be sold to the highest bidder. And the ads will come like a wave of innocent advice to be your friend and will eventually show its true colors of buy me now aggression or lose out on a special deal we have just offered you.

Social media is a consumer transaction.  Your content fattens the information stream they need to pin point products that they feel you will be compelled to buy.  They will enlighten you by ads and messages that seem sincere.  They hide behind the new trend of "authentic," with images of people having fun wearing the latest styles.  All targeted to you from the personal info your gave unknowingly when you signed up for the consumer wasteland of social media.

The ad space is sold to any company trying to exploit the naivety of a new means to sell products.

Social media uses us by exhorting the freedom of the web we participate in but really the corporations behind the site are mining all the free data you give them for profit.

Social media trespasses on your private personal world and what you see on the screen are your own reflections, a mirror, a vacuum an echo of what you want to hear and see by others seeking the same kind of a connection in a infinite field of choices.

Social media is spreading us out with an overwhelming amount of minutia, separating us from action, into a constant state of reaction.  The bombardment of images and voices on their sites keep us viewing them for hours at a time when we should be living our life as we want, with purpose not viewing a mechanical tool that is their to get you to convert your being to a commercial buying fool.

The corporate social media sites (news sites included) are manipulating the info we receive creating a new social order through their profit driven propaganda tools, now fully integrated into the hands of the young as they get older and have never experienced a community of individuals who actually sit and talk with each other.  Resistance is terrifying, as we accelerate our lives, bending to the new technology driving us into an ever faster state of a collective homogenized life style of a buying mentality, where our relationships are becoming transaction through a screen and not a personal voice to say enough.

We need to break this strangle hold on our lives by these a-moral hooligans and take back our life.  We need to live, not through something that's only purpose is exploitation, but within ourselves that says enough of this greedy constant need to buy.  We need to become more human again not a post on a media site, which ultimately is meaningless self idolatry.

We need to be active creators of our own world, a new world we want to see and live in and not sitting flesh reacting to posts that do not connect but separate us from others and ourselves.

Social media is limiting your ability to live in a real external world, by activities that mean something to you, that produces something worth your time and effort and has value for others.  Whether it be photography, poetry, drawing or any personal exploration of the why we are here vs the addiction to a screen that limits your ability to see a whole picture.

Through this collective malaise of disconnected moments we are building our own tower of Babel.

October 4, 2015

Photography Notes

Don’t just take a picture of anything that moves. Slow down your mind.  Involve yourself in times stillness, unseen and unfelt but present.

We all have these intuitions, that feeling of something is present before us.  Some important manifestation is waiting to be discovered. If only I could see it, the revelation of a connection with yourself and nature, your subject. This connection is calling you to explore the scene further until an image aligns itself with your internal landscape.

Photography can be therapeutic, giving one a chance to slow down and take your mind off yourself and focus on nature, our source of beauty, meditation and exploration. 

Release your anxieties by focusing on something outside yourself. Your senses can be overwhelmed and your mind begins to unravel without purpose in the pursuit of the image that is present before you but escaping.

Mental distractions can limit your ability to grow as a photographer. Each distraction creates a barrier to seeing, limiting your ability to learn and succeed in taking more chances with your camera techniques. 

If your senses are overwhelmed by a scene step back and take an image of the overall scene first. This will give you confidence, that you have something of record and now you can relax abit and begin to really look with renewed purpose the subject present before you.

The fate of your success is to control the impulses that demand action now. The voice in your head saying I have something better to do so I’ll take a quick shot and move on. Don’t make any judgements, take some deep breaths, relax your anxiety to distort good choices, let go of the need for more and ponder the stimulus in the scene that is drawing you closer to why you choose this subject in the first place. 

Then begin disciplining yourself to look deeper for compositions that can create an interest in your subject, more than just a surface gleam. Experiment with new compositions and perspectives that enhance your internal relation to the scene. 

When practicing your craft you are learning technique but more important learning  to see your visual interests.

Being excited about your relation with your subjects is half the battle to making good images, the other half of the battle is intent, what are you trying to convey to the viewer about you chosen subjects.