April 23, 2019

Gordon Parks, “The camera revealed them as they were, human beings imprisoned inside themselves.”

Images have emotions, it is how you create your images that can instill in the viewer a deeper understanding of the world without trying to manipulate them in to buy products he doesn't need or want.

A great photograph lays bare your inner approach to your subject. There are no formula's to copy if you are trying to express your inner vision through creating a photograph of the truth objectified. 

This need to become cattle herded by corporations to believe in their ways and not your own is a demeaning representation of your inner truth. If you act without an inner voice asking why, what is the purpose of your inner gifts? what is the underlying assertion being made for me and not by me? then you are truly under the thumb of mass media and the trolls that live by the code of misrepresentation. The underlying current of social media is profit. Using your information to exploit your posted thoughts for material gain.

To achieve greatness in living a life free from the evil stereotypes that shackle our mind toward hatred you must let go of the fear the pundits words express, deliberately seeking an attempt to stifle your inner intuitive recognition of the perpetual history of lies told endlessly to distract us from the obvious greed these voices share amongst themselves. They seek to complicate the truth and put truth under many hats to confuse the issues that they don't want reconciled.

Our gift to them is our financial collapse. And the incarceration of our freedoms deemed radical when all we are asking for is to be seen and heard. The wealthy demand silence from the masses and we are to be grateful accepting pennies on the dollar as they abuse the power they stole by taking everything they can before our world collapses in wars and climate aggression.

It is their will that creates the perfect intersection of wealth and poverty.  Here at the intersection, the wealthy pass with smiles and promises of a better a future.  All the time knowing that these people waiting to cross the street will never reach the other side.  For as they begin to cross there will always be an obstruction in their way, this obstruction is called stealing their lives away financially and by taking their truth and submerging it in fear and anxiety to work jobs that will kill them before their time.

Photography is no longer an art form.  It has become a commodity. A photograph is now used as a prop to sell products using the words authentic, real and powerful while the ad places in convenient location products that express a manly or womanly lifestyle.

The image seen becomes an awareness of the photographer's role in its creation. His assignment was dictated to him for a specific ad and his intellect used the words in the rough draft as a golden light to copy as best he could in the field the idea the product represented in a casual, open feeling of liberation. When in truth the image was a culprit in the exploitation of the viewers senses, targeted to directly to him as a response he made on social Media to his friends and family. 

There is no relationship built around dogma and specifics of image creation.  Photography is a freedom to become more than your image creation.  It is a chance to broaden your intuition and your connection to the external world demanding attention, if your eyes and heart are ready to enter your own internal universe.

The photographic image use to reveal the impossible. It was a window into another world of beauty, realness, terror, anger, insight... It revealed a world we didn't know existed and it made us aware of the power of documenting this world with honesty and integrity. 

This documentation whether it was wartime, (how many image do you see today of the wars raging in the middle east), migrant workers, race riots, war protests, pollution, sports, the migration of peoples due to climate change, etc... all this was done by photographers willing to sacrifice themselves to get images to bring light on the subjects people were ignorant of. The camera was the eye into a world it seemed forsaken by god. It was a sacred commitment by the photographer to seek out images that revealed the poverty, racism and despair of the people without a voice. And these men and woman photographers changed our world with their intuitive force of compassion to fight the overwhelming reality of greed that still exists and is exemplified by the beauty of this planet being destroyed by the self indulgent power of the wealthy for profit.

These moments captured for what? Why take an image that you don't feel to the very marrow of your soul? Why look through a viewfinder if all you shoot is a shallow reflection of who you might become?

It seems we treat photography as a copy machine an impersonation of our world that we didn’t create but fear changing our role in it. We feel tied to the complexity of earning a living, doing the opposite of our inner instincts because we are afraid of the forces of greed that has exploded in this new century beyond any sense of honor or caring for the people of this earth.

We now document our lives with images to parade our facade before others. To show others our journey in the self indulgent look at me world of shallow truth and understanding.

Our behavioral vision is one of simplicity of character. Remain in your present state without growing more intimate with your own unique visions of your world. 

Your truth never revealed in your shallow expressions of your own glossy picture perfect existence in a photograph that limits the viewer to a surface reflection of your shallow depth and easily ignored as just another player skating on the surface of intuitive knowing, the deeper existence present but ignored.

Image creation, your vision, should be open and honest, a living presence in your journey through your unique existence and your images expressing a truth that you visualize each time you put your eye to the view finder.

The herd instincts are strong, behavioral forces enticing mankind to conform to the powerful structures that have risen to control ones outer shell and to indoctrinate his intellect into the understanding that the world is controlled by the elite power of money.

Photography today has become a one view perspective on a world that must demand openness. The photographer that begins to build a relationship with the external visual stimulus by looking deeper under the hood by allowing his intuition to direct himself to those moments of pure singularity, a possession of passion that embraces all humanity and nature as one and creates an image expressing his, only his unique perspective without props that undermine the honesty of photography in this media frenzy of material domination.

By changing ourselves we could begin to control the external appearance of this realities solidity and mold it into a form of beauty through our image creations that could empower others to shed their facades of physical prisons and begin to explore their unique insights into their personal inner world.

Listen to your inner voice, your destination is further away than you think and closer too when you find your path of commitment to your photographic vision.  

