June 1, 2020

Photography Is A Job Done Dirt Cheap

The photographer gives his/her all to create a wonderful image and then to be told that your image you have worked so hard to create will have to go into their Royalty Free files because we have given up on profits for the photographer  from our Rights Managed imagery that once protected photographers with a contract that limited usage and charged a much greater royalty for the image creator. 

What a systematic destruction of a living wage for the photographers, an undermining of good business practices by not sharing the income with the very people that made your agency profitable. 

Stock photo agencies in the past were in partnership with their photographers. There were meetings and advice given but not a narrow perspective on the world but a vision of wonder for any image, back in the day, was an expression of the mindful photographer and the image uniqueness was always welcome.

Now the agencies want to fit the image creators in little slots, to define them as this or that kind of a photographer. How pathetic, if you give someone the go ahead to create from their heart then you have opened the talent door wide open.

But it seems the agencies now want to be an assembly line of dull repetitive photos with no depth or meat on them.  Shallow minds more interested in their titles than on the truth of a photographers hard earned vision.

Now everything revolves around profits not the actual means of profit which is great photographs. 

All the photographers efforts are undermined when they get their first deposit and find themselves stunned at the peanuts the agency is sharing.

But the photo agency does very well because they take 85% of any sale and the photographer gets 15% of a low priced bundling of his imagery with others, a give away to corporations that are demanding cheaper and more cheaper payouts every year. For you see the creator is the pawn in this game of greed, they are the ones doing the hard work and getting less and less for their efforts.

Now think about this, that image you submitted took you days of hiking to locate that perfect landscape and then have the patience to wait for that magic light that created a wonderland of color and beauty in nature. Now you have been told that your image isn’t worth peanuts and you feel betrayed by an agency that seemed honest and worked for the photographers benefit.

Photography is no longer an art form it has become a commodity for the rich to exploit the photographers that are new to this new business model. It is appropriately called screw the artist creating the image in order to pay investors their fair share of sitting on their asses buying and selling people’s livelihood!

Royalty Free imagery is the biggest con game in photographic history. The agency that started this destructive business transaction had no intention of allowing the producers of the images, the photographers to take more than the investors.

And as each year passed both in Rights Managed imagery and Royalty Free images the dollar split between agency and photographer began to slide downward. What a great scam they played, claiming they were protecting the rights of the photographer and his imagery and at the same time allowing

the buyers to exploit the give away of imagery for less and less forcing the old-time photographers to leave this bad business arrangement. The newbies that were coming up as the old guard  photographers business model was being shredded enjoyed just seeing their images published and liked by others. For them this was a hobby and they didn’t have any idea what their images were really worth and they didn’t care. But as the years past even these once amateur photographers realized they were being screwed by the photo agencies but couldn’t stop the fast paste slide into the poor house. 

Photography was a means to express something personal in a visual articulation of your feeling toward your subject. We all seek to express our inner world to the external reality of cruelty.  And just maybe our image creation would help some people realize the beauty of this planet earth and the inhabitants. Photography has always been about influencing popular beliefs and opening the eyes of people to the real issues needing correction.

But in the long run it was a scam to entice photographers to bring their original imagery into an agency from children, landscapes, sports, older folks in their 80’s… What the agency was doing was demanding more and more imagery so they could unload the agency to the three big photo agency conglomerates leaving their photographers in a precarious situation for the new agency could care less about them all they wanted was more images to sell cheap and in volume.  Bundle the images into a sweet deal for the businesses and also a sweet deal for the agency. What does the photographer get, well next to nothing? The creator of the sale, his image, is just a dupe allowing these photo agencies to exploit the very source of their wealth.  What a business arrangement you supply us with the product and we will give you almost nothing in return. Welcome to the new rodeo of stock photography. How long can you stay in the saddle and not be thrown for a loop as you hit the ground and your agency still steps all over your ability to make a decent living.

What a trill the new photographer has when his images are accepted by the RF agency and he sees a grand future coming and he is proud to be part of it. And even after his first sales for pennies on the dollar he still believes that he can make a decent living by shooting stock images. And he buys the latest and greatest lenses, camera bodies, tripods, memory cards, filters and he is now set to journey into the realm of price shock photography, and it is not for the faint of heart. 

It is hard to believe that these mega agencies can be so manipulated to destroy the income of the very people that made them successful, so cowardly to succumb to money, to worship cash, over their photographers, as the new god of power, the investor class that demands profits over the image creators time and effort making them wealthy.

What a con game these agencies are playing on their stock photo shooters or should I say “fools on the hill!” Why even make images to sell for they all end up in the same bed, cheap prices for cheap labor!

What is your motivation to make imagery? If it is money, I hate to tell you this but your chances of making a living at stock photography is pretty slim nowadays. There is just too many people taking images and giving them away for free. 

If however, you have that inner compulsion, that intuitive need to create something of value for yourself and others then I applaud you! You are of the old guard of photographers that have to keep making images no matter what the cost. It is part of our nature since childhood, the need to express our feelings through a lens. To immerse ourselves into the subject becoming part of the scene as we focus on details that when combined with others will tell a beautiful or ugly story that had to be told.  

