The Online Photographer

Yr. Hmbl. Scribe coins yet another term that is sure not to catch on: Ph.TSD = "photographer traumatic stress disorder."  This seems to be what I suffer from sometimes when I worry about the character and conduct of a photographer whose work I want to discuss or recommend.

I thought of this again the other day because, pursuant to our discussions of color photography last week, I was going to put together a mini-portfolio of pictures that I consider to be "real" color photographs. I decided I couldn't risk trying to present the actual pictures here on my site—rights holders have become very stingy with any use of their images in static presentations online, the opposite of the way it used to be. So I was going to find images that I could link to. I have a visual memory, and visuals often come to mind before anything else. One of the photographs that lazily came to mind in that context was one by David Alan Harvey.

But Harvey, as you might know, was outed as a sexual predator in a long and carefully researched article by Kristen Chick called "Magnum's moment of reckoning" that was published at the Columbia Journalism Review. It's a long article but instructive and worth reading. It eventually led to Harvey being the first and only photographer ever to be kicked out of the Magnum Photo cooperative. Technically he resigned before he could be kicked out, but that was a preemptive manipulation—it was highly likely that his removal was imminent.

I like photography for a lot of reasons, but one thing I really don't like about photography is that it can serve as a cloak or a screen for sexual predators...and worse. Apart from Harvey, the poster child for who you do not want to be, there's Nick Nixon, famous for his annual portraits of his wife and her three sisters over the course of decades. Nixon was revealed by a Boston Globe investigation in 2018 to be preying on students, engaging in highly inappropriate behavior, and misusing his teaching position for sexual harassment. He "retired" in disgrace and his last exhibit was cancelled. Although he has not been convicted of a crime, the situation casts a retrospective pall over his life's work. Another is the execrable Terry Richardson, who used to sexually abuse hired models. Although he has also not been convicted of a crime, "In 2017, due to the allegations of Richardson's sexual misconduct, many fashion brands and fashion magazines decided to no longer commission his work, including Valentino, Bulgari, and the Condé Nast magazines: Vogue, Glamour, Wired, Vanity Fair, and GQ. Following the professional repercussions, he has not actively worked since 2018." (Quotation from Wikipedia.)

At another level altogether are rapists, murderers, and serial killers who use photography as part of their schemes to entrap their victims. The litany of exemplars is too awful to rehearse, but the worst example who can stand for the others is perhaps the "Dating Game" killer, Rodney Alcala, a stone-cold psychopath who was convicted of five rape-murders but might have committed as many as 130. He lured both young women and young men to photo shoots, and entrapped and tortured victims as young as eight. (Although he "won" his notorious 1978 appearance on the TV show "The Dating Game," the winner refused to go on the date with him because she found him "creepy." That's the understatement of the century, but definitely good instincts on her part.) After his convictions, 120 of his photographs were circulated to the public (900 more could not be released because they were too sexually explicit), and "at least six" families came forward to identify loved ones who had disappeared.

(Just as an aside, humanity badly needs to work out an effective legal way to identify and stop psychopathic killers, similar to the way that the RICO act allowed law enforcement to counter the activities of organized crime. I don't know what this would look like, but there is certainly an urgent public safety mandate at stake.)

Anyway, all of this is an issue for me when I blithely poke around the Internet looking for interesting pictures. I knew about Harvey and one of his pictures came to mind anyway, although, fortunately, I recalled the scandal involving him before linking to a picture of his. I'm reminded of a friend of mine, a top lawyer, who told me once that he had to charge $5,000 to write a letter. I asked him how that was even possible, and he replied that he had to know the deep story before he would know what and what not to say in any letter. It's not so Draconian in my case, but it's something that does worry me. I don't want to brightly point out a website or a nice portfolio or some outstanding picture or other without knowing some functional minimum about the person who made it.

How do you feel about "separating the artist from the art"? I would say I have low demands of artists as people—the art matters, and it can still matter even if the artist was very far from an ideal human being. And I know that ethical standards change over time, so I don't require that historical personages conform to current ideas about morality (I don't even agree with all the current ideas about morality). Condemning Adventures of Huckleberry Finn because Twain used the N-word in the 1884 book is asinine* in my opinion. Asking that a person be a great artist and also a great guy or gal that you'd leave your children with and love to have a beer with is simply asking too much. The proof is in the inverse; many of the very best human beings I know happen to be artists...but their art sometimes stinks. (No, it's not fair.) Many good and great artists, on the other hand, are far from good people. In some cases that's part of the wellspring of their art.

But there are also cases where I just can't separate my feelings about the person from the art. I will never care a whit about Salvador Dali, never look at or recommend Joel Peter Witkin, and so on. (I don't even want to name more of them here, as if the very mention of the names sullies the page.) Others are further into a gray area. It helps that I always thought Terry Richardson sucked as a photographer—I had no interest in his work even before learning what a jerk he is. But Nick Nixon was someone I admired. I heard him speak when I was a student, have seen many of his originals (even owned one once, thanks to Keith Canham!), and followed his work through the years. I thought there were some things about his life, work, and career that were instructive and illuminating for photographers to know about and consider. Will I ever look at his work the same way again? Or even look at it again? Probably not. At least, not the way I feel about him now. But, if I'm being honest, I'm just not sure.

Mike

*I once got into a long discussion with a feminist friend because a character in a short story I wrote referred to a grown woman as a girl. My friend's feeling was that as the author of the story I controlled my characters and had an obligation to make them use currently acceptable terminology. My feeling was that I was writing a character, and if the character was one who would call a woman a girl, then that's what I should have the character do. Surprisingly, we were not able to resolve the argument.

Original contents copyright 2023 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

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Andrew V: "There is an excellent recent book called Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma by Claire Dederer that deals with this topic. I learned of it through Joerg Colberg's blog. It is a great piece of writing with a thoughtful and careful approach to the issue."

Lothar Adler: "I think the discussion at hand (art vs. artist) is too narrowly defined and that is what creates this problem. The actual underlying topic is the purpose of art to explore and celebrate human nature and conditions of being, to the extent we can recognize and tolerate, depending on our intellect and mental durability!

"In this discussion group, with all due respect to all persons involved, it is probably a very bourgeois view of human nature, which is also further restricted by the cultural sphere, the zeitgeist, 'good taste,' moral and political correctness.

"In consequence only 'decent' people who stick to the current rules would be allowed to create artistic products and only these products could be consumed without feeling guilty. The image of an armchair, a coffee table with photo books and a landlord in a knitted vest comes to mind. If art is the creative expression and creative exploration of human nature and human conditions, then all of this has to be much more broadly defined and permitted, otherwise we are only talking about crafts and decorations."