We all struggled earlier in our careers as we began to explore our own inner voice allowing us time to become our visionary future through the creation of photographic moments that caught the subject and we hoped its essence.  But a photograph is not the essence of the subject but the external representation of a piece of our very essence.

We can’t hide from what we take pictures of. We intellectually know what we like and what we don’t like (in our structured existence). Partly from our parents and partly from our friends as we grew up. We have been led to our likes not by our own discoveries but by an external force of needing to be accepted as a part of a larger whole. We are basically animal instincts and as such we want to be part of something. We want to be herded and liked for our conformity, to the norm, the structure of our external reality never changing. This reality is not a stone tablet but in constant flux and malleability if one looks deep into his own unique inner form. We assume sameness but that is because of fear and loss of our position in the community whether good or bad.

But our herd instincts are strong and we want to follow leaders instead of being one.  

We must begin to tear down the walls we have assimilated, barriers to our inner intuition, as we grew up and begin to see the world through our own unique eyesight.

Images have become ubiquitous, they have lost meaning. We are over saturated with similarities of image taking because the majority of people look for sameness of patterns in their lives. We seek a need to be accepted. To be plain and ordinary without faults just a person living day by day. What ever happened to individuality and desire to be your own being present in your unique moments?

We have been given a toy, a toy that distracts us by conditioning us to participate in ads aimed at soliciting viewers to buy products from companies that know more about you than you know yourself.

Tyranny oppression, cruelty, reign of terror, despot, welcome to the 21st Century of organized global criminality. 

The value of photography is becoming lessened by the proliferation of snap shots and an underlying sense that photographs are nothing more than digital files without any deeper necessity than promoting oneself on social media. Images used to be a means to communicate a message of importance.

We must fight the urge to move on, ignoring our existential physical nature. As herded animals we like to roam and see new things. We are part of something bigger and this something bigger controls our lives. But when does this need to belong infiltrate your consciousness and your intellect measures your worth and assumes that where you belong is not of your making but of earning a wage to become a boredom of false facades. A character acting in someone elses plot and your inner intuition melts into pools of sorrow and regret.

Open you mind to your unique vision. Look deeper into nature and your subjects that draw you to them. Explore beyond your inner fears, reach out into the world and see with open eyes those images demanding to be made. That is, if you can open your mind to new possibilities and see these subjects without conditioned stereotypes interfering with your inner perceptions.

April 6, 2019

The creative process is becoming obsolete.  Artists love to get their fingers dirty examining the soil of life on this tiny speck in a vast universe of emptiness. Artists love to be hands on and explore their inner potential by experimenting with different intuitive concepts to find that inner revelation that expresses their personal being in its fullest. Why create art if it isn't an external representation of your inner world? 

To interact with the the external world is the only solution to an artists individuality, his/her loneliness of isolation creating a personal, inner vision that when expressed in its inner origin gives this compromised world a view of a unique personality.

We must realize that the structure of this world, this outer reality is a prison of conformity. A copycat existence where human beings like to repeat what they heard as if they themselves speaking it makes it original. We are a herd roaming through our existence without a deeper understanding of ourselves and our ability to change our perceptions of our existence. 

We are the cattle the wealthy instill with fear and loss so we will just go along with the extortion of hopes and our lives being lessened on a daily basis from the external pressures of money and fear.

We are blinded by monied interests to abandoned our true selves, our true visions in order to fit in a slot of performance necessary in order to make a living without living our true nature.

We live in a technology of oppression! A separation of society with the haves and have nots! We are being pulled away from an interaction with mother earth that is beginning to make humanity callous and amoral. As computers begin to dominate out lives, taking from us our individuality, we become autonomous. We become controlled by technology rather than technology being controlled by us.  We are the pawns to be played in a chess game rigged in the wealth's favor.

Every aspect of our lives is becoming known to outside forces of monied interests. Ads are being created especially for you even though you didn't realize that your movements on your computer have been followed by the major corporation for years. This accumulation of likes and dislikes are now being processed for direct ads to your mind/ego.  Even though you haven't yet realized in present time you needed that product.  Manipulation of your physical presence your intellect is the next frontier of human exploitation.

The herd instinct is a powerful force of compliance and security. This security however is an illusion like any other manipulation of your senses especially your ego.  We live in today's hypocrisy to be liked on a screen as if this has any thing to do with living in your life.  Human herds are being exploited without understanding the controlling forces of technologies power and pervasive influence.  

We are being manipulated in a battle of intellect over intuition. Our intellect loves redundancy and doesn't like new perceptions of individuality to surface in an otherwise controlled mind and physical presence. The physicality of the world is dominant by industries greed and power to manipulate perceptions that seem to placate the masses and ignore the few that see the avarice and greed behind the words of persuasion. The words that have been used for centuries, controlling the minds of the many with emotions of togetherness, of belief in the greatness of this America, of this exploited population herded into the corrals of words that ultimately are meaningless. This belief that America is our land, is your land is a lie. This land belongs to industry and technology and if you open your inner intuitive mind you will see the destruction of this planet is only the symptom of a deeper aggression, a protection of a way of life not for the people but for the few that rule this world with their ability to use propaganda as a means to separate us from becoming united against their perverse destruction of people and nature. 

Projection of their own inner fears. We seek compliance with the herd instincts to become part of and not separate from the masses.  But of course this limits your ability to become your inner essence and express your unique vision of the external world that is being corrupted by the psychopaths that control this world through intimidation and blatant corruption.