Photography of the past was an art form but now photography is a cliche a redundant expression of dull ideas copied from the handbook of agencies telling the photographers what to shoot.  The main theme for the stock photo agency now as in the past is smiling faces and food. But now you have no authenticity of character because they all look posed and out of place, a studio set up rather than an honest and open get together of friends, not models. 

Photography is a means of expressing a deep inner emotion, a battle with nature to study and take your time exploring the possibilities of the landscape that reflects something within you.

What has been created is your inner expression externalized for the world to see? And you would like to think that your time and effort in making the image is worth more than just a 10 cent sale!

May 31, 2020

Photography is a lost art doomed now to become just another expression of the mundane world without depth of character. Our love of life is dwindling with each new revelation of pollution, wars, crime, rape, murder as the 1% continues to put profits over human beings and mother earth. 

Photography is no longer about intervention in the cruelty of life by documenting the horrid conditions of people, slaves to the criminals and the rulers of countries. 

The photojournalist used her instincts to put herself in a precarious deadly situation in order to tell the world, is this who we are, is this the best we can rise too by showing us the brutality of violence of wars against the poor and the abandoned people with no voices to yell to their rulers why have you murdered us and the answer was profits.   

We are just stick figures without an underlining intent or motivation to really perceive the world as it is and then try and make changes that are necessary for this planet and people to survive.

The cameras can think for you. Every photo taken is a replica of someones earlier work. Originality is no longer necessary for what is original when we can just make it up and photoshop the image to represent a lie or even better yet a crime.

Just think of it you will not have to make an effort to create images of your family anymore, those insightful moments that tested your patience in order to capture that one moment of your son’s first birthday party, trying to blow out the candles on his cake with such a proud expression on his face, to the cheers of your family and friends.

Now you can host a birthday party, a dinner party for your friends or an impromptu get together with business partners and all the documentation of the event you need is just a flip-a-switch away, your own in-house and office surveillance cameras hidden in every room strategically placed behind framed prints that once marked you as a photographer now take images of the festivities.

This is done automatically without a personal intuitive purpose, now just set the quantity of images you need taken and let the technology do the work for you. How simple is that? I know what you’re thinking, what about when I am out and about on the town or having a quiet moment with a friend how do I get pictures of that. I don’t want to stop anything and ask for people to pose, I just want pictures taken pronto and the images sent back to my home computer so later I can see myself and others and know I looked good and they looked ok but I need to be discreet. No one must know I am stealing photos of them. You never know when they might come in handy. And no I am not a spy or pervert just cautious when it comes to get togethers. 

Welcome to the new world of scheduling your very own photo shoot. Not with lights and assistants but hidden cameras installed for your night out or your night in. Just call ‘sneaky photos’ we have cameras set up everywhere, just let us know where the event will be held and voila, your covered no flashes distracting your get-together and our prices are reasonable and we do ask for a little hush money to keep the media quiet from investigating privacy issues.

Instead of thinking about the person you are interacting with you will be thinking about how you look and act towards the hidden camera. You can't wait to see what pics this mechanical beast took of your little foray.

And once the party is over you won't live your life through conscious memories of that day but will have to look at your life through the eyes of an objective device that has no feeling toward you or your purpose, a surveillance camera in your own house. What a brilliant idea for those that don’t have time to think before they take a photo, now something else can do your thinking for you. Just kick back and lose site of your own unique personal vision and let a mechanical device do the job for you, or who has the time to create images and then download those images and edit those images and caption those images and color correct those images and spot those images, that is just too much work for the new man and woman in this world of ego’s and image status, facades of speciality when in fact all prominent change has been worn in high fashion, a spectacle enjoined by the wealthy put on in centuries before we were even born and then are suddenly regurgitated again as new in a cycle of a copycat existence with originality of spirit ignored and demeaned. 

So don’t fret why not have all that taken care of by the hidden cameras documenting your life for you, so you can relax and just ignore others for your own pleasure of ego.

We are living lies and we are helpless in our inability to take charge of our own feelings through the force of the photographic experience by allowing technology to worm its way into creating an easy way not to take your own visualized images through pictures taken not only by camera implants in rooms and homes but also the automatic cameras now a days that have auto exposure, auto focus, auto wind, auto color corrections, and the best part about it you don’t have to think or spend time seeing the beauty of people or of nature but you will feel secure in allowing a mechanical device to do the thinking for you. Lets not call it photography, lets call it instantaneous visualization of surface nonsense, these images don’t do anything for your creative heart and your personal unique visual expression but just a quick documentation to let others know that that is me, me, me see where I was and what I was doing, Look At Me People!! here I am and here I was. 

This selfish existence we live in is now an automated system of a collective intellect telling us what is good and what is bad and what we can’t do and what we are allowed to do! Freedom of our intuitive self is being undermined by technology and the incessant eating away of our mental and physical worth as human beings as the powers that be experiment in controlling our lives through redundant copycatted experiences, the latest fads that distract us from the real truth the absolute control over our lives through social media and military madness. Your had held devices are a means of psychic manipulation and it works as an ankle monitor so they know exactly where you are at all times. And then the ads show up, buy this, buy that, everything is on sale, even your personal life is a mirage of individuality.

