Dandelions Close-up

Dandelions Close-up
Dandelions In Black And White

Monday, January 13, 2020

January 13, 2020

Cambridge Analytica

My Own Interpretation In My Own Words 

Loss of Independence and Loss of Truth. 

We are pawns in a movie with actors sending us information to manipulate our mind to believe their truth and not the real truth of their evil disguise. 

This movie is an invention and is promoted and produced by psychological influences taken from your social media revelations and financial records. 

Big business knows more about you than you know about yourself.

All this information is used to create a profile of you and how you might be swayed to vote for a different candidate or buy a product that wasn’t even on your radar screen.

What you like and what you dislike are known by corporations, wealthy bankers, wealthy market gurus, the military, wealthy families desiring to control the worker ants by manipulating them to believe what this narrow band of greed can accomplish by mental manipulation of your intellect will keep you under the control of the rich as you are corralled in a mirage of existence, not living your life but someone else’s manipulation of your supposed free will working in a dead end job soon to be off shored for even cheaper labor, welcome to the 21st century of madness and mind control.

Listen carefully to the spokesmen for the wealthy and you will find their mouth pieces are our elected officials bought and sold by rigging elections.

Statements made by our government are lies and exaggerations to protect their way of life, using people as their slaves and our tax dollars are funneled over to the powerful families as an inheritance for these corrupt, selfish, greedy imitations of past gods who think themselves above our constitution. 

Do we as a society have a shared understanding of truth? Do we fully understand what is happening in our own country and in other countries, where the wealthy want complacency in order to steal their land for what is underneath, oil?

We seek information to understand our particular time in history, who are the demons and who are the good guys in this mad, mad, mad world of wealth and greed that have finally been seen by the people that have been manipulated from the time this country was formed, in the beginning, the slave owners in this so called democracy, these wealthy landowners had no intention of stopping slavery, this good old USA of manipulators and rich land owners were addicted to power and greed. And to this very day nothing has changed in this country or around the world, the manipulations continue and the innocent people suffer to make the wealthy richer!

But now there is even a more destructive and sinister plot afoot where we never know truth in politics, news feeds, politicians, investors, wealthy families, bankers, corporations, for there is a new level of control being used to allow only the people that have power to know the truth while the populous know only what they have been fed, false information from their social media sites. Words, twisted and moved around, a sentence now written or spoken deceives the viewer and listener to think a different way from the known facts and are now used not to inform but to control their emotions fed with lies. 

Photographs are not documenting a reality we all share in and trust but manipulating our visual senses with propaganda to control our behavior in order for us to choose candidates and laws that will only do us more harm and destroy our democracy by shattering the ideal of freedom we were all hand fed. 

News outlets create their own version of a truth that has been rehearsed to counteract the real truth spoken by honest people that hold the truth as the foundation of any democracy.

Why manipulate citizens of your own country? Well, first off, for profit.  If you can show the wealthy corporations, the wealthy families, the wall street investors and the wealthy bankers a means of psychological warfare, a means to control perceptions of reality over a population or even a small segment of people where you could influence them to change their vote or buy something they don’t need and can’t afford, all by using information these citizens thought was fun to participate in by giving away their personal, private information to social media corporations, their personal feelings exposed, their thoughts and physical likes and dislikes displayed for programers to take and exploit that now can be combed and used to manipulate their behavior, like a Pavlov dog, by major corporations, what excitement for the social media sites to have this information they can sell to lobbyist and political campaigns that could manipulate different segments of the citizenship to vote a certain way by targeting them with false ads that can hook them in their fears, their doubts and neurotic personalities to vote or not vote at all which could sway the election as it did in 2016 by a candidate that had the backing of major corporations, wealthy Super Pacs and Cambridge Analytica.

Words, becoming sentences of lies and mental mind control creating an automatic response without study or understanding.  In todays technological destruction of personality and individuality we seem to respond not to honest facts but more to our inner feelings which are controlled by propaganda machines and bought politician that have learned how to push the right buttons and to get people to hate others for this distracts them from the true criminals that should be jailed the powerful 1%.

They have been brained washed to think and feel that differences mean unpatriotic!

With the heavy influence of social media selling our personal information we are easily trained to react according to their behavioral studies and to vote for and to protest against something that actually was for our benefit but because of the controlling information they have on our private life these criminals of destructive propaganda were able to direct ads specifically to you controlling what you felt and thought about a new law or candidate. 

People in this confusing time of technology overload are easily duped to believe a lie and not believe a truth. Who do you believe when the dis hacks are spreading lies like the wildfires down in Australia!

What benefits would the different parties in the American voting scam have to cheat and sway peoples feelings and ideas toward a vote or decision that was not in their best interests. The wealthy call these swing voters, these manipulated human beings unaware of the lies propelling them to change their minds and to vote in absence of the truth or facts “persuadalbles!”


With the right verbiage, the right keywords known to the voter, a candidate could send out a propaganda letter or a TV ad directed at a certain constituency that would be influenced to vote a different way given what they thought was the truth. But it wasn’t the truth it was a false propaganda to manipulate the psyche of the voter to vote against their best interests. 

Minds can be changed, could be convinced that something is purple when it is yellow, the truth is a lie and the lie a truth all done through information taken through social media and what guinea pigs posted concerning their private lives, their likes and dislikes.

They could even use disinformation to change the minds of people fed up with the criminal rule of law we now live in here in this United States of preposterous wealth in the hands of the few, to not vote at all, why bother if everyone is a crook only out for themselves, even those candidates that are not lying and are telling the people the truth of their predicament. 

How our freedoms and our hard earned money is going up the ladder to the wealthy as our corrupt politicians do the dirty work trying to cut money for public schools, food programs for the poor, social security and medical coverage, climate change, and investments with alternate energy proposals. 

All this is done to keep money flowing upward to the heavens of gluttony.

Through social media, everything about your life is studied and categorized to set a profile for corporations, wealthy bankers and wealthy families to buy this information and then use your personal info against you, to manipulate you through a fraud of lies to maneuver you to change your mind and vote for one of their bought politicians. America the beautiful should be changed to America the Corrupt.

All of your communications, phone, pad, writings, any post on social media, banking, investments, physical health etc.. Are known now by corporations and this info is bought to increase profits and to elect partners in crime.

Or push your mind over the line from a progressive thinker to a conservative voter but you don’t really know why you changed! 

So our behavior is tracked and this information gathered into a profile of your background and personality and job status, girlfriend, boyfriend, likes and dislikes gathered from your social media sites and then used against you to drive you in a direction that wasn’t on your radar until there is an important candidate that you thought you liked but now through this false information you can’t stand him or her. But in truth you were just lied to in order to sway and an election. 

Isn’t that what America stands for, manipulating the vote in order to get a corrupt candidate the rich like into office rather than one seeking big changes in our government! In this great country of the United States where freedom reigns supreme, and your vote counts, yeah right!

By putting out there in social media land your personal life history you now have opened pandoras box! What is a truth directed at you and what is contorted facts, lies, manipulated deceptions that seem plausible but are illusions of words forming fake news that contradict your original perception of truth. 

Power maintains lies to con the people into thinking there is a better future, there isn’t a better future if the goal of the rich is to take over the independence of human beings making them slaves to the avarice of evil selflessness. 

We are living in a bad hallucination, a delusion of freedom perpetuated by the hollow men and women of deceptions.

We live in an age of materialism, a false witness to the mirage of truth in a reality created to contort the mind for profit.

Why are you giving up your freedom of thought, your autonomy in your understanding of your truth not someone else’s? Social media is a contract of analysis to get you to buy products and now to vote for the people that will take your money and exploit your privacy. 

The wealthy, the fat cats that perfect their contortions of truth, their lies are their truth, ruthless in their dissecting of peoples fears, exaggerating the consequences of electing a certain candidate because he can’t be bought and could disrupt the cozy relationships the other candidates have with the super rich 1% ( their Super Pacs a propaganda of false witness) that have bought most of our elected officials. It makes you proud to be an American? 