When we explore our world free from the webs of influence in the external world we begin to find connections that were present but not seen.  We begin to see through our own eyes the multiplicity in life and it's influence on us when we are present in our moments.  When we begin to explore our world through our inner intuition, we see the fallacy of the controlling forces trying to make our voices meek in their wealthy presence. But once you begin to see the world through your own eyes and not someone elses influences then you begin to create your inner vision. 

With technology creating more and more barriers to experience external life we begin to conform to the status quo.  And we succumb to the popularity of hand held devices that don't allow us a vision of our future.  We have become slaves to the technology and its powerful internal and external demands. 

 

When we go out of ourselves to explore nature and humanity we enter into the world seeking an image that represents our feelings in the moment.  Sometimes these feelings are oppressive because we had too much involvement with the outer chaos that is created by the powers that be to subdue our inner revelations and force is to huddle down afraid to seek our intuitive vision. But we must be strong and fight through these moments of despair and seek our inner world externalized in powerful images generated through our unique perspective. 

 

When we sit in front of a screen hour by hour what has our lives become. Our life is no longer unique but repetitive and focused not on our inner vision but someone else's controlling nature.  

Technology never stops it explodes with new means of distractions and controlling influences. We see it now in the ability of technology to generate life like people without the need for a photographer through computer generated images.  We can sit in front of a screen and create our images without ever going outside and interacting with nature or with other human beings that are alive and trying to be present in their unique moments.  What is life becoming if we never take a walk outside ourselves and into our unique universe and express this inner vision through our external efforts to become more real.

April 4, 2019

Part 2

The State of Stock 

From an Article I wrote on Stock Photography back in 2006

Royalty Free

I feel the big three agencies,  Getty, Corbis and JupiterMedia are trying to paint a more rosy picture of the industry and especially their cash cow RF than there actually is.  

They claim micro-sites and subscription pricing models won't have a big impact on the Stock Photo Industry and then turn around and embrace these new models, expand these new models, advertise them and market them over RF and RM and say with a straight face they will not effect the very RF and RM licensing models there undermining.  Cigarettes don't cause cancer people smoking them do.  They must see the traditional RF market peaking in terms of pricing and volume.  Why is that?  

We know that our income from RM peaked a few years ago and is on the decline.  We can expect more of same as these new price points dominate the stock industry.  I am not saying we can't have some good sales even some great sales but these kind of sales will happen less and less.  The question you have to ask yourself is should you continue to submit and I say YES!  You have to in order to keep up with dwindling returns on your images.  Without new blood in the system you are guaranteeing your failure.  

If you go to most big agency portals and do a generic keyword search more often than not RF images come up heavy on the first pages.  At some sites there home-page is a walking Billboard for Clip, you can see discounts offered on their clip products even gifts given if they sign up for one of their subscription services.  Check out Index Stock Imagery and WireImage for just a couple examples of what I am talking about.   

Everybody is using clip, it is mainstream.  The proliferation of images from studio production companies is undermining the perceived value of photography.  With so much content to wade through what image buyer has the time to really examine an image and fit it to their ad campaign, the motto now is "just good enough".  

The speakers talked about opportunities for themselves in this changing market place especially when it came to wholly owned images.  This offers them multiple ways to market images at different price points without having to give royalties to an assortment of individual photographers and other content suppliers.  They can then use these images in a subscription service ( with monthly download fees), individual RF sales online and RM sales in Stone+ or any other business scheme they feel can make them money.  I also look at the wholly owned image issue as a bargaining chip when these agencies sell out to a Multi-Media company.  With wholly owned images the new company doesn't skip a beat in marketing these images in their own products.

Wholly owned imagery is probably the worse news for the independent stock photographer because it means his images are competing with heavily art directed concepts that target the very clients his spec images are trying to sell to.  Royalties are an albatross around Jonathan Klein's neck and he wants to get rid of it now as he begins the last restructuring of Getty before he sells it.    

Many photographers see 'work for hire' or simply an employee of a distribution portal or studio production company as a more secure future rather than shooting on spec and hoping your images sell.

The image distributors don't want to wait for images.  Speed is profit.  They want more now to take advantage of this insatiable appetite for image content.  So they tap other smaller agencies, studios and now the amateur market that are looking to sell their content on a world wide distribution platform.  

I feel this is one source of my stress, is how can I keep up and shoot enough good imagery to increase income given that millions of imagery are uploaded daily onto the web.  Is there another way my images can reach the client?

These distribution portals are under the illusion that volume sales will make up for lower 'return per image'.  If you base your licensing model on low price and volume sales only and don't control the production of your product then all you have is a glut of new imagery being created for that market place by you and your competitors and pricing once again becomes the only way to gain market share and that is gained by lowering prices even further.  It’s a no win situation and the RM photographers are feeling the heat.  Also,  in any market place once you begin slashing prices there will always be some new venture capitalist who can lower prices even further by introducing another business model that further reduces pricing.  

Rights Ready and Riser

I don't think these new pricing schemes will increase my income much even though I will participate in them.  Bahar Gidwani former owner of Index Stock Imagery (he is selling Index to PhotoLibrary) says that he is not afraid of Getty's simplified licensing models because they still have the flavor of RM.  Clients demand simple straight forward online transactions.  My belief is this will further erode our income by once again competing on price alone to gain market share.  A bad deal for the individual photographer.  