Ken: "I think it may be easier to separate the art from the artist if there is a distance involved between the artist and the viewer, whether that distance is temporal, spatial, or in terms of the art's appeal. E.g., I find it a lot easier to be critical of artists whose work doesn't appeal to me to begin with, regardless of whether the 'art' involves photography, painting, sculpture, music, literature, or another medium. It is also easier for me to be more critical of western artists (I live in the U.S.), those who were actually convicted of crimes, and those whose crimes were closer to the present time. On the other hand, I would have a difficult time getting worked up about the alleged crimes or misdeeds of Caravaggio, Gauguin, or Renoir, to use three examples. Those artists were far enough in the past (and I like their work enough) that I have no problem separating the art from the artist. Maybe that's all just my long-winded way of saying, it depends."

There are certain seat-of-the-pants rules I've set for myself when using social media.The longstanding utilitarian metaphor of Ulysses tying himself to the mast so he can both hear the Sirens' song and also not succumb to it comes to mind.

First, never click on anything that says "To [achieve something desirable], do this." Similarly, avoid anything that purports to make anyone "speechless."

Never go to Buzzfeed.

Never watch a video with a robot voiceover track. (Look at me, I'm so old I don't even know what those are called.)

Avoid pages with titles like "[number] ways to [solve some problem that's common enough that you probably have it]," such as, "9 Ways to Never Have to Clean Your Toilet Again." Yes, you want to know. But no, the information is either not good or too obvious to be useful.

Never follow slideshows.

Always check out the source of the information you're reading. Ever heard of it before? Know anything about its reputation? Are sources cited? Ever heard of them?

And bear in mind you can't always trust sources you've heard of that used to be reputable. Sources such as People magazine and Newsweek are now junk, for instance.

Never get suckered by wanting to know what once-beautiful people look like now.

Never scroll down on sites suggesting miracle products.

Try not to care about anything Warren Buffet does. No, drinking five Cokes and eating breakfast at Macdonalds every day will not turn you into an investing billionaire.

Stay away from YouTube Shorts; they are as addictive as crack, and as nutritious. That one amazing magician guy who doesn't have a name is an obvious exception.

Unless you know the person or know of them, except when you're being helpful to them or vice-versa, don't engage. It's exhausting and absolutely pointless.

And, of course, never trust anyone who says something is "genius." They're not even smart enough to use the word genius properly, so what could they possibly know that you would want to find out?

Most important: never follow what the bots suggest to you. Don't browse. Choose what you watch/read/consume for yourself. For example, David Hurn on Instagram*. I do research on the Internet, and I can tell you, the bots and algorithms are just throwing hooks and bait into the water wherever you've been seeing swimming. (I'm very confusing to the bots, because I research all sorts of weird things and never return to 99% of it.)

And a takeaway: if doing something on your phone or computer is making you feel upset, lonely, distressed, depressed, or anxious, stop doing it.

Bright shiny metaphor
Not too far from me, in a small town that just saw its last grocery store close (it's now a dollar store, where everything costs $1.25 because of inflation), there's a gleaming new gas station / convenience store. The store part is surprisingly large. Apart from a small display of apples and bananas prominently featured at the main crossroads of the aisles—and the bottled water as well, I suppose—there is almost nothing healthy to eat or drink in the entire store. The whole place is lined with refrigerator cases featuring a bewildering array of brightly colored drinks, including beer, and freezer cases for ice cream and frozen cheesy foods in boxes. There are whole aisles for bagged candy, bar candy, and fake candy (such as "protein bars," which are candy bars for people who need to feel good about their choices. Yogurt is sugary pudding for the same folks). Mylar bags puffed up with air and filled a third of the way up with endless varieties of very expensive chips (I think the Brits call them "crisps") occupy anther whole section. I don't think I have to go on. The point is that everything there is carefully designed to be attractive and enticing, but almost all of it is bad for you and you don't actually need any of it...except perhaps for the one thing you went in for. And—too bad for a town without a grocer's—no matter how clever you are, you're unlikely to be able to put together a meal there. If you do, it's going to be a pretty sketchy meal.

That's social media, right there. Seriously: thinking of it as a shop or a catalog chock full of bright shiny sh*t you probably shouldn't bite on will get you very far along toward being able to put it into perspective. Pass this along to your favorite young adult.

—Uncle Mikey

*Thanks to John Krumm for this.

Original contents copyright 2023 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

phil: "Sorry, I can't read your blog today. It starts out with 'this is GENIUS.'"

Jack Mac: "Speaking of fake candy: I confess to be the inventor of Nature Valley Granola Bars. I worked in the breakfast division of General Mills. We made Nature Valley Granola cereal. It had less nutrition than Cheerios, but how could that be, since it was Natural? Cauliflower is natural too, but does have nutritional value. But it lacks sweetness. I ate the granola cereal as a snack. I liked to grab the biggest pieces. So I asked the researchers how the granola was made. They said it was mixed up, rolled into a thin sheet and oven roasted. Then it was mechanically crumbled up. I asked them if, instead of crumbling a batch, they could just cut it up into candy-bar size. They could. I got an improved oh-so-natural snack for myself and the rest of America.

"That was in 1974. Now I would have made them Organic too, and advertised them on Instagram."

Ed. note: My friend Jack Macdonough introduced himself to me originally as "a retired beer salesman." Turns out he retired as CEO at Miller Brewing. I've known him for years, yet this is the first time I've ever heard the Nature Valley Granola Bar story! A man of many surprises, not to mention modesty....

Moose: "Sadder, but wiser Uncle Mikey! As to genius, the internet remakes words. Once in effect, the old definition is gone, on your screen, if not in your heart. 'Meme' was such a wonderful, interesting, subtle word, but no longer."

Not THAT Ross Cameron: "Couldn’t agree with you more. The phrase you are looking for is Critical Ignoring—the next step beyond critical thinking—to make sense of and filter the facts vs. information vs. opinion / entertainment / commercial interests (including so-called ‘alternative facts’ and Colbert’s Truthiness). Interesting article on that from The Conversation, here. Reminds me of this page—now quite dated, but still relevant, for researching. A good tip is to use more than browser when searching for info on the interwebz."

ASW: "The worst part is that the shiny new store will outsell the recently closed grocery store by orders of magnitude. To extend the analogy a bit further, if the new store is social media the grocery store was a dying local newspaper. Better for you, hopefully with some locally produced products, and invested in the community vs pure profit."