Any bill that would take money from their ravaging the earth must be stopped by lies and suggestions of treason from socialists out to destroy our democracy, yeah right as if the wealthy have had nothing to do with destroying our freedom all along. 

Our freedom of speech, our individuality is being undermined by programable computers spewing out info on all of us making it easier than ever to confuse and smear the reputation of good people, undermine our freedom of speech and destroy our ability to have open elections without outside influences.

These manipulators, mind contortionists, are tracking all your intimate moments online and are then able to predict your behavior when they send you some made up facts that they know will get you all jazzed up to post your own false beliefs and on, and on, the lies flow easily into the minds of people fed up with the reality they didn’t know they were creating. 

It must come as a shock to people’s concepts of themselves when they realize they have been played since birth to believe in a capitalistic system of corruption as the path to freedom and a good life.
Up until the early 1970s our economy was certainly more fare and it gave our veterans good paying jobs and a decent family life. But that changed as the wealthy began a propaganda blitz to undermine the middle class and workers worldwide. Wages stagnated and business began buying other business and banks became greedy and invested in themselves instead of an infrastructure for our decaying inner cities desperate for housing and rent control.

Our mental foolery is being sold for profits, when you can believe false information as truth and truth as behavioral fraud.  

Social media takes your posts and sells this information after analyzing your inner mental threads, secrets and then puts them on the market place of exploitation to be used against innocent voters by campaigns that want to have a specific candidate win against another candidate that would make it almost impossible to corrupt and could end their free ride of tax brakes for a class of egotistical crooks that are already billionaires but I guess when you are addicted to greed and power you don’t see humanity you just see profits! 

What a country of ideas and vision for a better future for all of us, yeah, if you believe that I have some mountain view property to sell you in Florida.

The wealthy prey on state districts that can be controlled and flipped to the side of corruption by looking for candidates that salute the powers that be with, a yes sir, right away sir, whimpering and sucking-up to the powers that control them like a lap dog looking for table scraps.

 Through messages of fear, anger and hate for outsiders, through words that you assimilated through social media sites, through behavioral manipulations you have become the new rats in a cage exploited by words that incite in the dull mind a need to protect a system of government that is broken and now is not a government of the people for the people but a corporation for the wealthy by the wealthy and lets praise the oligarchs for their manipulation of peoples personality traits, a little mind control here and there can’t hurt anybody but our so called democracy!

This is a new war not of missiles and guns but that certainly will be present it seems for the rest of my life and my children’s but now backed by a new revelation of moral decay, weaponized information on each and every one of us whereby we can’t tell who is truthful and who is lying to us.  

This manipulation of our elections is a criminal act and should be responded too by arrests and imprisonment. But wait the people behind this fraud of an open society, open and free thoughts, are the very rich that control our congress and government right now so they have nothing to fear and won’t stop until people wake up to this mind manipulation and come together not as puppets of wealth but as human beings fighting for their lives.

We have always been commodities to the wealthy, a means of profit but now it isn’t us so much but what we expose about ourselves through the corrupt social media sites, the stores we shop at, remarks we make to friends, our beliefs,  all of this is programed into a profile of your behavior to be manipulated and we become the new cash cow for election tampering. 

If we look at social media you probably never read the terms and conditions of the site you are giving your information to. They are free to use that info anyway they please and believe me they use that info to destroy our freedom of speech and freedom of choice.

If you look at news stations today in our country it is all fluff and the obliteration of researched facts, it’s talking heads have been programed to blame the down trodden, making them an escape goat to blame for all our problems through a deliberate false analysis of the true situation and yet we take this shallow demonstration of our news media, this deceptive so called freedom of speech, as actual useful, information. 

Stop and think what are news outlets doing, they are drawing your curiosity to manipulate you to buy commercial products and to move you slyly over to a position that will eventually undermine your ability to live a life without debt, fear of wars and catastrophic climate change.  

Cambridge Analytics has a name for those they target to get a Pavlov dog response and they call you the persuadalbles. Easily manipulated minds that only grasp the surface of life and not its depths. 

Through social media you are profiled to be manipulated! History is full of cultures and military states, Nazi Germany, that controlled their citizens and military by manipulating the citizens consciousness to think in terms of a herd instinct, it is better to be with others in a collared environment than to be seen alone and sent to a concentration camp.

Where are the regulations to protect citizens of the United States from this infringement on their privacy and their behavior patterns? Really, you don’t see that this country is basically a corporation that has no intention of protecting it’s citizens from selling personal information bought off the social media sites. 

Think about it, the social media sites are a multi-billion dollar companies getting free info on its citizens. This information is worth billions more, do you honestly think and expect these monsters of deception are going to stand by and allow restrictions to their criminality to protect your private information.

Remember you are the one that didn’t read the rules of the game and aloud your thoughts to spew all your personal info out into the dark black hole of information gathering. 

We should be demanding the ability to say no to advertisers taking our info and selling this information to subversives that want to manipulate your voting rights and to sell you something you can’t afford and don’t need. 

This is a war of values, a war of truth, a war of caring for each other, a war of standing strong together to fight those criminals of greed and power.

These new companies springing up peddling influence are creating a new industry of deception and criminal behavior. Not that we don’t have this now in Washington DC but now it has taken an ominous turn whereby these perpetrators of criminality are not for our country but for themselves, profits at the expense of our constitution.

Where is our government, why aren’t they protecting its citizens from these power greedy psychopaths. We need strong regulations on these media sites and controls on how they gather and distribute the secrets of our citizens. 

Right now there no restrictions on these corrupt corporations trolling your private information. How far has our democracy fallen under the power of corrupt corporations! Freedom for its citizens is the main goal of any Democracy, how far the United states has fallen since its conception. 

We are being studied, each click we make is recorded and each time we stop and read or look at images this is all put in your personal file to be used again and again to get you out there shopping for things you don’t need and voting for an idiot that has only one thing on his mind sucking up to the wealthy so he can skim a little profit of the backs of the American workers, god bless this country of corruption and vice.

They use surveillance advertising recording where you go on the web what stores you visit what products you look at and this is placed in your open file for the rich to use this info to sell you those very products you looked at or something similar, possibly more expensive.  

Wake up your privacy is being invaded. 

What will it take for people to wake up to consumer deception? This treachery of invading our privacy is against the law. We have become not a police state but that is certainly is coming but a corporate state
where anything goes, even spying on its citizens for profit. 

We are in a full service propaganda machine, our lives are under continuous scrutiny where the powers that be look for hints of a character that is needy, wants to belong, is fearful, angry, frustrated that can be fed a pipe-dream that steals your voice through word manipulation by getting you to respond in a negative way towards something or someone you don’t even know in order to get an opponent elected that is more favorable to allowing pollution, oil drilling, fracking and corrupt banks into his state not for the people but for his friends in high places to exploit the citizens.

The next big attack will be fear based slogans that will infiltrate the minds already fearful of their lifestyle braking apart by the very mouths that are creating this fear based society.

We are predictable especially by giving our private information away for free, allowing these crooks to control our behavior. We are individuals free to make our own choices, we don’t have to rely on technology that is destroying our freedom of thoughts to do it for us.

Why would we want to be controlled by thieves hacking into our minds to find ways to take money from us? We must fight for our freedom and not succumb to technologies cold, unforgiving, mesmerizing omnipotence through delivered through social media.

An estimated 68 elections around the world were manipulated by Cambridge Analytica. Their mode of operation was to instill in the people a new wave of hate and fear before their votes were made. They took pride in their undermining legal and free elections stating that fear and hate is the best way to engage voters.