Will clients look to PC (Photographers Choice) Rights Ready and PC RM as viable brands with quality imagery?  As more and more photographers get discouraged because of the lower income return from PC and move on to other distributors, the PC collection could lose its depth and quality of imagery and make it ineffectual to compete with the growing number of brands on the Getty site.  

Notice once again the treatment of the independent stock photographer.  The only way for us to get images posted on the Getty site is to pay.  Notice no open invitation to submit to Riser.

And what about this new brand called "Open".  Once again the marginalized independent photographer will be left out in the freezing cold and only the big shooters and major suppliers will be invited to participate.  I can feel a breach in the levee now and like New Orleans we are sinking.

CAN THE INDEPENDENT PHOTOGRAPHER SURVIVE

We are fighting against ominous trends in the Stock Industry and all of these trends are put in place to benefit the distributors and not the independent stock shooter.

" The image has to standout from the common place subjects that we see on a daily basis.  Mediocre images have little power anymore".  BS,  all I see are mediocre images parading around as insightful, cutting edge propaganda stroking some creative researchers ego but what real value do these images posses.  In my experience more often than not a great image is what fits the clients picture needs and usually this is a straight-forward and clean concept or subject that is composed, lit, and presented with good color saturation and photographed in a unique way.  Another words the traditional stock shot.  Who defines a great image the client if it fits his photo needs, society if the image transcends the ordinary and touches some internal chime in us all, the consumer if its trendy and hits them on a pop chart level.  We all shoot great imagery but if we are segmented out, marginalized into a lower priority brand (PC) who is going to see our stuff.  

I do think we need to push ourselves to shoot more intuitively instead of a straight capture of our subjects.  Evolve out shooting style, experiment with lighting, see deeper into the subject looking for that gesture that hits the universal.  Also, shooting for the web the images need to be well lit and have a clean concept presentation.  No extra clutter.  Clients are searching at the speed of clicks for that one in a million shot (literally).   

I have a recurring image in my mind of a sinking sail boat.  The boat has been hit with many torpedos.  The torpedos have names attached to them, clip, subscription services, micro-sites, copyright violations, wholly owned images, technology, overhead, work for hire, studio production companies, amateur market etc... and the photographers have climbed the mast and are clustered on the look out platform holding on for their lives and all are saying ," look I think I see a safe harbor ahead all will be OK".  

Declining budgets are driving image buyers to cheaper sources of imagery.  Just like WalMart corporations are squeezing their vendors to reduce costs and crank up the volume of image production if they want to see an increase in their income. On another level the internet allows companies to by-pass the middle man (ad agencies, art buyers) all together.  This in turn lowers the budget at the ad agency which in turn forces them to lower the image costs to stay within budget in order for them to compete when a corporation comes a calling.  

Check out the new trend at some companies web sites.  They are using customer images to sell their product. Consumer/crowd sourcing at its best, www.becu.org.  Some resorts are now crowd-sourcing imagery from customers that have visited their resort and are posting these images/videos as ads on their website.  This trend will continue and expand,  further eroding our chances of making sales. 

We have all heard this before but now it has become a standard reality.  The internet needs content and small image files are just fine.  I have a question that I think poses the main question facing Getty and the individual stock photographer.  How much would you charge for an image to be used as a 5 second ad on a ipod?  Folks that is where we are heading.  This insatiable appetite for cheap images is where the image market is going.  And that is why subscription clip and wholly owned images are the future for the distributors.

Jeffrey Burke talked about the long awaited media convergency that has finally arrived with accessible broadband.  Rich media delivered to the desk top.  " The new big wave that will hit the Stock Photo Industry will be to incorporate in the ad, pictures, text, spoken word, music, motion graphics and more all woven together into a seamless presentation.  He thinks that video/graphics is the next big opportunity for the distributors.  I agree, check out www.mediastorm.org.  This is more editorial/journalism but you can see the commercial potential.  

As the years progress consumers will demand this rich visual experience and where will that leave the still image?  

Jeffrey also talked about a concept introduced by Joseph Schumpeter an Austrian economist called "creative destruction".  "His theory of, gales of creative destruction, refers to the concept of industrial transformation that accompanies radical innovation.  For us this means that new technology or business practices become prevalent and create new market opportunities many older established business or whole industries might suffer serious decline or extinction".  Can you say the Independent Stock Photographer.  

The industry keeps touting how picture needs are increasing but I feel the more important question for us photographers is how are they getting those picture needs met.  The independent photographer cannot be only committed to the same old way of doing business.  We need to try and reach those customers, we used to make a living off, by having our images at many different price levels and yes as much as I hate to admit it at sometime in the near future, the micro-site level as well.    

Can we offer new related service that can re-connect with a distinct market segment we once sold imagery too?  Maybe we can offer along with our images a website that also offers consulting services, articles on shooting, lecture series on topics that hit your target image buyer business needs.  Nothing new hear but action is needed.  We see these kinds of websites happening all over the web now.  Can we bring something new to the table and attract a client base?

Can we change the way we shoot, not radically but enough to give image buyers a fresh perspective on an old theme?

We know its a buyers market.  We know photographers keep creating imagery even though this very creation is the cause of sinking prices.  We know distributors benefit more because it costs them nothing to have these lemmings produce more and more content.  We know it will get worse as China/India and others start ramping up their image content .  We know clients are looking for cheap/free images or they will just steal them off the web.  We also know we have no other choice but to keep moving forward and create imagery we believe will sell and look for the best portals to distribute our imagery.  