Flavioapu: "Thanks for sharing some thoughts about it. Nowadays there’s so much information available and so many people doing anything for popularity that we actually need to mine the Internet (or life) in order to find quality stuff. Whether we’re looking for food, information, connection or anything else, we need to break through a lot of 'attention stealers.' Everything is so superficial and I just wonder how deep the root of this human issue goes."

c.d.embrey: "William Gibson said: 'Before you diagnose yourself with depression or low-self esteem, first make sure you are not, in fact, just surround by *ssholes.' Is Gibson thinking about the internet? It seems like that to me."

Dan Khong: "Thank you Uncle for your pearls of wisdom in tackling the contents of the 'Net. As the name suggests, a net is meant to catch unsuspecting fish. And most fish have small brains."

Michael Ryan: "I also avoid: Will change your life forever. Will blow your mind. Will make your jaw drop. This is hilarious. All shockingly false promises."

["Open Mike" is the often off-topic Editorial page of TOP. If you don't like one, just wait a while. It's a blog. It'll change. —Ed.]

Wonder why this picture?

In the 2016 election, a lot of people "felt the Bern." Bernie Sanders' cause célèbre was wealth inequality, which in reality is far worse than almost anybody realizes it is.

There are all kinds of ways to slice and dice where you might fall on the spectrum. The biggest and simplest dividing line, of course, is which half of the population you fall into. According to the Federal Reserve, the median net worth of all Americans in 2019 was $121,760. That was pre-pandemic, so it might be a little different now. But it's a simple signpost. What it means is that if your net worth is above that number, you're in the top 50%. If it's below that, you're in the bottom 50%. Or at least you were in 2019.

What's net worth? ramseysolutions.com puts it succinctly: "Your net worth is what you own minus what you owe. It’s the total value of all your assets—including your house, cars, investments and cash—minus your liabilities (things like credit card debt, student loans, and what you still owe on your mortgage)."

They go on to point out that it's not a matter of what your income is or how much stuff you have. You could be surrounded by a million dollars' worth of stuff, but if your debts exceed a million dollars, then "you're broke." (Ramsey doesn't mince words.) This leads to a curiosity: many people who look very wealthy actually aren't. And the converse: some people who look poor, aren't.

My net worth took a big boost recently because the housing supply around here is incredibly tight and competition for the few available properties is ferocious (still). And that reveals a problem: while a house is among many people's biggest assets, it's a bit theoretical to consider its cash value, for two reasons. First, because its value is an estimate until it's actually realized in a sale, and second because a body's gotta live somewhere. But you own it (that is, you own the equity, its current value minus your outstanding mortgage), so it's an asset.

Have nots
Another group you've probably heard about is "the one percent." That's the top one percent of the population in terms of net worth. "One percent" seems like a small number, but it isn't: US population in the 2020 census was 329.5 million, so "the one percent" is approximately three point three million (3.3m) people. That's a lot of people.

And what does it take to belong to that group? The dividing line is a net worth of $11.1 million. If you have that or better, you're in the 1%. Worse, and you're in amongst the trifling, skinny-wallet-having losers, the 99%.

Of course, that's only the very poorest people in the 1%, the least wealthy of those 3.3m people. At the high end is where it gets extremely ridiculous: for example, the six primary Wal-Mart heirs own as much wealth as the bottom 30% of US society (the poorest 99 million people). No rational thinker would ever in a million years call for this sort of absurdity if they were designing a utopian society from scratch. It's funny, isn't it, that "centralization" was considered such a great evil of communism, when capitalism is doing nothing but getting more centralized all the time? We just centralize wealth and control in private hands, is all, both corporate and individual. And what is the difference, really, between the aristocracy of pre-revolutionary France and the "hereditary one percenters"? Note the word heirs in the sentence about those six societally useless Waltons.

Looking in the other direction, if you're in the bottom half, your situation is likely pretty bad and getting worse. Only the very richest in the bottom half have a net worth as high as $122,ooo. Go down further and the situation quickly gets grim. Get down into the bottom 20%, and most people don't even think in terms of net "worth": their "own vs. owe" number is zero or negative.

Everything is stacked in favor of the top 1%, and very much against the bottom 40% or so. For the latter, life is actually more expensive: they pay more for basic services and basic needs and they take more risks with everything from health to cash reserves; they have fewer protections against depredations and exploitation; they have fewer rights because they can't afford to assert or defend them; they have fewer options in terms of life arrangements as well as job, employment, and relocation flexibility. They can't optimize their circumstances because they can't afford to. Consider the recent abortion bans. Who's that going to hurt? Poor people, mainly. The ones who can't travel to another State, the ones who were already limited in their options before the radical judicial activism of the current Court (limiting our ability to fight climate change sure is the smart move for the historical moment, isn't it?). And, of course, the poorest 40% are hurt proportionally more by progressive expenses of all sorts, from sales tax to parking tickets.

Bounty
...Which brings us to the picture up top. You know what that is? That's fifty dollars in the trunk of my car. Seriously—for one bundle of paper toweling and two of toilet paper. Fifty bucks.

I swear, that threatens me—or, at least, it alarms me a little, gets me in my gut, makes me feel the fear—and I'm financially relatively sound for my area. Not only has the gas pump gotten shockingly more efficient at sucking money out of my wallet, but, cripes, fifty bucks for paper products? You gotta be kidding me. What is this, Hawaii? Did they have to fly it in from the mainland?

Fifty bucks, to put it in the context of people poorer than I am, is 3.3 hours at New York City's minimum wage. Leaving 36.7 hours of a full-time minimum-wage job for phone, electricity, heat, kids, car, health care, home or renter's insurance, the mortgage or rent, clothing, other household goods, home maintenance, gas, on and on. Oh, I forgot food (body's gotta eat, too). Inflation might hurt everybody, but, as usual, the people in the bottom 40% will suffer the most.

I just wonder how poor people do it. I feel my wallet's under assault, and I'm not even in the bottom 60%. They say your concept of the value of money calcifies when you're fifty, and that it's old people, not young people, who don't know the value of a dollar (it's worth less than we seniors think it is). Maybe that's my problem.

I stopped at the local lumber yard to get some rock salt for the water softener the other day (cost: 2.7 minimum wage hours), and the guy who waited on me was a weatherbeaten old dude with a gray pony tail down to his waist. (Probably one of those strange amalgams, the hippie Trumper.) As he loaded the salt into the trunk, I spouted off about the cost of the paper goods. He shared with me his own untutored philosophy, which boiled down to, "that's what they want. To make it so people suffer as much as possible."

Okay, not a subtle or holistic read on the complexity of the sociopolitical situation. But you know what? He ain't all that wrong.