We the people are under attack! Our sense of justice of an open and free elections has been destroyed by the criminals that have undermined democracy. We are in a new kind of war, a war on truth and facts to back up these truths. We are in an era of criminality that has no moral foundation and looks out for their own profits through manipulating, preying on peoples fears and these herded minds don’t even realize they are being undermined, lied to, their thoughts are known to social media and this puts a target for propaganda to be delivered to their computers insisting that their only action possible is hate and fear of those people!

Those people are human beings trying to survive just like we are trying to survive in the cunning illusion of a democracy.

If people looked at the growing wealth of the 1% and how this has been accomplished under the flag of a supposedly free country well look no further into the mind manipulations of Cambridge Analytica! You the people have been betrayed by the all American Business Ethics which is a facade built to promote trust when in fact criminal minds rule our Business World and our Industrial Military Complex, Medical Complex, Environmental Complex and on and on…

We should be an open and individualistic people but in truth we have always been played through fear and anger to blame everybody else except our own lazy thought process. With these new technologies we bypass our own intuition and look outside us for answers. Like trained monkeys we seek not our own voice but a voice of a manipulator, a proxy mediator to control our thoughts and our actions so we don’t have to think and we can go back to just playing video games!

To hide under the flag of freedom when inch by inch, tax by tax we the people are slaves to the wealthy and they purposely influence our behaviors through word manipulations to keep us distracted in fighting amongst ourselves as our corrupt government takes more and more power from us, the supposedly free society of the people by the people, yeah right!

This propaganda machine is in high speed directing the coming elections to empower the candidates that will toe the lineAnalytica and make the rich richer and the poor poorer!

Data you put up on social media is like giving away your soul, your personal self, exposing yourself to the corporations and Super Pacs as an easy target to manipulate in the upcoming election as Cambridge Analytica did in the 2016 election. Your personal information given away on Facebook is used to shape a narrative directed just for you to put doubt in your mind on the candidate you thought was worth voting for. And you will not even be aware of your minds confusion as you read and listen more closely to the lies slowly being accepted as truth. Trolls abound on all social media sites infiltrating groups and subtly expressing words that undermine the sanctity of our mental independence. 

Words describe a false protection. Instinct allows one to be independent. Your intuition is your alarm bell that something doesn’t smell right. But in todays fast paced environment of media dominance the truth is always hidden amongst the lies that get top billing. 

Where is our government in all these created lies and destruction of our supposedly open voting process, we have a right as citizens of the United State to know and be assured that our vote counts? The gerrymandering of our election process is a disgrace to this nation and is illegal and the perpetuators should be arrested and thrown in jail. 

The effects of gerrymandering is a loss of faith in democracy and a loss of good paying jobs for its citizens. Corporations own our political system and they don’t want to pay higher wages to the citizens of the America, so they try and rig the voting process to assure themselves that the politician elected is a bare faced yes man to the powerful money laundering!

Where is our government in this conflict of interest?
The government needs to be held accountable for their illicit participation in this criminal endeavor!

Gerrymandering:

[Two principal tactics are used in gerrymandering: "cracking" (i.e. diluting the voting power of the opposing party's supporters across many districts) and "packing" (concentrating the opposing party's voting power in one district to reduce their voting power in other districts).]

[Gerrymandering has affected every one of America’s states, and while North Carolina and Michigan have been found to be some of the most glaring examples, Florida, Maryland, and Virginia have also been brought to task and accused of being less than truthful about the way they draw their districts’ lines.]

[The definition of a gerrymander is a changing of voting districts to give one party an advantage or disadvantage a group. An example of a gerrymander is a creation of a smaller voting district to take away votes from a particular candidate. Gerrymander is defined as to divide a voting area to give one political party a majority.]


Why in the heck do we allow hidden money to dictate our future in these elections. We should give the politicians a month to make their case not with outside money by the few but everyone has the same amount to make their points of changing the direction of the country to a more open, inclusive society, explaining to the people their plans to stop the influx of outside forces infiltrating our government and remove any lobbyist from the government buildings and any congressman or woman or senator found guilty of being bribed will be prosecuted and put behind bars where they belong.

We need to know who is voting for what bills and what bills are being presented and who wrote the bill and who is backing the bill. 

Our government needs to be transparent in its dealing with foreign countries and any rush to war must be stopped until the facts are presented, not by the elitist few but the whole congress that represent the people with words of truth and not a convoluted argument of misrepresentation of the facts made by another president who lies through his teeth.

We need honest people willing to fight for the people of this nation and not fight for the billionaire class of heathen robbers.

What their game plan is to polarize the people from the truth of their values, instill fear of others, to brand different races as evil and thus we are the good superior force of civilization. We are the power that controls the world!

Our new wars will be fought not with rockets and military personal but with behavioral change, an ability to flood your brain with nonsense and feed
your fears with a false scenario. You are a test rat that is being sold false truths, rumors, innuendos and you are being gullible in believing anything from social media, period.

These manipulators create scenarios that fit with the posts you made and were meticulously analyzed by computer monitoring research to present a false witness a superficial friend giving you good advice. On the web you can’t believe anything you haven’t experienced first hand.

What a country of freedom we live in! We are stooges for the rich to play with!

This information warfare, these mind control platforms of social media will suppress voter turnout in certain states and increase voter turnouts in other states.

We are giving our life away through social media, being distracting from getting off our butts and living in the real world and not on a tech site of pompous fraud and lies!

Now given the prevalence of media sites your entire life is under scrutiny and your clicks and your interests are measured and calculated. And you will have no sense of the criminal minds playing you for a fool.

All your moments online are tracked in order to get a full picture of your behavior patterns. Once that is accomplished and they have a real good profile of you and your likes and dislikes then that information goes up for sale and then the fun starts for you when you get ads in the mail and ads online you never asked for or wanted. Welcome to the real meaning of social media information gathers selling you to the highest bidder!

Your information will be sold around the world and they will use what you thought was your private moments to hook you into buying products that fit your profile.

This is not marketing we have been use to, random ads to entice you to buy their product but now specific ads directed right at you, specifically made for your personality, your likes and dislikes in order to manipulate you to buy, buy and buy some more.

We have become a country of addicts who can’t seem to stop buying things we really don’t need.

We have no autonomy now in this world of corporate manipulators, who know more about you than you do yourself.

This is the same thing the Super Pacs do in elections  in order to get you to vote for their lackey candidates.

As we leave digital traces of ourselves all over the web we are inviting propaganda and behavioral changes to happen to us without us being aware of the process we are being drawn into. We are now the commodity, the product now molded to perform like a circus monkey! These swines of technology can create a resonance with your psyche and direct you down a road you have never been before. Just a little shove here and there and pretty soon you are out protesting against your fellowman. Welcome to the new world of psyche control.

Could you be manipulated to not vote?

Are you someone that can be persuaded to go to war on an impulse, a decision made in seconds instead of hours of contemplation and warranted facts that are founded in truth not flagrant misleading rumors. 

What about our women and men who sacrifice themselves to protect this country and our way of life each and every day!

But what if the war was based on a lie? What if our men and women in uniform didn’t have to die if we had an open and honest government?

What if the killing of an important enemy was a means of distracting the people away from an impeachment?

This government for the people, by the people being told we must be ready for war. Is this real or a strategy to take the spotlight off a president who has corrupted our way of life, our belief in our country? 

Creating in fighting amongst the people so he can exploit under the guise of truth more cash from the governments tax base.

Corporations are in the business of exploiting people and mother nature. Are we really mentally present in seeing our government for what it has become?

Business has taken over our American freedoms, it has begun the commodification of our democracy by standardizing and reducing our personal data as a commodity to be sold, and they price our data according to who is buying our personal information and how much they need.

Fearing life is a means of control and the powers that be are expert in creating scenarios that make citizens scared of what they have been told concerning immigrants labeled as terrorists but in fact they are trying to escape terror in their own countries that the United States has supported for oil and other profit motives!