Gary Shenk from Corbis thinks that by doing these 4 things the professional can offer the client value that will seal the deal and make the sale.

1) Great Imagery

2) Strong Rights Management

3) Metadata and Search (good keywords)

4) Global Marketing and Distribution

I would add a fifth one,  Consistent high-res 50mb files cropped, cleaned up and ready for download.

What about these that could also separate out your talent from the growing mob.

1) Consistency in producing great images not a one image wonder

2) Knowledge of commercial standards ( model releases, invoices, copyright etc...)

3) Solutions to clients problems

4) Experience

5) Service

I have ranted long enough and I think sometimes the best thing is not to over think things but just act and move on.  I will be shooting and editing more images getting these images out there,  looking for new opportunities that can level the playing field and bring back the Independent Stock Photographer as a viable piece of the stock photo industry puzzle.  

Your friend in an archeological dig finding the bones of an early 21 century creature called dinophotograsoris,

Jim

April 4, 2019

Becoming yourself,  we are forced into becoming what others think we should become and not the person we were intended to be.

We adapt to the never ending need to be part of something larger than ourselves.  This herd instinct is an ingrained animal behavior. 

Your individuality is a necessary means to express your true character.  But fear is always present. What would others think if I were to express my true feelings? If you never try and express your true nature how will you ever know if others would enjoy your inner revelations. 

Of course the problem now in our surface society of greed and avarice we have the social media trolls deflating any energy of a true expression, intimidating the mind to keep quiet and remain on a concrete path abandoning your inner artistic talent. 

You must have strength in your own inner character and push pass the mouths that have not found themselves and therefore they feel compelled to bring other's into their small world view of anger and frustrations.

We must as human beings express our inner revelations. We must begin to tear away the controlling influence of an external structured existence. We have to realize that we are not worker ants for the corporate minds. We are individual inspirations and we must learn to express ourselves forcibly and without fear.

Just another cog in the wheel of authentic lies as their truth stays hidden under a mountain of false words creating new trends as the herd flows where the ego lurks. Why not instead of listening to others demands for specific  content, move forward with your own internal relationship with the external world and create meaningful imagery of your internal landscape. Your intuitive senses are ripe for exploration and your image creations will tell the universe that you represent the intuitive forces of nature and are expressing an inner reality with purpose and self revelation.

We are gullible in the insistence that someone else's  words are our truth when in fact they are repeating words known to satisfy the disinterested spirits exhausted from the daily grind of frustration and inconsistent behavior from making choices that express our true character and not a facade built around social media, ads and money.

We are being dumbed down to have a computer think for our shrinking intelligence of a once independent spirit.

If you can create personal, interior imagery without an ego to be seen, then you are on a path of truth in  your unique character.  Putting your ego aside and just experimenting with lighting, focus and composition will enhance your image creation. You mustn't allow your chosen subject to feel inferior in public places.

Second guessing yourself on where to be and what angle is best for the subject at hand is your independent choice. Just relax and be present and aware of light and composition. You will always find a better composition the more you are in tune with your subject and see the many possibilities unfolding as the light begins to take shape and the composition begins to take a structured awareness of the infinite possibilities being revealed to you. 

Our senses get drained, our senses are tired of the grind and there is nothing left to make images of. Our intellect is in protection mode, listen to the clever assumptions it makes in your behalf. It is a redundancy of learned responses to the ever more frustrating lives we lead as products on display which is eroding our ability to take our lives back from the herd mentality. We can’t think for ourselves anymore. We have to be told what to do and say and how to do it and what to do. We are becoming frightened and introverted to our potential. We must have strength to explore our inner world and the courage to express ourselves for external view.

The constraints of society are getting to a point when everyone is copying everyone else. There is nothing new but the old ways of seeing and the old ways of behaving.

This is nonsense. There is an infinite way to express your inner talent. Your determination will get you passed a point of holding back in fear but you must push forward and release your artistic visions and pursue your holy grail.

Densely concentrated time, an over flow of meanings, surprises and defeats as we move along our timeline.

Can one break through the mysterious barrier of our ultimate isolation and bridge the gap between self and object and truly experience first hand the touch of oneself and another’s mindful awareness?

Breaking through the barrier to both inner self and outer form, a universal sight of external and internal harmony in a reality in tune to the voice of yourself in flesh and intuition and the inherent wall broken down that existed between truth and falsehood. For some it is to much to fathom, the ultimate goal of life is to become your unique vision pitted against the standard formula of societies wants, the standard existence of the many living a ho hum life and view of the miraculous waiting to be discovered.

March 30, 2019

Most of the time, we don't have time, to contemplate the scene before us, the ability to immerse ourselves into the thoughts of nature reflecting in our own inner being and then outward to create a unique vision. 

If we interpreted our relationship with nature the same we interpret our relationship with human beings then our ability to communicate on a deeper level would prevail. We wouldn’t have to use words that communicate a surface relationship with the reality we share. Our truth would be intuitively recognized. 

Coming on a scene without an intuitive realization that can connect you with the core expression demanded within the cameras frame shows how limited and repetitive our imagery can become.

Intuitive realization is your photographic eye awakening in the presence of a growing foundation of visual purpose.  

A recognition of your unique burgeoning relationship with your inner visual senses and your external subject.