Mike

Book o' the Week:

The Mindful Photographer by Sophie Howarth. I only know of Sophie Howarth from her time as a curator at the Tate Modern in London, but my impression then was positive. Her brand new book (it only came out a few days ago) is about slowing down as a means of enjoying photographing more. It's said to contain a curated collection of photographs along with anecdotes and explanation.

The book link is your portal to Amazon from TOP, should you wish to support this site.

Our link to B&H Photo

Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Frank: "Only New York City and Westchester are at $15/hr. minimum wage. Rest of the state is at $13.20. Tip occupations are even lower—$8/hr. plus tips. Federal is still $7.25/hr. unless superseded by state minimum wage."

Mike replies: $7.25/hr. for a full week (40 hours) is $290 a week, gross pay. I was getting nearly that in the very early 1980s as a handyman at a garden center. Seemed a little scant at the time. Average new car in the same era cost $9,400. Average new home price was $63,000.

$7.25/hr. for a full year is $14,500 gross. I don't see how it's possible to live on that, unless you made some pretty radical accommodations to it. And to support a family? Too bad we can't sentence people convicted of financial crimes to live for a year on $14,500.  :-)

Ken: "You're throwing away your money, and your usage is environmentally harmful. A simple bidet or washlet costs about a hundred bucks and is easy to install, even for someone who is not handy. It won't eliminate but will significantly reduce your need for TP. A couple of dozen kitchen towels can be had for less than the cost of a roll of paper towels and can replace paper towel use for, conservatively, 50% or more of your needs."

John Krill: "I had planned to go to a grand-nephew's high school graduation. He lives in San Luis Obispo, California. He has two older brothers and I had been to their graduations. He lives about 300 miles away from me so the gasoline for my car, at $6 a gallon, wasn't going to be cheap, but I figured, OK, I can do it. But then I checked room rates for some of the motels in town. Would you believe $500. So I sent this young fellow a check for $500 and told him to spend it unwisely. His mother loved that. I still came out ahead because I saved all that gas money."

Speed: "Missing is what happens to all the net worth accumulated by those at the top. Not even the wealthy live forever. In 2020, the [Walton] foundation awarded $749.5 million in grants to further our mission. We [Gates Foundation] are a nonprofit fighting poverty, disease, and inequity around the world. Across eight decades, the Ford Foundation has invested in innovative ideas, visionary individuals, and frontline institutions advancing human dignity around the world. 'And that's the way it is.' —Walter Cronkite."

Kodachromeguy: "Your friend with the ponytail was right. 'That's what they want. To make it so people suffer as much as possible.' I live in Mississippi. The governing class here spends its entire life effort on denigrating the poor, finding ways to remove social safety nets from them, defunding their education, and claiming that it is entirely their fault and responsibility. And the white poor keep voting for them."

Albert Smith: "Re 'could be surrounded by a million dollars' worth of stuff, but if your debts exceed a million dollars, then "you're broke."' Conversely, you could have a modest house, few frivolous possessions, moderate income, and no debt other than recurring monthly bills and be much better off than those working to 'put on the show' of having success in life. When I was gearing up for retirement in 2000, I read up on a new trend that took off in the early days of blogs on the budding web called voluntary simplicity. I didn't accept every aspect of it, but enough of it rang true to me that I set up my life in a way that I would not be a slave to trying to impress anyone at the expense of being debt free and having no problem sleeping for fear of not meeting my obligations. I read that a majority of the US population couldn't come up with $400 dollars for an unexpected emergency. I'd bet many of those people drive fancier cars, wear trendier clothes and go to nicer restaurants than me. Four hundred dollars...I have that in my change jars."

Kenneth Tanaka: "I’ve long found it interesting, albeit predictable, to read reports of what people buy with sudden windfalls of wealth. Cars, houses, clothes, whatever they’ve felt deprived of in their previous life. Looks like crates of toilet paper might soon appear on those windfall shopping lists!"

Mike replies: I've long been interested in houses—not systematically, and I don't study it, just interested, since boyhood—and I've heard that when people get to build a house, they will not just cure but overdo whatever they felt deprived of in their previous one. So if you didn't like your low ceilings (my late brother's complaint), you'll make the new ceilings too high; if you felt cramped for space, every room in the new house will be a third again too big (I have a cousin who did this); if your old house was dark, the new one will have too many skylights all over the place, etc. This has been borne out when I've witnessed it happen.

For years, mainly in the last century, whenever I looked at a house, the first thing I wanted to see was the basement. Realtors were mystified. But I always dreamed of having a nice darkroom. Curiously, I started doing darkroom work in a bathroom under the basement stairs at approximately age 23, and at 65 I haven't yet had a nice darkroom of my own. If I were able to build a house now, I'm sure I would plan for a comfortable, well-equipped darkroom, although I don't know how much I would use it.

I'd get someone else to develop the film, though, that's for sure. I've had enough of that for one lifetime.

Mani Sitaraman: "The UK's Guardian newspaper website has an article on the parallel present-day phenomenon of what they call 'skimpflation.' It's the phenomenon whereby price tags for goods or services don't increase, but you get less for your money, in obvious or subtle ways. The article is worth a read. (No subscription is required by the Guardian site but you do have to register and log in to read the article.)"

John: "It’s worse with that paper of yours. Poor people can’t afford to buy $50 worth of stuff in one go, so they buy it in smaller amounts at relative higher prices."

aaron c greenman: "Mike, I highly recommend watching the Robert Reich movie Inequality for All (2013). It’s a highly understandable explanation of the economics and effects of wealth inequality in American society."

WWII: Total U.S. military and civilian deaths in WWII, in 3 years, 8 months, and 26 days: 418,500

COVID-19: Total U.S. deaths so far from Sars-CoV-2 in 11 months and 5 days, according to the Centers for Disease Control: 318,786; according to Johns Hopkins: 374,341

"Sarge" (played by Michael Conrad, 1925–1983) from Hill Street Blues: "Let's be careful out there."

Mike

Ed. Note: Figures are "best available estimates." Disparity between CDC and Johns Hopkins figures result from differing standards for counting. Among other causes, the CDC uses death certificates, a conservative method which causes its count to lag 1–3 weeks behind.

ADDENDUM: The cost for KN95 masks is now down to as low as $1.14 per mask (at Shoplet) (no affiliation). (They were in the $5 range a few months ago.) N95 is the U.S. standard; KN95 is the Chinese standard. According to 3M, it is "reasonable to consider" the two to be equivalent. Both capture .3 micron particles. Broadly speaking, the blue paper masks protect other people from the wearer; KN95 masks do that and also protect the wearer to a degree.

Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Book of interest this week:

Picture This: How Pictures Work, By Molly Bang
(clicking on the link above takes you to Amazon from TOP)

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Featured Comments from:

A comprehensive search of news sources by the U.S. National Library of Medicine at the National Institutes of Health has determined that there were at least 259 people killed between 2011 and 2017 in accidents that were directly related to taking selfies.

Almost three out of four victims were male, and the majority were involved in risky behavior at the time of their deaths. The highest number of incidents happened in India, followed by Russia, the United States, and Pakistan. 

India, May 2016: A 15-year-old boy from Pathankot died after he accidentally shot himself with his father's revolver while taking a selfie with the gun pointed at his head.

The study notes that "selfie" was named Word of the Year by the Oxford Dictionary in 2013, and estimated the number of selfies taken by people between the ages of 18 and 24 to be about one million per day. That has only increased.

The study excluded people who died while talking or texting on cellphones; only deaths directly involved in taking selfies were included, and only incidents cross-referenced in "prepared" news sources were included.

Russia, January 2015: Two young men died in the Ural Mountains after they pulled the pin from a live hand grenade to take a selfie. The phone with the picture remained as evidence of the circumstance of their deaths.

The study says, "It is believed that selfie deaths are underreported...for example, certain road accidents while posing for selfies are reported as death due to Road Traffic Accident. Thus, the true magnitude of problem is underestimated. It is therefore important to assess the true burden, causes, and reasons for selfie deaths so that appropriate interventions can be made."

Serbia, April 2015: A 22-year-old man was trying to recreate a scene from his favorite movie Barking at the Stars by running in front of a train, beating it and being hailed a hero. As he ran in front of the train, he tried to take a selfie to document the scene. He was killed instantly when the express train hit him at full speed in the village of Laćarak near the northern Serbian town of Sremska Mitrovica.

The leading causes of death while taking selfies are drowning, accidents involving forms of transport, and falls. Electrocutions are also a major cause.

Italy, June 2014: A 16-year-old girl died in Taranto after plunging 60 feet onto rocks while she was trying to take a photograph of herself on the seafront.

"Attempting to take a selfie" is never reported as the cause of death.

The study's conclusion is that "No Selfie Zones" should be declared in places known to be dangerous to decrease the incidence of selfie-related deaths.

Personally, it seems to me that public awareness would be a better strategy, because "No Selfie Zone" signs would be easy to ignore, and there are too many places where people can get into trouble engaging in risky, distracted activity. Also, some of the danger is related to reckless behavior rather than hazardous surroundings. We photographers know how difficult it is to concentrate on making a picture while paying close attention to our subjects, and we can help convey that to inexperienced snapshooters.

The bottom line is that it's actually not easy to take a selfie and do something dangerous at the same time. You have to concentrate on what you're doing. Which makes it easier to be less aware of what's happening around you and other sources of peril.

Best solution? The traditional one: in iffy situations, use a photographer. That is, get someone else to take the picture. People shouldn't do it themselves. They should concentrate on where they are and what they're doing, and let a photographer concentrate on taking the picture.

Mike
(Inset examples from Wikipedia. No "last
selfies" were used to illustrate this post in
consideration of the privacy of families.)

[UPDATE Saturday: I won't allow any more scornful, derisive, dismissive, or "Darwin Award" type comments. Keep in mind that compassion is an essential element of our spiritual fitness. Imagine if it happened to your child, your brother, your childhood best friend. —Ed.]

Original contents copyright 2018 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Arg: "I disagree with the sentiment of some, that it is not the selfie but the 'dangerous thing' that is lethal. I disagree because many people don't want to do the 'dangerous thing' unless there is a selfie taken to record it happening. Plus, of course, doing the 'dangerous thing' one-handed, while putting all your attention into the other hand, is not just twice as dangerous, but more like 200X more dangerous. I therefore conclude that it is indeed the selfies that are lethal."

Mike replies: I agree. I think the salient insight we photographers have to offer is what you point out in your third sentence. I know that when I am intent on the viewfinder, at least two-thirds of my attention is concentrated on that.

My first smartphone had a driving app that just gave visuals, no audible directions. I tried to drive while checking the route on the screen...once. I never did it again. The screen drew so much of my attention that I immediately began driving just like I was drunk. Concentrating on taking a phone picture of a dynamic, changing subject while also concentrating on your safety in a perilous situation is about like making yourself instantly drunk, in terms of impairing your ability to concentrate on the danger.

D. Hufford: "Well, I think it has all been pretty much said here. The first rule is don't do stupid, dangerous things no matter who is taking the photo. But I especially want to comment on the pointing a of an unloaded firearm at ones head. Don't. Never. Ever. No matter if you checked the gun to see if it is loaded or not. No matter how familiar you are with the firearm. One of the basic rules of firearms safety is to never point one at anything you do not intend to shoot. That means 'unloaded' or not.

"To simplify that, never point a firearm at something that you are not willing to destroy if it goes off.

"Back in my military days, we had lots of city boys and others not familiar with firearms or firearms safety who thought it was funny to point unloaded firearms at their own heads or at someone else during training. Fortunately, the instructors, upon seeing this, would take the young innocents aside and, without so much as a trigger warning, kindly explain to them why they should never ever do that and if they did do so ever again in their #$@*&% miserable little lives they would wish it had been loaded when they pointed it at themselves. And those instructors were kind compared to my old man.

"Don't play with firearms, loaded or 'unloaded.' Lots of people have been killed with unloaded firearms. Never point one at anything that you are not willing to destroy."

Mike replies: At the suggestion of Craig, who commented yesterday, I read a few paragraphs about the death of guitarist Terry Kath of the '70s group "Chicago." More people might want to read it; it's vivid.

marcin wuu: "Actually, if I saw a sign proclaiming a 'No Selfie Zone,' I'd be more than certain to take a selfie instantly, even though I'm normally not prone to those. And I'd do my best to keep the sign in frame. And I'm sure I wouldn't be the only one."

Mike replies: Made me laugh. Makes me want to post a "No Selfies Allowed" sign outside my window...with the writing helpfully at head height. I'll bet people would stop all Summer long.

I've mentioned before that there's a freeway road sign in Wisconsin that says "Bong Recreation Area." At the bottom of the next exit there's a gas station, and the woman working there told me she gets people coming in all day long asking things like "Did I just see what I thought I saw?" Half of them want to know how to get back to the sign so they can take their pictures standing under it. (The recreation area is named for Richard Ira Bong, the top U.S. fighter ace in WWII.)

When I see signs in museums that say "No Photography," I usually have to take pictures of them....

Interesting issue: is there a moral dimension to an old photographic print of a poor man selling at a New York City auction for six figures?