We know politicians lie, some more than others. But why would you allow a candidate to lie to the citizens of America through Facebook as they allowed in the 2016 elections and are gearing up to allow lying in the upcoming 2020 elections. Is that really what our forefathers wanted? Is it really necessary to lie in order to win elections? Well, the main reason of course is money but also the foreshadowing of the collapse of our open society and a government for the rich and not the people. 

Lies to corrupt voters decisions is not free speech. It is a criminal action and it should be stopped by arresting the perpetrators of the fraud of our election process.

Sometimes I feel we are living in a third world country where our government is run by a dictator with no morals values. Oh, wait we are living that now in America!

The golden rule now in this corrupted economy of vice is profit over people. The wealthy don’t care about the citizens of this country they use and abuse because they feel they are above the law. It seems nothing much has changed in this country over the centuries except now it is more established, more brazen, stealing and manipulating its citizens without them necessarily knowing it.

We no longer have the protection of the law in our favor.  We are sitting ducks to be exploited and driven to poverty in a blink of an eye from the actions that belongs to some ego maniac investor thinking he is a new god of supreme corruption.

Without prosecution of these wealthy crooks that have bought and sold our politicians we are not going to be able to have a decent life and decent wages to live a good life here in this nation run be an oligarchy.

There is no longer a need for transparency for if the people open their minds they can easily detect the direction of our world governments. Oligarchs now rule this world. Without a firm belief in justice and equality we are lost as a civilization. 

Without transparency in government we are heading toward dictatorship.

Without regulations, laws, and honest judges we are doomed to be taken advantage of without a means of restitution we are doomed to a life of misery and distrust.

We need laws that are strict and enforced, this corruption of our government makes it harder and harder for people to believe in justice and equality for all.

The propaganda machine is in full force exploiting the naivety of people to believe that even now the united States stands for justice for all, BS, it stands now for no justice at all the only exception is for the criminal behavior of the few.

Sources For This Post

Facebook is a Crime Scene: “The Great Hack” has been shortlisted for an academy Award, co-directed by Karim Amer and Jehane Noujaim

Emma Briant, visiting research associate in human rights at Bard College who specializes in researching propaganda. Her upcoming book is titled Propaganda Machine: Inside Cambridge Analytica and the Digital Influence Industry.


Brittany Kaiser a Cambridge Analytica whistleblower who is featured in the documentary The Great Hack. Her book is titled Targeted: The Cambridge Analytica Whistleblower’s Inside Story of How Big Data, Trump, and Facebook Broke Democracy and How It Can Happen Again.




Sunday, January 5, 2020

January 5, 2020

Photography Blog

At the height of photography as an established visual art form, the photographers had insight into new subjects and unique compositions, the ability to stay their course of vision by making images of the ordinary and making them a revelation of the extraordinary. 

The street photographers were the first to understand that images of the real America, the good, the bad and the ugly were what was needed to make a statement about our society and the inherent racism and exploitation of the poor that has exited for centuries and still does!

These images inspired the young photographers to push through their fears of making photographs of the common place and just be themselves and use their visionary intuition. 

Photography is more than just documenting your life, it is a way to express your life through your image creations. You have a chance to give the world a glimpse of your inner self, your inner world through creating images of purpose and sincerity.

Now, in this twenty-first century there is no originality in image creation but redundant visual content that doesn’t give us any clues into the creators unique perspective. They are more interested in taking pics of themselves than exploring their own inner vision becoming externalized. 

The viewer of images today need more and more explosive controversial imagery of sex and violence to get their visual motor running. And of course how can we pass up images of stupidity. But these images are mostly surface images without depth, feeling or purpose except to make fun of someone else’s half-baked performance.

More times than not the current viewers of photographs are easily bored looking at the same lighting, the same expressions, same street scenes, the sameness of composition, and they ask themselves where have all the unique vibrant images with insight and character gone to. They are still present but they get lost amongst the surface glitter of color enhanced nature, landscape images, people images, nighttime images, really the majority of image created today for publication are redundant copies of subjects made from the masters years ago! 

What we have here isn’t real image creation but image redundancy, and image manipulation! By making the digital cameras basically take pictures for the person we have undermined the quality of image creation and the necessary focus needed to see beyond the shallow surface, and made photography a commodity just like buying baked beans. Except in photography most people give their images away for free without thinking twice to social media. 

Now I don’t want the reader to think that image manipulation is a bad thing for if the artist sees in the image something more powerful by using color enhancement or a textured surface to bring out his inner vision than so be it. It is the photographers job to express his inner intuition anyway possible to get the external world to take a deeper look at his image creations.

Images of the external world are reflections of your reality, a reality in constant flux. To capture these moments you must have a heighten sense of the behavioral flow moving around you. Look through your own eyes for originality and an expressive image that reflects your inner person. And not a snap shot taken while being distracted by life and the swift flow of time. When you are in your moments time seizes to exist and you are in immediate contact with your subject and the composition and light that will reveal it to you. And after you are done making images and you look at the time you can’t believe the hours that went by and they felt like seconds! 

Our lives have been broken apart in the addiction to follow instead of lead. 

A good photographer looks at the world not as a place to ignore with the pressing duties of work and the loss of time. Photographers when they are in the moment of visualizing their subject through contemplative awareness time is nowhere present, time vanishes and the photographer is in a new dimension of perceptive reality through an internal vision.

We don’t have to look far back into the past to find the culprit of the beginning and end to photography as an art form.

We just have to see the evolution of content beginning to degrade as more and more people took up the digital camera, phone cameras and overwhelmed their senses with trivia and bad compositions! 

Lighting a scene was too much work. Composing a scene with originality was to frustrating and time consuming. Digging deeper into the landscape or cityscape became just too boring for the snap shooters, this new generation of shooters demand instant gratification from anything they do! 

Everything should come easily to me for I am a known entity on social media and anything I touch or shoot becomes an important item to be displayed for my high brow followers to ooh and awe over.

And what did the art world get from the ease of taking pics in the mid twentieth century, they got a slap across the face and a loss of revenue as photography became a cliche a way to copy and not originate your own uniqueness.

If you over think your visual purpose with lighting, lenses to use, filters, and special effects then you have too much equipment holding you back to just be present and take in the beauty of mother nature as it is and not try to force upon the landscape your ego or your intellect.

Ego will get you pushing the lines of vanity and your intellect will get you in a mechanical response to the beauty before you. Both will undermine any chance of creating a worth while image.

By seeing only meter readings, f/stops, shutter speeds you have lost your connection with the scene present before you. 

By moving quickly to set up your equipment you have lost the composition that was slowly revealing itself to you. 

Yes, you will have to determine these important elements when you have found your intuitive composition but for now just enjoy the show before you. Be grateful that you are present in such beauty. 

Sometimes when you come upon a scene and the light is breaking through with a magnificent sunset you must step forward and quickly set up and make your photographs. But you are not overthinking natures gift, you are instinctively reacting to an external beauty and taken advantage of your timing by reaching your destination at the peak of morning/evening light! 

We each have our own way of seeing the world. This can be good or bad. But as a photographer it is your responsibility to show your inner truth through imagery that reflects the integrity of your visual realism.

Our external presence seen objectively by others as just another camera buff clicking away at some god forsaken subject no one else could possible be interested in is the very definition of conditioned responses. 

Those people only see a limiting value in crossing the street to the other side. The crowd keeps its eyes forward never looking around at the beauty and uniqueness of details that they are missing. 

Our lives have been suspended, broken apart in our seemingly addictive natures to follow instead of lead.
We are under powerful forces of greed and criminality which instills in us a lessened truth, a forgetting of oneself as his own truth in the hectic pace of life just to make a living as the prices rise and we the people are undermined by exploitive corporate criminals.

In making photographs listen to your instinct, your intuition. Sometimes all that is necessary is patience to be present in your awareness of the scene that surrounds you. And by being ready as the light changes, you had an inkling that something was happening behind you and not in the scene present before you. And as you looked around behind you, you saw the beautiful sunlight warming the multicolored flowers in a landscape you placed yourself in with anticipation.