We have already crossed over the line, becoming impotent, lackadaisical representations of the status quo and when anything of importance happens to spur us into our real selves again and act in unison with others as a unified powerful force expressing the outrageous control of our lives by the elites that own our government and control the population through key words that ring true to the bullying minds of racists to do their bidding through propaganda that is coherent misdirection, we the people buckle and retreat in self pity for who are we to fight the corporate monsters of avarice and think first and read between their words of lies and exaggerated truths that they have invented to protect their monopoly of control over us.

If only people would let go of their external facade and just be present in their own moments with a camera or without one but just be open to the infinite universe of unique experiences for what it holds in front of you is a life journey worth taking.

Instead you have substituted, that which can give you insight into your life and others by immersing yourself in your perceptive intuition of a scene, your courage, and replaced it with a narrow understanding of empathy for others, only those that have the same hate and bigotry you do, your selfish anger at loss of your self worth and then projected onto others, your anger and blame and you have convinced yourself that other people are taking something away from you when in fact you have been duped by the powerful forces of greed by using words that incite in you hatred toward an enemy that is an illusion, a bad movie script.

When violence around the world is escalating along with poverty and wars how are human beings supposed to act. Human beings will naturally sacrifice everything to save their family’s from poverty and death. The rich oligarchs are the ones that have put this planet in peril and they are the ones manipulating these racists thugs to do their dirty work for them. And they act just like Pavlov's dog looking to jump for their treats toward self annihilation by blaming innocent people for the corruption in politics and in corporate businesses. 

“The Fool On The Hill” how can people be so blind to the fact that they are being manipulated to hate others when the true hate comes from the elite’s wealth and the military industrial complex.  

We are objects being placed outside our visual consciousness diverted by the media as products to sell hate and hair cream to. 

This will continue your growing awareness of the existential reality of your own non-existence. We have experienced existentialism on a massive scale throughout our individual lives and we will reap the benefits of being alone in a dark foreboding blackness by the increasing fear of others, hate, violence, greed, manipulations etc... and in order for you to feel superior and “real” you will be told you have to dominate the human species with promises of an illusion of power that only exists if we allow them to continue their crimes of disillusionment. 

We are living this today. The continuing reality of people as objects, a narrowing of the mind's perception of individuality between independence and the herd mentality. The wealthy see themselves as 'Titans of the old Roman Empire of profit'.

The way to beat existentialism is to open your mind to the new possibilities of triumph over self indulgence.

Social Media controls the information that is fed to us in diluted form in order to pacify the masses in corralled thinking, one answer fits all their con games.

Are we strong enough, determined enough to finally realize that a good life exists for those that can move away from the automated formula's of the wealthy and begin again to use their own mental capabilities to explore their own inner directions with confidence in their purpose?

We all carry our own albatross around our necks that deny us our hopeful vision at some quality in a person or a nature scene that is new and original not for profit but the sharing of a personal  idea.

Technology as it becomes more and more invasive will demand more and more power from the masses. The ultimate goal of technology is to do the thinking for us. Any questions you may have can be instantaneously answered not by your own individual study of the facts but by a wordy cliche that answers nothing but siting the meekest of sources. These sources are owned by the corporate wealth paid to use attacks on anything that will undermine their quarterly profits.

As life becomes more and more complicated humans do not want to have to think for themselves that is too much pressure on an already stressful work environment and home life. So we look for words and actions that can pull us along with the flow of times cruel endings whereby we don’t do much in the way of helping others by look away and we then allow ourselves to feel better for doing nothing.  

Why be an independent thinker that can put stress on your delicate skin and confuse an already stunted mind.

As we distract ourselves more and more by words and ideas that are at best trivial, our conversations become more repetitive. An accumulation of junkyard thoughts that have as much purpose as a devout atheist becoming pope. 

We allow our minds to take the least path of resistance and this leads down the path of fascism which the united states is severely in the grip of right now this very second.

Photography is creating a newness to the visual scene. Not a cliche of another’s hard work.

But now in this streamed lined repetitive necessity of the herded instinct we seek an assembly line of casual, meaningless imagery that doesn’t excite or instill in the viewer anything at all but ordinary feelings of a lost existence, people deprived of their individuality now seek the comfort of conformity within the workings of their constructed lives of ignorance or false hope. 

Nowadays new imagery with an intuitive truth has a limited value, a passing fad of human folly and violent aggression. The powers that be insist on violence to regurgitate the simple minds inability to think out of the box he is confined in. By ignoring the path toward deliverance and independence these men of greed intrude and control all our feelings by a misrepresentation of truth for their own deadly profits.

When you create a worthy image from your subjective intuition you have transgressed the formality of controlled thoughts and have entered into a world of anarchy.

The only meaningful subjects for prints nowadays is hollywood glamour. And the tidbits of truth that make us jealous of the perfect hair, the perfect eye, the perfect nose and body. Exterior perfection hides a shallow interior an interior conformed to live in material dependency.

Native American Pow Wow at Day Break Cultural Center, Dicovery Park Seattle, Washington State

March 21, 2020

I am startled by the light, how it curves around my subject and is upon me with subtle warmth. My chosen subject is illuminated in pure wondrous revelation.  