You must not hurry through the beginning relationship with your subject by attempting to force an image on the external forces hampering your visual craft. 

Patience is always a key to success. Allowing the relationship to grow and blossom into a unique understanding and a vision that explains your inner world at the moment the exposure was made. An inner truth revealed through a visual stimulus.

An image worthy to be taken is to wait until the roots of your intuition are firmly planted in the external soil and then and only then will your composition instill in you a need to click the shutter.

To finally see the overpowering connectedness of ourselves and the external forces of nature is a blessing of inspiration.  

The infinite choices present, where to begin your journey to your individual expression. What is it that drives you forward and without a safety net of conformity to lessen the degree of fear present in you, to step out of the formula's you have been taught?

Your purpose is present in you but you need to break free from the redundant behavior that is confining your vision in a narrowing perspective. 

Your conditioned journey through your young life instilled in you a need to conform.  When you take pictures now you are following the herd, you are being accepted into the patterns of your friends and other photographers that found their rhythm not in their individual expressions but by copying from others. This need to copy others limits your ability to create your own visual art.

This slows your maturing visual sense. This allows you a standard of representation that is quickly understood and accepted.  But it will not set you free to becoming the individual that you are destined to be.  

Your images will not be found in repetitive actions, going to the same formula over and over again without changing the composition of your internal awareness, your intuitive force of inner perceptions becoming your external vision.

Coming upon a scene you are the craftsman taking these infinite possibilities and narrowing them down to an individual perception that is your unique vision.

Don’t rush through the scene. Be present and accept your place, your perspective, as only one of many possibilities. Study the light and its angle on your potential subject. Begin thinking of your lens choice and the need for a tripod to get the depth of field necessary to complete your internal intuitive vision.  

The scene before you begins to take shape.  You are now in the moment and time’s movement is unnecessary for you are focused, unaware of you're meddling intellects attempts to make you change your perception to a known composition taken millions of times before. You focus harder on your potential creation and thus begins your partnership with nature and the external force of revelation. 

Now you are not an outsider you are one with your subject. The subject has accepted your deliberate motives, a unique vision, only you saw and is accepting your diligence and your inspiration. 

Before over thinking too much you just click the shutter. You are present in this moment like never before. Being one with the external world is the greatest high a photographer can experience. And in that moment of connecting with your inner intuition and the external scene you created a unique beauty that others might have missed but because you entered the scene through your intuition you were able to represented your inner being.

There are times when we don’t have the time to study and unfold the layered scene in creating our own vision.

We sometimes must act instinctively, quickly recognizing the scene rapidly unfolding before us and quickly position ourselves to take advantage of nature’s forces.

By moving quickly anticipating the movement of you subject you were able to recognize the potential possibilities and bring yourself into the reality present by immersing yourself in the fluidity of the scene and

your unique sight, seeing the potential and acting on it instinctively.

Always be present in your moments. To hurry through them you are falling into the trap of expedited time. That overwhelming feeling that in order to accomplish everything at once we must keep pace with our limiting wants and do as much as possible in the now, in order to feel we have done our best. This is training in the reality of someone else’s structured existence not yours. This need to hurry past your most precious moments undermines your natural gifts bestowed on you by your own uniqueness.

March 17, 2019

When I first started creating imagery I was lucky enough to be accepted at some of the best photo agencies in the world. 

When you were signed up with these agencies you felt that your images would be in safe hands and that you and the agency would both earn a decent wage. 

The photographs we took were called stock imagery because when you submitted your images to the photo agency they were put in file cabinets waiting to be asked for.  Just like any unique product stock imagery blossomed with the explosion of magazines and advertisers demanding better, higher quality imagery and more unique images to choose for their projects (ads). One of the many things I liked about stock photography was that you didn’t have to deal directly with the clients wanting to buy your images, the stock agencies handled all that for you which freed your time up to travel and create more images.  

And the photo agency handled the final captioning, filing and client contacts. 

They received 50% of the sale. Back in the early eighties and up to the mid 2000's this was still a viable business arrangement. 

Two things happened during the late 90's and early 2000's that completely devastated the Stock Agencies ability to maintain a decent income for themselves and the photographers that worked for them making images.

The first thing that darkened the clear water of successful agencies was the introduction of Royalty Free Images. Royalty free shattered the dominant Rights Managed model of pricing based on usage. And also the ability to track sales and charge the buyer if they used the image for some other purpose without paying.

The other big change to Stock Photography was the transition from film cameras to digital cameras. One of the key factors in this transition was the cost of film. Processing film can get very expensive especially when you are shooting 100's of rolls on a single trip through some spectacular, iconic American landscape.

The average amateur in the early days of Stock Photography didn’t have the funds or the time to travel and create tens of thousands of imagery to process, edit, caption and then submit to the photo agencies. So the competition to submit to these agencies was restricted to mostly professional photographers. 

This didn't mean of course that there weren't some great images being created by woman and men outside the so called professional level of image making, that were just as good and sometimes better than the pros but the pros had the time to create great images consistently for the agencies they worked for. 

But once digital cameras proved to the agencies that their digital sharpness was good enough to be included in the files of the Stock agencies then the cozy relationship photographers had with the photo agencies was pretty much over. Now anyone could create good images without worrying about the cost of film. 

The other thing that helped spur the amateur to taking more pictures was that digital cameras allowed you to set an auto exposure and focus, as did the newer film cameras, that could automatically adjust the settings to get a decent image in all sorts of lighting challenges. 