As a photographer you never know for sure where your instincts of nature’s light will take you but you must be ready to find a space that gives you an opportunity to change directions in a moments notice.

A good photograph expresses the personality of the photographer.

We are at a crossroads with how to reclaim photography as an art form. Photography has become a commodity, a comedy act with no other purpose than entertainment. Photography used to reveal the beauty of this world and the ugliness in this world. Photographers gave their lives to photograph the wars and the corruption that now exists in corporate America. Where are the photographers covering these explosive issues? They are present doing their best but corporate media doesn’t show these images of truth for then the sleepwalking people might awaken to the oligarchs that have now taken over this globe.

It does take awhile to get what photography is all about. It is not about the image but what the image say’s about the photographer that took that photograph. It is his inner subjective nature we see in the great images that are created with a purpose.

The images taken in today’s society are snap shots of life without depth of character. The people of the world are changing and ignoring the underlying condition of our democracies. Snap shots are frivolous moments that keep one sedated without having to use your mind to see the truth of media’s dominance of our consciousness not to empathize with others and to always seek the truth of words spoken by political criminals. We seek fluff over substance. Fluff with no depth for we don’t want to know the truthful ending of this ride we are on. We see but don’t react. We feel but we don’t express our feelings. We assume a point of view (our safety zone in the herd) and laugh at the truth hidden under the graves of the innocent.

The images snapped now are meaningless, a crossword puzzle without the ability to create an image that is visually significant.

The images taken today are boring, fruitless expressions of surface conformity without a visual identity, a real significant purpose.

Our visual senses have been dulled to ignore any photographer that tries to disrupt our pleasant valley sunday drive of shallowness.

Think about the billions of images taken daily that have no purpose, have no story to tell! These images have no expression of depth in the scene or a deep conscious expression of a person’s life.

We have become objects ourselves, objectified through the camera lens to be a stick figure, an external facade with no depth, a laughing face with closed eyes. There is no longer a meaning in image creation, what we have now is a creation of distractions from the truth we are living. We are slowly being corralled into a tight uncomfortable overcrowded coral that will eventually be demanded to give allegiance to a class of wealth that will rule over all of us with military discipline.

Our lives are now uploaded onto social media sites. But in truth these pics are not our lives it is our ego’s demanding attention as this world hurdles further and further away from our own inner revelations and values. We are becoming silent to our purpose as the power of wealth determines this planets future and ours.


Lets all pose for the camera.  Lets show our addiction to happiness when a camera is presented for a group snap shot. Our fixation on self propaganda where a pose is more important than a subjective truth.





Saturday, January 4, 2020

January 4, 2020

Street Photography

Now as a street photographer you move down the sidewalk, casual, nonchalant, a tourist, making images of people, places and things, timing your approach along with a quick composition, your trademark, now you are beginning to hum and anticipate and extend your visual senses to encompass blocks ahead anticipating the integration of your intuition, emerging into a scene present yet not fully formed and composed for your unique eyes.

Then mayhem with motion, dogs barking, people hurrying to their destination, the cars blocking the cross walk, people yelling to get out of the way and you are suddenly in the middle of this chaos and you are opening your consciousness to feel the image forming coming at you as someone runs by head down with a stolen purse luckily you anticipated the crowded streets today and had your wide angel lens ready for the entertainment. 

Street photography is being present in your moments and anticipating someone else’s moments and where you need to be to be able to compose an image worthy of the scene developing but also a keen awareness of the buildings, glass displays, a unique individual that catches your perceptive vision and your once again on the hunt.


As a (street) photographer you are intuitively involved in the multiplicity of peoples behaviors and anticipating a moment when their personality would be revealed with intensity and a unique visual sense and timing to be where you should be as the composition forms in your mind and abstracted from the external reality where the scene became real but it originated in your intuitive mind to be in a certain spot as the people walked in unison as you slipped casually into an already preplanned view point to make a landscape of humanity in a busy city.




Friday, December 20, 2019

December 20, 2019

Photography Notes 

Ease of taking photographs, there is nothing to it just point and shoot without a visual foundation for your personal expression. A haphazard reality we seem to live in now where anybody can create art even though they didn’t really create their art, it was more or less a copycat expression of someone else’s work. 

You know a truth when it is your individuality being present, when you connect on a deeper level with your subject and you feel the purpose behind the image created.

You also realize that after the fun of photography is done you have a lot more work to do to get these image ready to be viewed by others. 

Then a nervous reality begins to take hold after you look at your exposures on your cell phone/camera, you see a run and gun approach to your photography that doesn’t work in creating meaningful imagery. You fell for the standard approach to tourist photography,
snapping pics in a random manner. 

What you needed was a structure to your visual mission before you went berserk and started clicking the shutter at anything that was in front of you. 

So after the shoot you download your images onto your computer. Now first and foremost what is your after shoot work flow, your editing process. I like to look through the images fast the first time through and deleting the obvious mistakes, the out of focus and haphazard compositions that doesn’t give a constructive visual sense of the scene that was present in front of me.

And then I settle down and really study the images to find a few that represent your inner intuitive feelings with the scene. Obviously most of the images won’t feel right, they won’t fit your unique visual perspective and you might feel defeated.

But this is a good thing, a good lesson as well because you learned not to just go blazing in upon a scene and blitz it hoping for a few good images. You have to have in your mind images already being formed as you approached the subject and you must allow those perceptions to blossom in you. Let them take a hold of your senses and open your eyes to your intuitive vision. 

Next you enlarge your image so you can find all the dust, foreground and background distractions, tree limbs jumping into the frame, people stopping in front of your subject to admire the wonderful landscape, your wife or husband yelling at you that the kids are getting cranky, lets go! all these things frustrate you and limit your ability to move closer to uncovering the subject you were finally interested in to create your visual perception. 

But that is the life of the photographer. There is always and I mean always something that will interfere with you and your ability to have the time to create your vision but you must control the time you have and with a focused attention to create a worthwhile image.

You have to be aware of your surrounding, the time of day, the fading light and even who you are with and work as quick as possible, once you have uncovered your subject and are beginning to compose the scene to create a beautiful image. 

And finally you will color correct the images. Not exaggerating the color but giving it the necessary quality that creates for the viewer an image worth remembering.

Photography is a lot more than just snapping photos randomly hoping for an image that looks OK.

Let your imagination go, let go of stereotypical image creation that you see repeated endlessly, look for that detail, that expression, that realness you felt as you begin to set up your visual senses to examine the scene before you, beginning to find a connection with some elements of the scene but more work needs to be done exploring the nooks and crannies of the landscape before you can zero in on your unique composition. 

You only see the reality you were conditioned to see, this structure of narrow-minded perceptions is to blame for your confusion when you are attracted to a subject but then give up because it didn’t fit your pre-planned comfortable, redundancy of a narrow perspective, as if shooting the same old subjects over and over again will create an unexpected visually unique perspective. It will not happen.

The only thing that is stagnate in this world are people who don’t accept/see the truth that they know in their souls is the right path to take but instead they are so filled with fear and hate and the blaming of others that they fold inward and refuse to allow their unique perspective to be seen and heard. 

A society that is fear based, that has been manipulated by the corporations and oligarchs has a deceitful purpose in controlling the population, it is a form of slavery, just ask the Native Americans and African Americans what a false life we live by becoming mouthpieces for lies and hatred of other human beings dictated to us by hate groups fearing the coming changes that are upon us now.

It is your responsibility to outgrow the cliches of behavior and visual stereotypes that permeate through our society and to have the courage to look through your own unique eyes and to create your individual sense of the physical world through photography. 

Conformity is a decease and it is spreading hate and criminality through this world. You must have the courage to break free from the conformity of vision, the endless replicas of the visual cliche’s and break free with your inner vision poised to create unique beautiful subjects.