Just a few minutes ago the landscape was dull without a pure foundation of details struggling to be represented until the sunlight broke through the clouds. This was the final ingredient that elevated my chosen subject before me into art.

My intuition ignored the intellects preconceived construct of the scene before me. 

I sensed the possibilities of mother nature and her ability to change light on a whim and this particular subject demanded that I wait and set up my equipment to capture the beautiful light being revealed over the scene toward sunset.

Without patience we tend to ignore the primary subject and go for the easy snap shot so we can move on gliding on a surface facade without depth and originality.

Photography is our means to extend our lives. Photographs tell our story and allows us the ability to remain alive for our families and buyers of our work. For our image creation is our means of an after death resurrection.

The importance of creating a legacy of images is a freeing of oneself to just live your life as best you can and let others see and discuss your work after you are gone. 

But what is happening now in the photo industry is the commodifying of images as a product like ground meat. And the proliferation of images in the market place reduces the respect images once had in the hey day of what I call the iconic expression, the truth of our lives through the integrity of the photographers work. 

Especially when there is an over saturation of image cliches and redundant images being taken.

Photographers once had the respect of the people but now are seen as glory seekers taking images of anyone and anything just to capture something without a purpose or a cause just for chance of making some money.

Photographers are creating an epidemic of run and shoot photography.  A carless attitude toward the creation of great imagery. In order to make important imagery you first must become entwined with your subject, studying the details and the composition that will best express your connection with your subject. And give the viewer a sense of being present when the image was made.

Without a personal vision that is unique and visually powerful you will become part of the shoot anything club and call it a good days work. 

Being self-centered just exasperates the loss of momentum in understanding the patience that is required just to make one exposure.

The new generation of photographers are seen as worker ants as they roam this world seeking images without purpose, just snap shots of details they hope will sell for pennies. 

These mega agencies couldn't care less about their photographers. Why should they care for there are 100s of millions of shooters that give their images away for free and the ones that hook up with an agency gets virtually nothing for their efforts? But for new photographers it is an ego trip just to see your image taken in by the agency and then to receive in your bank account virtually nothing. You are not going to be able to make a living on your images like you could beginning in the 1980s and ending in 2008, when the economy collapsed.

Anyone can take snap-shots but these won’t pay your bills. 

I better qualify this by saying that the condition of photography as an art form is dying. Everybody is a photographer and everyone has access to photo agencies gobbling up images just to sell them for peanuts. Why would anyone want to supply their images to a photo agency that takes 80% of your efforts without demanding from their buyers a higher price for their photographers time and efforts?

Because once again it is not the image, the image is not that important, it is the volume of image sales that makes a difference. Lets get real for a moment, if you don't know you're being suckered by putting your images in the mega agencies as RF then wakeup! Any agencies that spouts off about how you will get your return through volume sales, run for hills. The agency will make their profits and you the lowly photographer will be the ones that lose in the transaction. They will gain because 80% of any sale will be theirs and tell me how many times will your image will sell that even come close to equaling what the mega stock houses receive for every sale.

Stock sales are lowering the quality of images being created. Anyone now is a shooter with the ability to submit their work to the mega stock houses is free.

Simply put the photo agencies now don’t really care about the photographers, only the images they create,

which will be sold for less than a candy bar.

Some photographers know how to create and sell stock images and do make a good living submitting their work but they are the few amongst the millions 

of shooters taking snap shots of anything and submitting these run and gun images to the mega agencies and getting really nothing in return.

We need to separate our image making from the control of the super agencies. We must create unique images with purpose. Exploring the outer world and reflecting on what we feel and see and bringing our vision forward, realized through our photography. 

I will be creating photography books and putting these online. This isn’t new but at least it moves me away from the photo agencies that have lost all respect for the people that make them billions. To them we are just workers on the conveyer belt line putting our photography efforts in small boxes that are later sold with coupons at the stock house grocery outlet.

February 19, 2020

What is it about photography that is so addictive? Why do we love to take images of ourselves, our foods, our bodies, our faces our lives?  

Memories express something about us, how we live, what we like, what our interests might be. Memories can guide us forward or they can cripple us to a life not lived.

Photography is a means of escape, a path to explore the external world and to seek an image that can express an emotional moment without distracting, jumbled subjects, mismatched assembly of in-cohesive details, which allows them to be absorbed by the reality they are present in, unaware of the photographer capturing their moments.

We as a society really like conformity. We don’t like conflict, having to argue with someone about their lives and who we are. We seem to demand privacy when it comes to sharing our inner being, our inner thoughts.  It is time to break free from the fear of expressing your inner nature. 

You need to be strong, have faith in your inner voice ready to express your intuitive vision and hurdle over the mental blocks that are hindering you from becoming your true expression, externalized through image creation. 

We should be fed up, tired of hiding in ourselves missing our only chance to show the reality we live in through our own personal inner visual relationship we have with the outer world. We need to break free from the chains of imitation. To become yourself you need to acknowledge your intuitive force within, which is trying to get you motivated to see your true self through inner awareness outer perceptions.

Life doesn’t end with one set back or two or a hundred. If you believe in your vision then you must follow that path that gives you your inner focus!