And when you add in the ease of use of camera phones you can see why there is an explosion of images circulating through stock libraries and social media and these images are being trolled by ad men sent to find the all important realistic image for their next authentic ad.  

And you can be assured the photographer will not get what his image is worth. And for that matter if you tried to bargain with the ad man he would just go pick another image in the stack of billions of images visible on the social media sites or the agencies web pages and get the price he wanted in the first place, pennies on the dollar.

The transition has been made and the amateur has become the source of image taking and the so called professional are livid that they have to take a back seat to the new wave of image takers, making their once golden egg relationship, the 50/50 split between the agency and the photographer, obsolete, leaving them struggling to make any kind of living off there efforts when now they are competing with billions of photographers and trillions of images being taken with the understanding that those images are not worth what they once were worth. 

I received just recently from one of my agencies a sale of one of my exclusive images for pennies. Because of steep reduction in image pricing many professional photographers have quit making images and retired. 

Since we now live in a society where more is better we have more images created on a daily basis than we did when photo agencies came into existence.  

What has this massive amount of imagery done to the once Rights Managed photo agencies and their professional photographers?  They are becoming obsolete. 

Rights Managed Exclusivity, imagery that the photographer created and was able to get a signed release from the people or product in the photograph. These images were tracked by the Photo Agency to make sure they weren't being used by similar companies selling in the same competing markets. This protected the buying client and the photographer for possible litigation.

Not all images were Rights Managed Exclusive, there were RM images that didn't have the appropriate releases and they were mainly used for non-exclusive editorial use.

These RM images are no longer needed. Most agencies now, are almost all Royalty Free! Buy a one time use and you have that image forever to do with it as you like. The agencies say no, we monitor the usage and will make sure the photographer who created the image in the first place will be paid more if the usage is beyond the contract agreed upon. That is a load of garbage, royalty free is just what it sounds like. Many buyers using the same image over and over again in different markets while the photographer that created the image never gets his fair share of the license fees. 

Royalty free to the client but also royalty free to the creator of the image, the photographers. They receive pennies on the dollar for their time and effort to capture a unique subject.  

The question is how can any photographer nowadays make a living at creating imagery and sending them to photo agencies to sell for them.  Simply they can’t. Once royalty free was introduced the business community flocked to that marketing scheme and has never stopped getting imagery on the cheap as compared to what photographers received when they were with agencies selling Rights Managed Imagery.  

Think about the over saturation of images in the photo market place, the trillions made in a year. These images are mostly created by the general population. 

And now they are being sent in to Royalty Free photo sites and getting paraded around the business world as a cheap way to buy images for your product or website.

Without much of a photo understanding.  But because of the ease of use and the simple controls necessary for getting an image with sharpness and ok color you see the social media bandwagon of uploaded images of all possible subjects.

This in turn discourages the photographers trying to create their own unique vision of the world and to make a living as a photographer.  

Photographers are losing ground to the masses that create imagery of all possible subjects and then post them top sites that sell them for peanuts on the dollar. Or give them, away for free.  What does it mean to be a professional photographer in today's fast paste need to be seen not very much.

The photograph is losing its value as an artifact of our history.  The creation of a great photograph is undermined by the simplicity of picture taking. How much time does anyone now a days take, really studying an image to understand and feel the images importance.

Photography as an art form is doomed. The instant image taken and uploaded without a purpose instills in the viewer an overwhelming sense that the photograph is not art but a product, an over saturated look at details and scenes that are repetitive and dull.

We live in a world of surface level perceptions without depth and empathy for the subject matter. We cruise by the importance of image creation like we do fads when buying clothes. Photography is now a byproduct of making images.  It is their for show and the product the ad man is selling is the star.  

March 16, 2019

The Future of Stock Photography

I was looking back at some old letters I wrote back in 2006 to my Photo Agencies and photographer friends concerning the major upheaval that was breaking apart a once profitable arena for photographers to make a decent living by shooting stock imagery. 

Some of the Photo agencies have changed especially when ShutterStock started out in 2003 and is now strictly RF images and is making the executives at Getty nervous about their future.

Some of the agencies mentioned in these letters are no longer in existence or have been bought by larger agencies.

Jupiterimages was bought by Getty Images and Corbis, Bill Gates photo agency, was bought by a Chinese company but images are distributed by Getty.  On a side note Bill Gates got tired of his agency, Corbis not making money and having him fork out millions a year to keep them afloat.

Part 1

November 1, 2006 

    

STATE OF STOCK

November 1, 2006

I reviewed some articles on the future of the Stock and speeches given to a PACA (Picture Archive Council of America) conference in the spring to see if anything they said back then would foreshadow the changes that have happened in the last 3-4 months in the Stock Industry and low and behold if you read between the lines they have laid out the distributors strategy right down to embracing of micro-sites, wholly owned imagery and subscription services.  The speeches were given by Mark Berns at Jupiterimages, Lewis Blackwell at Getty, Gary Shenk at Corbis, Jeffrey Burke past president of PACA and Roger Ressmeyer present president of PACA. 

"Once an industry reaches saturation, customers stop buying new images and are only trying to replace ones that have gotten old or over used.  This leads to a drop in volume.  This drop in volume leads to hyper competition between sellers and eventually negative propaganda toward their competition in order to gain market share".  

We are about to enter the mud slinging stage.  