I can remember that image I created that changed my photography forever. It was a photograph of my daughter sitting in front of a blue door in a downtown Seattle alley. It was far above any image I had taken up to that point. What was different about it was that I took my time finding a place that intrigued me and allowed me to compose an image that I intuitively knew would be a good image.

Hopefully, we all can get to a point in making images that transcends beyond the snap shot that everyone shoots, but not you, you studied the scene the lighting, the contrast, the tourists, and decided to make an image when the early morning light just brushes along the mountain terrain creating a special sense of nature’s magnificence.

You must be confident in your abilities to learn and create great images. What is missing most often is having the confidence not in your bombastic ego or redundant intellect that keeps meddling with your visual senses, demanding they know better than you what to shoot. Just be yourself flow with time and your physical presence allowing all the details of the scene to penetrate your intuitive mind and focus your attention on the little details that will guide you to a photograph that was not present until you allowed a connection with the subject and your inner talent to be united together to bring forth the image that was hidden.

Without ego’s meddling and just being yourself in your individuality, you will create opportunities that others won’t see because they are being ruled by the intellect that judges them without mercy and creates a barrier to originality and a fear of trying something new. Your unique individual experiences are with your efforts!





Monday, November 18, 2019

November 18, 2019

Street Photography A Stream of Consciousness

We look for the open expression, the subject allowing their inner feelings to project outward into a reality unconquered. The photographer welcomes this openness of thoughts and moves ever closer to the subject by positioning himself where their will be no details that will distract the photographic eye from the facial expressions of the subject, his clothes, her hair, their originality. 

A good photographer can have one subject and in the time it takes to create an image the subject could express a litany of expressions from happiness, anger, loss, guilt, resignation to a bad situation, tears the full gambit of emotions that expresses the inner/outer universe of our human lives. All these will be expressed and felt in a photograph. A click of the shutter, time passing onward, oh illusive time, but in the photograph taken time is frozen still, in their eyes the meaningful and elusive, a split second, the shutter captures a moment, in war, in a wedding, a friendship, happiness, guilt, anguish, handicapped, hateful, all the emotions of humanity captured in a millisecond and put into a frame, with that unique moment created as time moved on but not in the still image that is now present, jarred loose from the passing seconds, forever stagnant but with purpose yanked from its moorings and now stands free, alone just like the subject in their anguish and this stream of consciousness isolated, separated now forever from the persons physical presence, separated by the click of a shutter, a moment taken, irreversible taken from the subjects fluidity in physical space, this person’s time line abruptly stopped in that split second of seeing a possible composition by the photographer and then the subjects time begins again outside the frame as they move on and leave nothing of themselves only the impression on a digital file separated from their physical source, prior to the feeling expressed and taken from the person by the photographer now without the ability to change their frozen expression, this photographic reality, this image, is possible because of the infinite time we have to make images without a structured necessity, only our own rules of composition and exposure making it more a cutting away, like an artists sculpture, catching something from the person, her inner personality, more anger bottled up an extension of the person’s personality becoming her exterior unknown to her now until she sees herself through the photographers lens and realizes this is not her, it is someone else without a foundation of times motion in completing her expression instead this expression was in flux when the photographer broke through times unity, seeing into the photograph through her exterior emotions and in her facial expressions unclear, broken away from the next moment settling for an irrational revelation, something of her personality more unique, taken and this separation is an abstraction from her outer facade and is not representative of her internal self hidden under an accumulation of narratives tried on like used clothes and now caught in this moment an idyllic self acting a role for someone else’s entertainment looking back years from now at a picture taken without knowing the ending, a mystery puzzle now forgotten, it is what it is without change, a still life exposed to random views without a connection, alone in self without speech, without an explanation, a dutiful personality compromised and forever alone maybe in an album or in someones wallet, the perceiver and the perceived unified through technology and not seeing the ramifications of a new awareness in random exposures, a new feeling of capturing someone else’s moment without permission a new street revelation, a motion of the camera coming up to an eye moving on the street moving with the crowd or against the crowd an observer, a truth seeker, his purpose never planned always ready in anticipation, the old way, the random objects reflected in glass in front of the mannequin, the truth of the photograph doesn’t lie, it reports the details and leaves the impression of the scene for others to observe and feel their disconnection or connection with the subject, the independent scene a contrast of thoughts in characters acting their roles in physical space, without favor, without forethought, just now in the present, quickly push the shutter now! now! an objective vision trying to unmask the facade of faces as objects once hidden trying to turn away, we hide behind inner rage to get a glimpse of these special moments, under currents, under the skin glimpses of another character wanting to come out but forfeits the freedom of their expression, their purpose, something gritty and bleak with tears and in a reality that is truth without clothes, without a mask of happy spirits bubbling away supposedly ecstatic while underneath an impulse ready to act out in a street performance of violence, look at me I am alive but dead in your camera, once the image taken I no longer exist, do you understand this, I am in a new spacial dimension without escape my purpose now is to be observed by multiple eyes seeking my thoughts in a purpose never exposed I have no voice in the theater of a still life, the image maker always with his intuitive antenna up looking for that moment that begins and ends with the image taken and the subject forever reborn and placed in a photo album or book for the dead in heart will inherit this menagerie of sinful natures, for the truth of our existence is this, we are inner beings with an outer shell, purposely disguised as someone else that hides their emotions from the prying thoughtful eyes of others, the camera always ready to expose an inner truth through outer materialization, the photographer takes from the street an image, the subjects likeness and applies this dubious foundation to ascertain the realness of the expression or the middle finger being presented in front of the violent facial features an anonymous photograph behind the persons dramatic features and an image is still-life enhancing ones selective ambition to inside the moving target, feeling their inner vibes unknown unexpected the photographer grasps a scene beginning to develop not with tricks but patience a subtle plausible reasoning of our being aware of ones surroundings, knowing the alleyways, the corners to go through or stay hidden in doorways waiting for that inkling of personality that will pass, always seeking an uncomfortable representation of yourself in others but only their outer shell that gives a simple clue to their nature and how we should respond in apathy, without emotion at our first encounter, a test of the other’s performance, now we must listen to the frivolous sounds of a camera clicking away at everything and anyone seeking to unmasked them and we find in the infinite void of our dual reality an emptiness in the photograph even though presented with a knowing power, a godlike power to take from spacial sequencing an absence of expression, an appearance coming to life with deliberate agonizing features, yelling obscenities, knowing that the camera demands truth in a suggestive cloak as one parades in circles down a busy sidewalk that expresses and commands something within, an inner journey maybe saved, as the people separate and give space to a spectacle of someone else’s truth, all is blank until details show in the scene a possibility of composition waiting for the right appearance, one seeks their hidden persona, the detail that illuminates the inner vibes you feel that this is a truth worth investigating to follow your instinct with emotion of details forging a possibility in the mind of the photographer their physical presence exploited as high art but not in an excessive selfish ego’s brute force but as a person who roams the streets looking to repeat a play for anyone moving in currents of deceptions, he chooses compositions through intuition, he never takes his eyes off the faces reflected in dirty windows always perceiving his visibility and exploiting the deceptive convergence of details excited to play their part, the betrayal of someones surface gleam for once in awhile one clicks the shutter at that moment when the pedestrian is himself and we can apprehend through the image made a depth of expression that exists through the photographers mind, who never once looked outside himself for inspiration and visual content worthy of his interest, his perception entirely his, externalized.




Sunday, November 17, 2019

November 17, 2019

Is Photography Still An Art Form? 

Photography can still be a great art form if one approaches the subject with respect, openness and a unique vision.

Photography is an expression of an intimate moment between photographer and subject.

We live in moments strung together that create our past and future. If we become aware of our surroundings within our unique moments we have a chance to create magnificent realities on a two demential platform.

We express ourselves in obnoxious ways and we express ourselves in quite ways. 