Dorothea Lange, White Angel Bread Line, San Francisco, 1933.

I say there isn't. What there is is irony. Irony is intuitively understood by most literate, educated people, which all of us are, but let's talk about it anyway.

Wikipedia notes its formal use as a communicative technique: "Irony, in its broadest sense, is a rhetorical device, literary technique, or event in which what appears, on the surface, to be the case, differs radically from what is actually the case. Irony can be categorized into different types, including: verbal irony, dramatic irony, and situational irony." The original use in Greek tragedy was when "the full significance of a character's words or actions are clear to the audience or reader although unknown to the character," as when Oedipus says "I pray that [the killer's] life be consumed in evil in wretchedness" in Oedipus Rex by Sophocles—when the audience, but not Oedipus himself, knows that he unknowingly curses himself. The most familiar form of irony is sarcasm, whereby you say the opposite of what you mean. Policeman: I'm sorry Mr. Jones, but you're going to jail tonight, and your car is being impounded." Mr. Jones: "Oh, wonderful."

"White Angel Bread Line" expected to fetch between $100,000 and $150,000 at an auction is an example of situational irony. "This type of irony occurs when something happens that is completely different from what was expected," says yourdictionary.com. "Usually, these instances incorporate some type of contradiction and a certain level of shock."

"White Angel Bread Line" is important because it was the first time Dorothea Lange, a formerly prosperous portrait photographer who aspired to take pictures that told stories about peoples' real lives, felt she had achieved what she was after in showing the full human and emotional dimension of a subject. It's "a disturbing but beautiful image," writes artsedge.com, "that would come to represent the face of the Great Depression: The weariness indicated by the man’s posture, the emptiness of his cup, his individuality obscured by the low brim of his hat, and his isolation from others on the breadline, all adding up to a poignant yet respectful portrait of hopelessness and despair." It is an early example of what later came to be called "Concerned Photography," whereby photographs, it was hoped, could arouse compassion in viewers and change public attitudes. (We're on the far side of that curve now, the public's sympathy for pitiable pictures having been blunted by overexposure and our realization of our own impotence to help.) For it to end up being traded about as a bauble to show the status and power of the rich...well.

But given that the price of the print is highly ironic, is there anything immoral about it? I can only see one way: if we take it to symbolize something greater than itself, in this case the much larger issue of wealth inequality. Thoughtful people can indeed apprehend a moral dimension to excessive wealth inequality. And perhaps the universal qualities of the man facing the camera ("his individuality obscured by the low brim of his hat") could stand for people now who are beset by poverty. But there's nothing causal going on here and nothing unjust: it's symbolic only...if that. The subjects of the picture aren't being harmed, and neither the photographer, nor the sellers, nor the buyer are directly harming anyone. And besides, the photographer, her brother Martin (who was escorting her at the time for her safety) and all the people in the picture (adults in 1933) are dead now.

Even the "White Angel," Lois Jordan, whose soup kitchen served over one million meals in San Francisco during the Great Depression, is long since departed to her reward.

Mike
(Thanks to Tom Walsh)
Inset: Dorothea in 1965 by Imogen Cunningham's son Rondal Partridge

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Mark Jennings: "Immoral? Maybe we’ll never get to the bottom of that question, but by asking it and trying to answer, we’ll learn something along the way.

"A famous landscape painter—maybe Constable—once painted a neighbor’s farm. Reportedly the farmer was baffled when later the painting sold for more than the farm itself did."

It doesn't matter, but I'd just like to say that TOP's official position is that skullduggery like the following is unethical. This is verbiage from a regional news-oriented kind of site, with the organization's name removed:

Photo Sharing Terms
By submitting photos to [org.], you are granting [org.] and its affiliates and/or clients permission to use, share, and edit your photo without limitation. Photo submission automatically surrenders any copyright to [org.]. No royalties shall be collected by the photographer for any revenue generated by [org.] or its affiliates or clients, directly or indirectly related to photo use. No payment shall be made to the photographer in exchange for the photo or its use. [org.] is not required to credit the photographer when using the photo (though [org.] often will!).

Yeah, I know that a lot of uses are harmless, and a lot of photographs are valueless, and a lot of photographers are willing, and "org." and its cronies are simply trying to make it easy for themselves to use submissions without jeopardy. I don't care. Any website, company, contest, charity or anything else that asks you to "automatically surrender your copyright" is being unethical.

"Let's be careful out there."

Vox clamantis in deserto, heavy sigh, etc. But that is The Online Photographer's stand on the matter, and that is that.

Just say "no." And let's be careful out there.

Mike

P.S. No, I don't have permission to link to that clip or to show that screen grab. Then again, I'm not claiming I now own the copyright.

Original contents copyright 2017 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Glenn Allenspach: "Bravo! (And you have my permission to use this comment)."

Dave: "It makes me crazy when the local newspaper publishes photos my friends submit and they're thrilled they got published. Without payment. Numerous times."

Joey: "Openly violating copyright of others who did not surrender it in a piece where you rage against this org's copyright policies hurts your standing in my eyes, whether or not you see it as rightful finger pointing."

Mike replies: Maybe, but don't forget this. I do the best I can.

Kenneth Wajda: "Around here in Colorado, different towns' tourist agencies run contests for photos for tourism use, and do the rights-grab, too. And the quality is never as good as if they just hired photographers, but they're willing to take less when the price is right. Every news channels asks the public to 'share' their photos. Share is a nice word for 'give away.'

"Shame there's no shame in asking for free. Most people wouldn't ask for a dollar off at a yard sale or wouldn't be caught dead taking a handout. But when it comes to the arts, they 'beg' all day long. Until there's a stigma against it, and the artists aren't willing to give it away, it'll never change."

[Mike is on semi-vacation this week so TOP is on half-speed till Wednesday the 24th.]

"Michael Phelps, the crown jewel of Under Armour's Olympic athletes, is wearing Nike sweatpants, swoosh and all, on the cover of the latest Sports Illustrated magazine."

Omigod.

This could have huge repercussions. Millions of Sports Illustrated readers now know about Nike.

I have never been able to take this feature of capitalism seriously. Yes, I know it means big bucks to the companies. Yeah, I know there are contracts and agreements and all kinds of negotiated conditions that pertain. It's all Very Serious to somebody. But it's all about what kind of pants a guy wears. Ultimately, about as trivial as trivial gets. As much as I know I'm supposed to care about such things as a good little consumer, I can't bring myself to.