In today’s culture living is more copying what other people do rather than expressing your unique visual voice. As technology takes over our mental capabilities, making it easier for us to be manipulated, whereby we don’t have to have independent thoughts of our own perspective, our own unique interpretation of the reality we were born into, because it is easier to flow with the crowd and accept another’s observations as our own. That is demeaning your inner realization of selfhood by substituting someone else’s visual beliefs as your own. 

You can’t be yourself, your true self, if you project outward someone else’s unique talent  that doesn’t represent your inner insights.

This inability to be a unique human being with your own personal thoughts displayed through your artistic imagination will not bring you any closer to your truth, your own exploration of your inner talents.

You must fight to find yourself and what you admire in this world and what you are truly interested in. And more importantly how will you express this knowledge through your own visual originality.

Imagination is the beginning steps of self revelation. Creating something through your own inner will begins your journey towards personal freedom of thoughts. You are an individual without puppet strings attached to your physical presence or your mental perceptions of this old and contaminated reality of wealthy greed determined to control your thoughts and your will to improve your reality.

Singular expression of your subject that has been photographed to infinity and beyond and yet you were able to capture a detail, a landscape that brought a new understanding of the subject to the public eye, a new perspective which separates you from the herd. 

It can be intimidating and sometimes a lonely journey, so we retreat to an easier path, a solution dictated to us by others that have a very different idea of your future life. If you are going to be manipulated why not be manipulated by immersing yourself in nature rather than allowing someone else to dictate how you should live through your future years.

Is it the ability to capture a scene, a person and then have a history represented to you through that image that allows you to remember the scene and its significance as you age and reminisce about the time you were present taking that particular picture or were you the subject of the picture and someone else captured you in the scene. And by being the subject you had no control over the composition or exposure and seeing yourself posed in a way unfamiliar can be an extraordinary feeling of hopelessness. As if that person in the picture is someone else, not you.

Being present in your moments is the gift that photography gives the photographer if he realizes the importance of his involvement in the scene. First, by having an interest in the subject and a feeling of  inner connection with the landscape and allowing his personality, his ego to step aside and just bring forth his inner unique feelings to merge with his presence as the subject is slowly revealed. A revelation that doesn't always happen immediately but over time, you begin to see details that are important but something is holding you back, hindering your ability to find that unique perspective that will free up your mental focus that is obsessing with another aspect of the scene and then as if by magic you see perfectly the  relationship that is beginning to unfold with connective possibilities.

Or is there something else going on that attracts someone to photography? You the photographer have a certain power, an ability to document the world and all its horrors and pleasures.  

The ability to make from the physicality of existence another piece of a unique puzzle, creating an image that can’t be duplicated, framed and admired through your lifetime is just one of the powers in photography. It is a means to describe the world through your own personal expression whether it is a snap shot of a scene or an in depth study of a person or place, a subject that you are attracted to and want to be immersed in because it has a meaningful purpose for yourself and you hope others.

Break free from the structured control society demands of its citizens. All get in straight line and follow all the rules we have set up to control your intuitive self that is bursting with ideas for exploration.  

We are bombarded all our lives with conservative ideas and ways of living. Our existence is determined by the forces of technology and mental propaganda on how to behave in living a dull, bored existence.  

The ruling class doesn’t want you to break free from the role you are playing. You are their pawns to be manipulated for their profits.

We have a natural need to belong to something perceived bigger than ourselves. How can we be part of something bigger than our own unique presence? Our own individuality is bigger than any life worth living. Our uniqueness is our gift to ourselves and our means to freedom and a unique expression.

Once we have summoned our intuitive forces to begin unraveling the structures that limit our ability to be perceptive and innovative in our lives then we can begin to choose wisely by slowing down and studying our subject before we begin making images.

Random shooting is the cliche of street photography. We need to go beyond the unrelatedness of the subject with our inner creativity that seeks harmony with the outer world represented through your inner intuitive force.

The outer world is preoccupied with controlling our lives and stunting our ability to express a personal vision.

Your special presence, being alive, with your individual perceptions is your ticket for freedom and your visual preparations are as unique as you are if you have the courage and a willingness to express yourself in a natural expression of your unique truth.

Photography is a means to capture memories. But whose memories? If you are a wedding photographer you are capturing someone else's memories. 

If you are a photojournalist then you are capturing historic events for future generations to see and feel the past and its powerful influence of the wealthy on our freedoms of expression.

If you are a tourist then you are capturing images that are your memories to share but without the depth of perception and a deep personal connection. In other words you are taking images not making them!

You could be the designated family photographer that clicks his shutter anytime he sees an image he feels might have value even if the subject disagrees months later that that is not what they look liked. He is creating memories for the family to see their own progression through the years, how faces and bodies are aging and those life events that mean something for everyone.

He is taking memories not making them.  He is objective and sees only the surface of a scene without realizing the need to penetrate deeper into the scene with his own unique viewpoint. Instead he settles for an image already framed from a repetitive visual sense that he is tied to, that is solidified as the subjects line-up and pose as they have for decades without any depth of character!