These quiet moments allow us to think before we begin searching the exterior reality for an image we sense is present.

We have to become part of the image reality we are studying, an extension of ourselves made visible through the details we decide to choose that will enhance our visual insight present in the scene before us that represents an importance to our inner intuitive consciousness that is beginning to form a composition in the continuous flux of light as the photographer begins to solidify his composition.

Photography is an art form with many dimensions. Many avenues of study and learning opportunities. If we seek to make great imagery then we need to let go of the preconditioning of thoughts we were raised by and just see life through an open mind. A mind willing to take chances with light, composition and exposure. You must be your unique self studying the landscape searching for that image you feel is present. 

Photography is an expression of moments in time, in a physical space we occupy in constant flux. If we only focus on the surface details then we have abandoned our artistic insights of deeper emotions, and ignore the scene evolving, changing and giving the photographer 1000s of possibilities that he will have to edit down in order to find those details that will be the corner stone of his visual foundation, setting the stage for that landscape that will not only express his inner perception through the nuances of light but also be a revelation to the viewer of his personal artistic expression.

Photography sees behind the facades of an empty life, a reality dimmed because of the control we assume we must have over ourselves to conform to a certain standard of behavior and then snap images in the present through those restrictions without understanding the infinity of moments before the shutter should be pressed. Patience is the first step in becoming a photographer, without patience you will be part of the herd mentality always moving forward, backward, sideways, down never toward your intuitive photographic expression.

We are trapped in our flesh and our physical space we live in. Our presence is transitory and as we age and change we accept our limitations and seek solace in our past when in fact we should be expecting, demanding a newness of vision, as we age in our individual history and we should be able to create a deeper understanding of our unique reality we are traveling through by increasing our power of awareness, our determination to expand our vision of ourselves through new, unique images. And become through our interior perceptions of our external physical space a rejuvenated expression of our selves through our photography.

We are physical beings that seek knowledge in the appearance of our surrounding and the forever changing realities we try to conquer. We need to ignore the pressure of the past. We mustn’t adapt to anything that limits our choices. We should always be seeking revelation of purpose and explore our inner world projecting ourselves and our photographic eye outward into the realm of infinite possibilities.

A moment in time is all a photographer needs to create a great image. Awareness of your surroundings, the angle of light through clouds and trees all must be taken into account before one can position himself/herself for the image creation.


The most important relationship between subject and photographer is respect and being in the right light.



Tuesday, November 12, 2019

November 12, 2019

Future Of Photography

In this unnerving future of photography it has become apparent that cliches are the new mantra of the photo agencies. When you look through the millions and millions of images on these stock agencies photo sites you don’t see originality but a redundant expression from a narrow herd mentality. Everything looks the same, happy people (actors) doing what they do in rooms of bright lights and staged props all for the chance to be put in an ad and gain some money. These actors will reap the benefit of payment for the time spent posing for the camera but will the photographer make the necessary money to break even. The answer to that is no, not when the photographer is getting 20% of the sale and the agencies take 80%. 

If you want to know one of the reasons why Royalty Free is a bad deal for the photographers that is one of them, the money split is taken by the powers that be and the photographer is left holding a few pennies.

The agencies will claim look, these RF sales will be multiple sales to many buyers not just one offs and you will reap the benefit of more money from RF than you would from Rights Managed. 

Very doubtful when you look at the buyers getting giddy over the usage of these repetitive boring subjects by paying the stock house a cheapened sum of cash while the photographers hard earned efforts gets the shaft. 

And because of RF the agency takes their 80% while cutting more editors and staff because lets be honest everything will be done electronically without the need for a human presence. 

There is nothing original in their subjects chosen and photographed, supposedly representing, according to the agency, real life. If we could live like these superficial stage performers we would be as far away from real life we live now. Poverty, crime, racism, anguish, health issues,… and yet the agencies try and sell us photos that are supposed to make us believe that these are real households and real people. Right, I have some mountain view property in Florida I want to sell you. 

There is no realness in the images created, nothing that would suggest that these are intimate moments
between people that know each other, just paid actors acting a part trying to express real emotions in front of the camera.

There is no personality in the image creation, no connection with the subject, just a surface reflection of the same boring pictures we see time and time again in ads that are suppose to represent real people, in real life situations. These are not real people but actors posing for the product that is always forefront in the image. 

The redundant themes are now in place. Casual conversation with an expression of concern, love in the models eyes toward the actor playing a role, a smile, a laugh, never a tear, maybe a serious face of importance, but nothing original, the scripts are in place and the photo agencies are all playing the same tune, boring images without originality. 

Royalty Free is confusing but in one instance it is appropriate. Royalty Free for the photographers that took the image. 

Everyone chases the photographers dream to be seen as a great shooter, creating images of beauty and depth without the redundant cliches we see constantly in travel and people images. But everyone will eventually realize that photography today is not the photography of the past. There is so much images being snapped and then put online that for the stock shooter he/she will never reach the heights of their expectations. 

Sure their will be some good shooters that will try to be authentic in their approach to creating a realistic scene, a natural expression, an intimate moment. 

But the majority of images taken now are copycat imitations of already created images, a continual regurgitation of past shots where the subject is posed in shallow depth without originality. 

These images are not created out of love of nature or people but to exploit the external world for profit. 

All great images are made because the photographer took the time to know his subject. To explore the many facets of the subject habits and personalities and this guided the image creator to connect on a deeper, personal level with the person, place, or animal.  

Photography now is chasing the sameness of content, happy faces wearing the newest trend in clothes, hairstyle, makeup, props and phony expressions.

Honesty in todays stock horror show of repetitive trends is undermining originality and purpose in image creation.  

The old masters made images through their own inner vision and not a list of posed images to shoot by an agency that couldn't care less about the time and money spent making the requested images, all they want is more and more images to demean photography by making it a lost art, turning image creation into a commodity, a commercial enterprise for shareholders profit!  

The loss of caring about truth in image creation, assuming images are an honest view of a subject, is settling over us and eroding the meaning of the image, lessening our awareness of how to make unique expressions of our inner being.

This poser photography of snap and go as if you could really see the final subject in a split second of observation. 

We are diminished in our ability to present a subject in a new light, an authentic representation of a life we thought we knew.  

Great photography is not done in time’s movement, a great image is created when time stops for the photographer and his impressions of the scene developing before him unfolds slowly as he seeks a deeper understanding of the details of the burgeoning light that is revealing to him a new perspective that the image creator will use to express his intuition that is seeking answers to reveal a unique vision.


My advice to younger image creators is be true to yourself and create images you like and don’t rely on content briefs to trap you in an image box you can’t climb out of, use your own unique perspective to create images with purpose that express you inner world externalized for all to see.



Monday, November 11, 2019

November 11, 2019

Royalty Free Is Now The Standard 

Royalty Free is now the standard scam to sell a photographers hard earned efforts.

So Getty finally made an easy decision. They will eliminate Rights Managed (RM) imagery from their clients choices and finally put a dagger in the heart of a business model that protected photographers image uses and paid the photographer a nice fee for their efforts.

I feel that the paragraph that best summarizes why Getty eliminated RM imagery is this,

“Royalty Free (RF) imagery is now the preferred and dominant licensing model for our customers due to the simplicity, value and quality available. Licensing complexity has only led customers to other content and in many cases another provider, as the broader industry is now essentially a RF-only model.”

If we break down this paragraph we will see that Getty was being depleted of customers that were bypassing their web site and going to ShutterStock and Adobe Stock Image.

Their efforts in trying to make RM imagery work for them and the RM photographers one last time was a lost cause from the get go. I don’t believe they gave this “Market Freeze” enough time to work. They just wanted to have an excuse to fall back on if photographers started to complain. If this happened and I am sure it did they had a ready excuse to tell them, that this Market Freeze was the RM photographers last chance and it fizzled. I can’t remember right off hand when they began this approach to selling RM through Market Freeze, even the title of this new approach seems off kilter, by hiding Rights Managed Imagery on their site in a new RM downgrade, separating our RM images from their main goal of selling only RF images showed the photographers still shooting RM our time in the spotlight was long gone.  