Trivial styling details in pictures were a problem for me as a professional photographer. One of my nicest portraits was of a girl wearing a tank top that showed a bit of her bra strap (that was in the '80s, well before such details were easy to fix). It didn't occur to me that I should be bothered by it. I actually thought it was kind of charming, in a casually louche way. To me it looked...Summery. Well, the mother was "appalled" that I would even show them the proof. They picked a different—inferior, in my opinion—frame. And never came back to me for another portrait.

You know what they say: Oh well.

Another time*, I worked and worked on a magnificent family portrait that encompassed five matted prints. It was one of the best things I had done and I was very pleased with it, and couldn't wait to show it to the client. Alas, the gentleman immediately noticed that the tongue of his belt, the bit that sticks past the buckle, was lying over, rather than under, the belt loop of his pants, which is not sartorially correct. Again, no Photoshop to make easy corrections. This fashion disaster occasioned weeks of arguments over payment, which he finally rendered, reluctantly, when I showed up at his house to repossess the unpaid-for artwork. He probably asked me forty times why I didn't tell him about the offending belt loop during the shoot, whilst we still had time to make amends and save the whole star-crossed project. Why, why, why? I assured him again and again that I hadn't noticed.

The truth is, though, that I wouldn't have said anything if I had noticed, because it looked fine to me, and I had no clue where the ends of belts are supposed to go, and I don't care anyway.

There were dozens of such incidents over my near-decade as a working pro. The problem, I finally realized, is not just that I am insufficiently perfectionistic; it's that I'm naturally accepting of quirky little details that are visible in photographs. Not only do I not mind them, I actively like them. I like looking for odd little details in pictures, and I like that they're there. Working and working on making an advertising shot perfect goes against my interests and instincts. I get gratification neither from the work of perfecting, nor from the perfected result. Hence, I'm not very good at that sort of thing.

Some people feel differently. In the past year or two, I've showed at least three pictures I can remember that caused a few readers to complain about imperfections. 

I eventually realized I was never cut out to be a pro, and this is only one of the ways. The nice thing about being an amateur in photography, of course, is (as I always say) that no one owns your photography. You can't stop people from having their opinions about what you do, but all the same, nobody can tell you what to do.

I like that.

Meanwhile, the Great Pants Scandal: Michael Phelps made an understandable mistake; Nike sponsors the Olympics and even though Under Armour sponsors him, he's required to wear Nike at various Olympics-sponsored events. It's logical enough that he could mistakenly believe that a medal-themed cover shot featuring three Olympic standouts was an Olympics-related happening. Could have been worse; at least he didn't claim that a fake Brazilian policeman forced him at gunpoint to wear Nike pants.

Meanwhile, here's a tiny, tiny consolation prize for Under Armour: before reading about this whole shocking imbroglio, I had never heard of Under Armour. And now it gets a free link from me! And I just ordered a pair of its shorts!

...And I think I will from now on. After all, it is reeling from its terrible Sports Illustrated cover setback, and I root for underdogs.

No, that probably does not ease the sting. One hopes Under Armour will eventually recover, though, and not perish from the world on account of all this.

Mike
(Thanks to David)

*I've told this story before, because, I admit, it still bugs me a little.

P.S. I would love to believe that if I were in Michael Phelps' position, I would be my own man, turn down payola, and wear whatever kind of pants I damn well pleased. However, the only reason I could say such a thing is that I am not Michael Phelps and nobody cares what I wear (Lee jeans, mostly). The truth is, if Under Armour paid me $5 million dollars a year to wear my underpants on my head at all times, I'd do it. I could probably even be had more cheaply than that, and I do not want to explore how much more cheaply. So much for lofty principles.

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Jack: "Beer and Photography: If you think sports attire companies care about what athletes are wearing, imagine how beer companies care about what brand you are drinking.

"Back in time, when you lived in your old neighborhood outside Milwaukee, there was a contingent of business people trying to gain support for a new baseball stadium. They were in NYC visiting the then-new Yankee stadium. Included in the group was the CEO of Milwaukee-based Miller Brewing, who left the group early. Since the rest of the group was hoping the brewery would contribute heavily to the new Milwaukee stadium, they tried to correct one of their group from ordering a Heineken beer. That person, head of the local business group, replied something like 'the Miller CEO is gone—not a problem.' Well it became a problem when a photo of the group showed up in the paper with the offending bottle clearly visible. Miller Park got built, but that particular beer drinker works in Columbus, Ohio now."

hzb: "Generally I've found perfectly perfect objects sterile, and 'imperfections' much more interesting: a wire intruding in the wrong place, repaired cracked ceramic, insect spot on a leaf, misapplied lipstick...I've certainly found not everyone shares my opinion, and too often focus on the innocuous 'flaw' rather than the overall subject in context.

"Some years ago, through investigating Japanese knives online, I discovered Zen aesthetics (wabi-sabi, shibumi, and kintsugi being some of the ideas), as well as many Japanese photographers. It's had an important impact on Western design in many fields and definitely speaks to me."

hugh crawford: "In 1980 or so I was working in a studio where we did a lot of editorial photography for New York magazine. We did a photo where several models were wearing brightly colored cashmere sweaters. We needed crew-neck sweaters but the only sweaters the stylist could find were V-neck sweaters from Bloomingdale's. Standard practice is to get clothes that are large for the models and pin the cloths in the back so they fit, so there was no problem with just having the models wear the sweaters backwards. Of course everything in the photo is identified by brand and retailer including perfume (!), so Bloomingdales was given a credit for the sweaters. When the issue hit the stands a ruckus ensued that included the president of Bloomingdale's calling the editor of the magazine to complain that hundreds of customers were coming to the store to buy sweaters that they didn't sell."

I have to admit I've been rendered speechless by a lot of things lately. I won't mention specifics in most cases—you can probably guess a few.

Not the most appalling, but possibly the most egregious, is something that's happened in our very own little parish. You can read the article yourself at Hyperallergic and I recommend you do so, but you can get the gist from the first paragraph:

"In December, documentary photographer Carol Highsmith received a letter from Getty Images accusing her of copyright infringement for featuring one of her own photographs on her own website. It demanded payment of $120. This was how Highsmith came to learn that stock photo agencies Getty and Alamy had been sending similar threat letters and charging fees to users of her images, which she had donated to the Library of Congress [for] use by the general public at no charge."

If that's not just a jaw-dropped, wide-eyed WTF, I don't know what is.

Not only that, it's not the first time it's happened. "In 2013, Daniel Morel was awarded $1.2 million in a suit against Getty, after the agency pulled his photos from Twitter and distributed them without permission to several major publications."

Behavior like that brings to mind—well, my mind—Matt Taibbi's famous description of Goldman Sachs: "...a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money."