If you are a visual artist then you are creating an inner perception externalized. This could be instigated by a past memory or it could be the revelation in process of an inner intuition that has finally surfaced and presented the photographer with a means of expression, an expression of a deep personal revelation.

The moments that need to remembered lose value as we move forward in times destructive nature, age lessons the need for individuality and religion takes a bigger chunk of your inner life. Mental capabilities lesson and we seek easy answers to our inherent passing.  We feel the longing we missed in youth and we appeal to the maker for a second chance. We don't get second chances in life, what you need is the stamina in youth and the singled minded purpose of your unique visual sense to become, to evolve into your unique perspective. If you wait to long your life begins to unravel and shrivel up, you become unbalanced and your focus is hindered by death's all encompassing determination. 

Your life needs to be constantly on the alert for that unique perspective you were born into but lost as society determined your future.  

Don't let someone else's structured existence influence you to conform to their status quo. You are unique and need to express your inner world through your individual  expression.

We seek the duplicate experience that gave us pleasure and hope and we move forward always trying to duplicate a moment that was unique in our minds eye but can never be identical to your previous moment. Time moves forward, changing us and changing the outer reality we live through. 

Your first truth in making an image of your subject became an ideal you wanted to duplicate. This truth in your subject dissipated through time, a loss of a deep connection, which you always need to bring forth a memorable visual counterpoint that will not imitate an already existing image taken years before. You only get one chance to click that shutter and create an image that you are pleased with. 

February 8, 2020

Stock Photography a Bad Business Model For Future Photographers

Once the genius’s of Getty and Shutterstock began competing with each other by lowering and lowering the price structure and royalty percentages for their photographers image creations on their web sites the only conclusion a photographer could foresee in his photographic career was that this is the end of making a living at creating great Stock Images. Why would a professional photographer continue to submit to an agency that gives him 20% of the penny sales?

And not only the disgusting split with their photographers but also the fact that they have eliminated Rights Manage Images from their vocabulary and everything they sell now is Royalty Free where their buying clients get to use the photographers hard earned efforts, our images, over and over again without any further penalty of cost.

A great business model for the agencies but a lousy one for the photographers. So what sayeth the goliath’s of the Stock clearing houses, we are in charge and you are the suckers that still contribute to us so we must be doing something right. Wrong, you have imploded a business model that worked well for decades but you didn’t like the photographers getting their fair share of their hard earned efforts so you created a destructive business model that now is coming back to haunt you. 

And the name of this terror with more to follow is called UnSplash a stock company that doesn’t price their images at all but gives the images away for free.

Yeehaw how about that for a business model. The writing was on the wall for a long time given the free images the Creative Commons has been giving away for decades.

Currently, according to statistics that Jim Pickerell’s ‘Selling Stock’ has published in Weekly Digest, it looks like UnSplash has 70,263,886 downloads per month compared with Shutterstock’s 15,433,333 downloaded per month. You don’t need to be a mathematician to see the writing on the future wall of stock photography, it is dying a fast death and soon it will go extinct.

Getty has known for years what the outcome would be if competition began to intrude over their victory platform at the pinnacle of the Stock Photo Market HayDay. 

Getty knew this day would come and late last year decided to abandoned Rights Managed image sales on their website. I believe this was not because they couldn’t make money still off the rights managed imagery but they decided a while ago to become strictly royalty free because they wanted to eliminate jobs.  It takes a knowledgable editor and sales person to negotiate a good price for Getty and thus for the photographer. By eliminating these jobs Getty saves money because selling RF images doesn’t need any negotiations. Each price is set and the client buys the image or not, all done electronically.

What are we left with in this mad dash to the bottom in the stock photo business? Well, we have less professionals and millions and millions of amateurs taking images and giving them away for free in an ego massage of look at me I got my image published for nothing.  A great business model for everyone to get excited about.

I believe with the erosion of professional photographers leaving the stock field we will see a decline in the quality and subject matter from the new kids on the block. What I see now is not photography as an art form but rather a snap shot of something that might or could be interesting, if the new-bees stayed around longer and explored the subject instead of clicking away and missing the real revelation of perception, your unique vision.

The redundancy of images being submitted is unnerving with no originality that gives us any hint into the purpose and the personality of the photographer. What we see now is mostly generic images with no depth and authenticity.
  

Only a slew of copycat photos that are saying nothing more than surface value. What we are seeing is millions of photographers running around copying someone else’s image creation on a lesser note and then submitting to an agency that doesn’t care about the image maker but only sales volumes.

What we see is cookie cutouts of smiling faces with happy families that will be used by wealthy corporation basically for free.

Give me a break in this exploitation of photographers that do all the heavy lifting creating great images only to see them selling for pennies on the dollar. And now the competition is giving images away for free.  What a business this stock photo agency debacle has become. 

In this devastating economy of greed there is no happy photographers, the stress and lowering of image prices basically undermined any purpose to keep submitting to these stock houses that have basically destroyed the livelihood of their suppliers.

I could go on and on with the undermining of a photographers hard earned efforts to capture a great scene, sometimes under hair raising difficulties. But why bother, we know that end result is always the same. Times change and the new elephant in the room is not a business model but a carnival of deception and a lowering of standards for generations to come. The big question is why would you give away an image for free after the effort it took to create it?