After the limited time Market Freeze was supposedly up and running on the Getty site I would go on the site and look for my images. It took me many attempts, jumping through an assortment of categories that eventually would bring up my imagery but not all of them. If it took me this overwhelming amount time to just get to my images I am sure the customer/art director must have been so frustrated to the breaking point she/he just gave up, forget this BS, and either went to a different source or just went with how easy the access was with Royalty Free on the Getty sight. I don’t believe Market Freeze was up and running form more than 2-3 months.

What a great name for RM, Market Freeze. We are freezing out the Rights Managed photographers. They have already lost their life style to a royalty (payment) system degrading year after year as RF crept closer and closer, undermining the photographers control of over his image creations, like a rotten apple in a barrel of delicious apples, eroding any chance for a photographer to make a living creating photographs in the Right Managed market place. 

Back in the 80’s and early 90’s their was something called respect for the photographers and their efforts making great images for the market place and if a client paid for the rights of an image and then tried to extent that usage past a certain negotiated date then an extra fee was sent to the business and the photographer received an extra payment. 

I can remember when we heard the first inklings of this new business model called Royalty Free. What was it how did it work? As we learned more and more about it it turned our stomachs and made us sick. 

We couldn’t believe a photographer would give away his image creation for pennies on the dollar. And then have no rights to rebill the client if he used that image on another campaign. And now in this ever cheapening of image creation add the word Forever without any means for the photographer to be reimbursed for that extended usage is absolutely crazy.  

It is a new era of greed by the Photo Agencies who have abandoned common sense and have left the creators of imagery at the mercy of the market place. I believe Royalty Free is not royalty free for the agency but for the photographer who receives 20% of the sale. I can see why Getty wants to eliminate RM. It is harder to negotiate pricing and it takes a good editor
to see the potential of the images submitted. In the past we trusted our editors. They were our friends and we had continuous contact with them in getting ideas where to travel and ideas for shots. But a good editor always let the photographer choose his course when making his own personal expression, his photos. 

Our sales staff in the old days negotiated a fair price for the image, a 50/50 split between the Photographer and the Stock Photo Agency. We were on equal footing. And because of the openness of the agency with the photographer you felt inspired to travel and create the very best image possible, by waiting for the unique light that would enhance the subject and also the price of the photograph. 

I wonder if Getty’s move to exploit the photographers by migrating them over from RM to RF isn’t also a cost cutting measure by eliminating editing jobs. I thing we can safely say yes on that. For all the royalty free corporation brag about is the ease of selecting an image and then automatically buying it and using it without any restrictions. It is as easy as pie and oh yeah, cheap. 

Now with cell phones and digital cameras, everybody is a photographer and the billions of snap shots taken daily get posted or accepted into Royalty Free Corporation.  

And that is what they are corporations, with only one thing on their mind and that is profit. Not the photographers who go out of their way to create beautiful images but the bottom line, keeping the investors happy with a growing market share.

Photography isn’t for fun anymore, it is a giving away your image rights to people that couldn't care less about you and what you earn from your image creation. 

What you earn now is pennies on the dollar from your RF imagery. Oh yeah, you also get an ego boost from selling your image on the cheap! 


Tell me how does that feel!


Tuesday, October 29, 2019

October 29, 2019

Taking photos allow us the feeling of superiority over mother nature and human nature. We boost our ego’s jealous nature as we select a physical space, that we will take away from the aggregate of details present a composition that exits in the external physical reality and through this capture we have a picture. It is amazing that amount of images taken each second of each day around the world. 

Nothing is hidden, all is a potential snapshot of someone or something perceived as unique. We prowl in the streets for a stolen image, an image that doesn’t represent anything now but a redundant visual expression that has no meaning. 

Pictures taken to day are selfish in the sense that they are not representative of our feelings toward the beauty of people or the beauty of nature but pictures that are all about the ego’s of the one taking the image. The subject of image creation today is not the external scene but the one taking the snap shot, our addiction to be seen at any cost, to be liked at any cost is the obsession of our selfish culture seeing ourselves as objects, material to be presented on social media.

Ego’s are the main subject of all our hedonistic self interest. We don’t see the objective necessity to respect nature and to protect our rights as citizens of this planet, equal to each other and not under the rule of the oligarchs. 

We have been disconnected from our inner purpose, separated from our true course, our true vision. We are all here on earth to enjoy the beauty of the earth not the destruction of the planet by the corporate elites, junkies for more and more wealth as if they expect to spend this money in heaven, as if savaging the earth would get them to the pearly gates before they were sent where they belong.    

Soon we will be folded nicely into nature mysterious disguise that has warned us of the catastrophic consequences of voracious greed. There is no escape from the aging body and aging mind soon to be silent without funds to buy a way out of deaths brutal clarity. 

Pictures have become selfish in the sense that they are not representative of our feelings concerning the beauty of nature but pictures that are all about the ego’s of millions taking the image.

We don’t explore our own inner intuition but copy what we see others doing, we imitate others in order feel accepted.

Great imagery accepts nothing but the individual expression of ones inner truth. A photographer in tune with himself and nature’s beauty doesn’t look for the cliché but digs deeper, looking for the outer representation of his inner feeling and insights.

The earlier great street photographers created a base of uniqueness, an awareness of the subject and an instinct of visual expression that captured visual moments with revelation and beauty.  These images revealed a new level of picture making, a new underground of subjects never seen before, that would illuminate our senses and push other photographers into a realm of the ordinary made extraordinary. These street scenes  were a new avenue of expression and changed photography forever! A new memory of a subject yanked from its mooring from a flowing, ever changing reality. A reality that is migrating, and evolving and we are blind to its nature of assimilation.

Now we are snap shooters, making images is no longer necessary, now when shooting we are not looking for a representation of our inner vision but an irrational need to be the star of picture taken, seen as just another part of the herd and not an individual with our own unique perceptions. The scene exposed in milliseconds, the surface glitter like eye candy attracts a dull eye and that eye doesn’t see beyond the reflective positioning of a growing laziness in mankind to accept the shallow facade that your intellect determined was just good enough representation to take a picture of and then move on.

We need to be ourselves without a sense of reproducing another’s surface reality but our own inner world externalized in a photograph representing our inner force of character, an expression that is coming through the scene demanding your concentration to be visually present as you realize the subject appearing on a deeper level. 

Because of this new way of seeing through focused intuitive vision you will not take a quick snapshot and then run to the next surface gleam but be still in your vision, still in your insight, still in your willingness to allow the scene to unfold, digging deeper through your inner connection with the subject that you at one time would have easily missed for an easy point and shot image without depth but now you have become more in tune with nature and it’s calling. Your inner awareness is now your driving force to create that bond with nature that had been missing.

However, the new era of photography is not about revelation of nature through a deep connection with this precious earth but it is taking from nature its pride as mankind destroys it through ravenous addiction to money and power. 

There is no loss of beauty in life for we have been broken to feel a good life is impossible as mankind takes from the earth its minerals, the earths atmosphere, warming the climate to an extreme where we will have monster storms threatening all cultures and our children all in the name of profits, these men and women of avarice and deceit, these criminals of duplicity, using their billions to deceive the people of this world through their propaganda machine as if nothing is wrong, and this marketing of a false narrative through a bait and switch swindle and their gluttony for more and more personal wealth on the backs of the innocent is just fine and dandy with no problems and the earth we live in is going a little crazy right now but look we are misleading the American people for a grand purpose, our truth is the defrauding of all peoples of the planet for profit. Look at it this way you won’t need a camera in your kids future because all this beauty on this earth will be gone, destroyed by our callous, selfish greed of the elite for the elite!