Make no mistake about it the independent stock photographer is in a free fall without a main parachute, thrown off the Getty cargo plane to make room for wholly owned imagery that can be utilized in many licensing models without having to pay individual photographers royalties.  Do independent stock photographers have a back-up chute?   

The main thing that comes out of reading these speeches is the positive spin they put on the state of the Stock Industry and how micro-payment sites are not really going to be a threat and yet at the same time they say this there is an undercurrent of anxiety that just maybe these $1 sites will affect their business and harm the traditional stock sales.  I believe not only will these new micro-sites wipe out many existing distributors and small Agencies we have now but they will become the standard in 5 years or less.  Some of these Executives are talking about creating a super Rights Managed Exclusive Portal that deals with the highest quality imagery out there, this elite core of images would maintain higher prices against the steady decline of RPI (Return Per Image) that the Stock Industry is seeing now.  Not a chance once you open the flood gates to the consumer market the whole system will collapse and it will be a free for all with all of us in hand to hand combat with each other.  Think Walmart and what it does to the Mom and Pop neighborhood store and you know your days are numbered as an independent photographer.  Once we became content providers the writing was on the wall and just like other manufacturing jobs that have been lost in the US to foreign markets we are next.  I read where Getty is in India giving photo lessons to the locals on how to use digital cameras.  We are already being outsourced.  

One of the things that stood out was how these distribution portals put more emphasis on volume sales, speed and profits over the relationship with the independent stock photographer.  I think alot of us are still hoping for a return to the old traditional stock agency relationship where we were once partners in the business model.  It won't happen.  We supply the content but not just content but massive amounts of content and if you can't supply thousands of images a year to these portals you will probably end up losing money in the long run.  

Micro Payment Sites

They discussed micro-payment sites and one speaker believed that these micro-sites will have to eventually raise their prices per image download if they want this business model to flourish.  The question is will production costs go up enough that the photographers submitting to these sites begin to demand higher prices for their imagery?  I hope so but doubt it.  Right now I feel most of the shooters on this site enjoy the community feedback on their images ( all very positive) and they like the instructions they get on how to improve their photo skills.  And besides they have a job and don't need to make a living on these images so small sales are just icing on the cake.  Many have stated that they couldn't of imagined just a few years ago getting paid for their images, for now that's enough.  

The one making the money is the distributor and they are making big money on the backs of the photographers.  Getty and others are moving to a micro-site business model. We know Clip destroyed the main bread and butter sales for the RM photographer and $1 sites will wipe out the bread and butter income of the RF shooters.  But it won't stop there I am afraid, we are seeing the end of a livable wage in photography.  Right now if I added in my hours of scanning and computer time plus travel and shooting and equipment etc.. I am making pennies on the dollar.  What will I make once these micro-sites proliferate the market place.  For that matter what do I make now.  Some of my exclusive images sell for lower than $10.00 and some of these sales lock that image up for years.  

There will be four main licensing models I believe in the near future.

1) Wholly owned imagery

   A) RM 

   B) RF

   C) Subscription

2) Micro-payment sites

3) Open systems like Alamy

4) Pay to Play Model

Open systems like Alamy create their own problems one of which is that the shear numbers uploaded on a monthly basis makes it pretty darn hard for any one particular photographer's images being seen by a client.  Corbis has dumped over 75,000 RF images on the Alamy site already. But what else is new!

Each image has a shorter and shorter life span.  Ad agencies are asked to target a specific demographic with customized ads, picture one image being sent to 30 desktops as a pop up ad, how do you price this using a RM system.  Lower priced stock images are becoming a necessity and where do you think they are going to get these low res images, you guessed it from the crowd, the mob, the community, the consumer, call it what you will but it will be the micro-sites or free sites like Flicr (which by the way has some of the best imagery I have seen on these kinds of sites). These sites are beginning to proliferate the market and these sites offer new content in huge quantities on a daily business and the image quality is getting better and better all the time.

The music stores can only carry and sell a certain amount of packaged goods, they have limited space, so they sell only the top favorites in very selective categories. 

Traditional agencies in the Stock world acted similarly but with the tech explosion and the internet all that has changed.

They call it the "long tail" on the internet, businesses can store hundreds of thousands of cd’s with coverage and depth in all music categories.  They make money when someone buys the most popular cd by Madonna or an obscure blues artist from Alabama.  What matters is satisfying the customer and when that customer finds his oldy but goodie he might look for similar cd’s on your recommended list and buy even more obscure artists from your site.   Amazon.com is like that.  

This is happening also in the Stock Photography world but on a much larger scale.  Alamy is getting a long tail ( close to 7 million images and counting) so are micro-payment sites and now Getty is introducing a new "Open" portal that will flood the already saturated market with even more imagery.  The problem for Getty and other distributors that are sure to follow is pricing.  Micro-payment sites are all about pricing but Getty wants to keep prices higher.  I don't think you can have it both ways high prices and a glut of images and expect prices to stay high, they will fall.  My RM sales are getting obscenely low and this is at the beginning of the micro-site craze. 

Don't forget Google as a place to search and find imagery.  Google is already crowd sourcing by having a game whereby you compete with other consumers to add keywords to images on their search engine and of course people are doing this for free.  Once images can be sourced better using their search engine the consumer and clients will bypass the distribution portals altogether.  

Next Royalty Free and Getty Charging Photographers To Upload To Their Site.