January 21, 2020

Photography As A Commodity

As with any commodity people will fight over pricing. But what most people never seem to realize is that once a new product, an original product, becomes a commodity then the corporate elites have taken its uniqueness and made it dull and redundant like toilet paper. 

Why would they do something like that, aren’t they in the business of profit no matter what the cost? Well, you have to ask yourself who is the patsy here, certainly not the corporations, not the mega photo agencies, it falls on the back of the photographers giving their valuable images away for peanuts on the dollar. And actually feeling good that one of their images sold for under a dollar. How absurd is that when in the rights managed days that image would have sold in the hundreds or even thousands. 

The losers are the image creators, the winners are the agencies taking their 80% of the profits from their photographers and they didn’t have to lift a finger all they do is allow the images makers to upload their products to be sold for pennies when it cost the photographer his time and money to travel to these expensive destinations. 

In the old days some agencies would chip in the cost knowing that the image creator would come back with great material to make up for their travel expense.  Now most photographers are on his/her own.

Within our capitalistic economic system we have commodified everything and anything that can be  exploited for profit, that includes people, ideas, mother nature, services, products… anything can be traded for money. 

Water is a precious commodity and it has become an object for exploitation by putting it in a plastic bottle to sell to the consumer, we need water to survive therefore it has become a great product to sell, a billionaires dream business. 

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Below Taken From Wikipedia:

[ In Marx’s theory, a commodity is something that is bought and sold or exchanged in the market.

It has value, which represents a quantity of human labor. Because it has value, it implies that people try to economize its use. 

It has a use value because, by its intrinsic characteristics, it can satisfy some human need or want, physical and ideal.

“As the division of labour becomes more complex, a class of merchants emerges which specializes in trading commodities, buying here and selling there, without producing products themselves, and parallel to this, property owners emerge who extend credit and charge rents. This process goes together with an increased use of money, and the aim of merchants, bankers and renters becomes to gain from the trade, by acting as intermediaries between producers and consumers.”]

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As a stock photographer you are relying on your photo agency to get the best price for the image you created. Oh, that’s right that was in the old days when the agency shared the profits from the great unique imagery that their photographers submitted to them. 

Now that has changed and images are repetitive and boring to look at. They are cliches of what the money men want to project externally, a mirage of happy faces, happy kids, happy grandparents all enjoying the great economy and healthy medicines that can help you cope with the prices that drain your bank accounts, hiding the undercurrent of corruption the wealthy manipulators have over the media spewing out this heartfelt desire to help all people reach their credit card limit. 

What is your truth, your personal vision and not a repetitive mind numbing cliche spoken on tv ads manipulating your intellectual perceptions to repeat and not complete your inner journey?

To create images with depth and a powerful individual determination you need to see photography as a documentation of your life cycle. It isn’t an ad selling products. Photography is a revelation of something deep inside you that has to be expressed.

We are living shadow lives of our true selves, taken in by medias subtle manipulation of our thoughts and emotions. We need to voice our own unique impressions and not let corporate voices deter us from looking at the truth behind the stage curtain. 

The goal of wealth is to sell products by playing to your fears. Your personal information is externalized through social media and that is the mind trap you have entered. Social media knows more about you than you know of yourself. Wake up to your inner force and break free from the spider web of lies and the words that impoverish our inner thoughts to seek false witness instead of the truth.

In this new physical world of valueless compassion we end up seeking an easy answer to the swill of voices spewing hate words to rile us up to condemn innocence and exploit our conditioned minds to seek purpose through violence toward others and ourselves.

The selective use of photographs tell only a part of the story. What happened prior to the photograph being taken, what happened during the exposure of the image, did the photographer pause just long enough to capture a lie and what happened in the aftermath of the image being taken. Frankly, just like social media, I don’t trust photographers today to photograph truth. I think everyone is pitted against each other and they don’t comprehend the manipulations of their actions and voices, they just don’t see their confinement to a select script of racism.

What can we say about today’s photographer, where everything looks and feels the same? I can no longer call it image creation but snap shooting of their external life, where they go, who they are with and what they ate.

That is powerful imagery that makes you want sit and stare at a blank wall rahter than that crap!

Photography is now a means to say look at me with no underlining current of depth and individuality. 

The ease of taking pictures now diminishes the need for originality. We are creatures of habit and we copy the actions of others as if we were herded cattle. 

The new camera technology makes snap shooting so easy that one can get addicted to taking pictures of everything.  

When you are starting out this is a good thing, because you don’t know what your inner likes and dislikes are. You are just beginning to see subjects that perk your interest. The key to success is to flow with these inner intuitions and practice your compositions and your exposure to bring into the light your unique visual senses.

Everybody is a photographer and no one is a photographer. Technology is the addiction and the pictures let your ego brag about where you were and what you saw.

Well, a snap shot is not really seeing, it is taking from the scene nothing but a surface reflection of your ego. To see a subject you must immerse yourself in the scene allowing time to reveal to your inner intuition the details that will eventually become your inner image externalized.

Ego shooting doesn’t allow you a personal relationship with your subject, you feel nothing toward the subject but a few seconds of your attention and then you disappear to another subject that appears to you as too dull to even take a picture. You are missing out on the real value of photography and that is being present in your vision with the millions of possibilities you have to narrow down to integrate into your frame the image being formed.

When you come upon a scene do you feel the excitement of your intuition that informs you that there is an image present to be made.

Stop moving, just look, really look deep into the scene seeking details that are present that are inciting you to explore even deeper into the forest of your vision.

If you hurry through life you are only living on the surface of a deeper reality. 

January 21, 2020

Royalty Free Scam

What is it about corporate investors that they have to reduce every possible business take over for only one purpose certainly not for the employees welfare but for their own profits?  Business today is not a people focus adventure to make workers lives better but a money making opportunity and that is all that matters, the bottom line of cash into their bank accounts. 

When big business/industry gets involved in any new unique selling venture opportunity it doesn’t take long for that particular business to be dismantled in order for the powers that be to funnel the majority of the profits upward and away from the workers that make the product they sell. They dismantle the core business, selling off as much as they can and leaving the employees without any new potential to get a good paying job.

We see it time and time again in the criminal behavior of corporate industry that invests in another companies business model, that was doing great, an upward arch and the original owner felt that having big money interest would help propel his company into the stratosphere.

What it did was sink into oblivion.

This wave of concentrated assimilation of other businesses into one entity is the corporate raiders  determined greed, externalized, destroying workers rights, unions and wages!  

And the stock photography market place is the latest to be undermined and destroyed by big business.

As in any take over of a business the employees are the ones that get the shaft first and in the stock photography business the photographers were the first to feel the hard slap in their face. 

Their image creation was the fuel that lifted these small photo agencies up into becoming a collaborative journey for the agency owners and the photographers. 

As in any take over the undermining of the photographers profits started slowly but then escalated into a frenzy of diminishing returns for the photographer.

This undermining our share in the profits of our own individual work, led to the inability of the stock photographer to earn a decent living in what he loved doing, creating great images, through his individual personal vision.

The big dollar pot went upstairs to the money men while the photographers got shafted.

Lets be honest stock photography had a great business model in its origin where the photo agency received 50% and the stock photographer received 50% of the sale to their clients. 

The agency and the photographer were a team working together creating images the clients needed.

It was the best of worlds back in the early 80’s until big money began buying up agency after agency in the mid 1990s, consolidating their monopoly on a mom and pop run business model. And then began shortchanging the photographer by lowering his half of the sale. 

Photographers built the stock photo business with their visual talent but through the decades that followed, as more and more people worldwide purchased their digital cameras and began snapping pictures there was an ocean swell of photographers that gave their images away mostly for free and these cheap images hurried the downfall of the Right Managed business model (where the photographer was paid well for his efforts) which ended up becoming obsolete, and evolved into the Royalty Free scam where the profits mainly go to the two giants of the stock photography world Getty Images, ShutterStock and not into the pockets of the photographer who made the image. 

You might ask what is the Royalty Free pricing strategy? Well, the photographer will get 20% and the agency will get 80%, nice isn’t it. But I believe that 20% will soon become 10% and then the photographers will just give their work away for free most do now for an ego rush!

When you think about all the images created in a single day, billions and billions of images by people taking snap shots and then sending them into RF agencies to be sold for pennies on the dollar you can see why this RF model works well for the agency but is literally stealing money from the creator of the agencies image base, the photographer.

The stock photo corporations have done the math so they claim and they state you can do pretty good financially by taking RF images. When you finally wake up from the agencies propaganda you will soon realize that there touting RF is a scam and your talents as a photographer are being used as decoys, a fantasy world of happy faces, loving embraces, as you submit the cliche images demanded, when in the past the true image creators sought to photograph the world as it is, a place of violence, pollution and racism.

As the corporate propaganda machine infiltrates your mind with receptive images of happy people not helping others but buying products and envying an ageless man and woman holding hands looking out over a vineyard with a beautiful sunset, their love assured forever. And the photographers are now part of the scam to keep the people complacent, wanting only to maintain their way of life as the poor suffer for the sins of the corporate greed for money and power.

And to ad insult to injury you discover that Rights Managed is a dying market place because most of the business community addicted to cheap labor and cheap prices for their ads that used to cost them thousands, tens of thousands of dollars for an ad. That dinosaur is on its last leg and will soon disappear from the stock photography world. 

In today's market of fast food photography even the editors are facing a losing battle to keep their jobs. Pretty soon all will be done automatically, search, find, and pay your pennies and then upload the image selected to your computer and lay out your ad and bingo it is done. 

With the death of RM you really won’t have a choice but to sell your images to the client yourself. Good luck with that, businesses today are run by greedy kids that think they’re the next bozo and they won’t pay for anything that is not dirt cheap for they have to save their boss some cash in order to get their monthly bonus!

You can’t live on the stock photography split of twenty per-cent.  You can’t feed your family, pay your rent, your utilities, kids clothes, school etc… welcome to the new age of photography. Submit your hard earned photographs to the stock house who accepts your efforts and then treats you like worker ants to get out there and shoot and shoot making money for the boss but while you live in poverty. 

The new age of photography income becoming waiting in line at a food bank to get canned food for your family.