By the way, in paragraph two above is our vocabulary word for the day: egregious (roughly, ih-GREE-juss), adj., extraordinary in some bad way; glaring; flagrant. Excessively shocking or outrageous. "Over-the-top awful" in argot ordinaire.

But really, there are no words.

Mike
(Thanks to Donal Wells)

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Don: "Just to add some balance. The images are available from the Library of Congress website and are listed as being in the public domain for 'copyright free access.' Copyright free images do get placed at Getty by individual photographers or by archival collections that distribute them. Value is added by keywording and making them readily available. Sometimes work is done to the images to improve them, or for example copyright free images from NASA may be composited into other work. Getty provide a lot of info from their legal team to their contributors about what is considered acceptable in this way. On the customer side, many have subscription deals and find all their needs at one place, simplifying their image searches (and thus adding value). It may seem wrong, but it's not necessarily illegal. The fault could indeed lie with the Library of Congress in the way they have made the images available (i.e., not in line with Highsmith's expectations).

"As to greed? The bill sent to Highsmith is almost certainly the result of an automated bot at work. In this case a mistake was made. Hardly a billion dollar one though is it? Getty Images does this to protect the work of photographers from the hoards who think everything on the Web is free and right click anything without a thought, claiming ignorance when caught and outraged that they are expected to pay for the use they have made.

"When Getty successfully claw back payment in this way the photographer whose image has been stolen gets a cut.

"I don't know Carol Highsmith's background, but it seems she is now in a position to pursue her photography without needing payment. I would imagine most of the photographers who supply their work to Getty Images, some 250,000, like to get paid and want unlicensed uses found and billed.

"There are two sides to every story, and it's interesting to contrast this trial-by-Internet with the recent mention of payment for use to Harlan Ellison. And before anyone says Highsmith needs paying: no she doesn't, she chose to give them all away."

Geoffrey Heard replies to Don: "Sitting in my far distant spot in paradise, the South Pacific New Guinea islands, I am always amused that the moment some corporate greed is brought to light in the USA, someone pops up to defend it.

"Don says inter alia: 'I would imagine most of the photographers who supply their work to Getty Images, some 250,000, like to get paid and want unlicensed uses found and billed.' The point, Don, is that Highsmith did not supply her work to Getty Images—she gave it to the Library of Congress to be freely available to whoever wants to use it. But Getty has some sort of arrangement with the LoC so that it lists them.

"Then Don says Getty needs to get some money for the listing and what not. Really? And the listing costs $120? And are Highsmith's pictures available only through the Getty listing?

"I have used a number of pix from the LoC from time to time, just downloading them from the LoC site (I just tried to verify continuing availability today but the LoC sites are all down for maintenance over the weekend). But Highsmith would not have downloaded the pic she used from the LoC because she had it on her computer. So she just picked it up and posted it. And, of course, Don offers the excuse that no doubt the billing was generated by some automatic bot. Sure, of course it was, it is always the computer's fault when someone like the egregious Getty is caught out.

"But in this case it was billing Highsmith for $120 for her own photograph which did not come from Getty's collection or via Getty.

"Was this a standard price the Getty charges for every picture in similar circumstances? Bet it is. It is a price that is supposed to include its expenses, its profit, and a few stray cents for the photographer.

"And there is the egregiousness of the egregious Getty. It was about to keep the whole $120 because Highsmith is not a subscriber.

"Further, the bot was wrong because Getty made it that way. If automated billing is the happen, then it is incumbent upon Getty to bill only for photographs obtained from its site and maybe only for photographs supplied for sale by its subscribers.

"Its bot should not be billing for other photographs.

"It would be pretty simple, I imagine. Getty could add a bit of hidden text or whatever to every subscriber image, I imagine, through an automated process that would cost virtually half of nothing to implement, and it could then set up its billing bot to find that information and bill on that.

"But would Getty do that? Well, it wouldn't want to; it might reduce its income by a couple of bucks so it would need to be forced to.

"No bot billing without exclusive property ID!

"I like the suggestion of fining corporations a percentage of turnover (not profit, that's too easy to manipulate, just ask the taxman) rather than a flat sum. I have read that in Finland, they do something like that with parking (and other traffic?) fines. The fine is a percentage of the value of the car! Does the Grosser Mercedes driver leave his car in No Parking areas in Finland? Nope. Does he in Australia where there is a standard parking fine of $50 or $100? You bet. The standard fine is barely pocket change for him and he is happy to pay it for the convenience. If fines are to be effective across the board, they need to be in proportion to wealth."

Angry man behaving badly (Mark Gordon)

If you've been photographing for any length of time out in the wild, you've probably come across some version of the angry man. A bored rent-a-cop, a drunk, a pissed-off wrongdoer anxious that you'll uncover with your camera whatever he's trying to hide, or just some jackass entertaining themselves by messing with you.

Alex Stone, as you might have read elsewhere, kinda ran into the Big Daddy of the angry men out in California. Alex and his team were photographing an Audi on a strip of almost-empty blue highway out in the middle of nowhere (actually Ramona, near San Diego) when a big drunk in a big truck pulled up and started screaming at him to "get off my driveway." (They weren't anywhere near a driveway.) What follows was harrowing, given that it easily could have escalated into something much worse. Very fortunately, firearms didn't become involved—it was exactly one of those situations that the presence of firearms can turn into something tragic.

You can read the story and see the video on DIY Photography. Note, however, that the video is laced with profanity and is not workplace-safe. It's not very pleasant to watch, either.

The local sheriff subsequently arrested Mark Gordon, 52, on three charges, the most serious of which is felony assault with a deadly weapon (non-firearm), which carries a penalty of up to four years in prison and counts toward the "three strike" rule. (In many places in the U.S., a third felony conviction carries harsher penalties.)

Right between the eyes
The reason this story is so popular is that one person is so obviously in the wrong, and that person got nabbed and bids fair to be punished. Which is very satisfying. People love to see, and read about, just punishment. Consider "Judge Judy," a popular TV program in the United States—the most popular of the TV courtroom reality shows pioneered by "The People's Court." It certainly isn't because she is a good judge—she is an awful judge, creating for the public about the worst possible model of what a judge is supposed to be. But she's a matchless scold—she really gets after people and gives them a piece of her mind. Maybe more than one piece. That's what people love. So among photographers, Mark Gordon stands for every jerk who ever hassled any of us, and we all fervently hope they throw the book at him and that it hits him hard between the eyes. Well deserved. We wouldn't mind if Judge Judy gave him a good dressing-down in public, either, for good measure, and screeched at him to "shush" if he talked back.

Incidentally, if you descend into the comments at the link at DIY Photography, you'll see a textbook example of why I have expended my irreplaceable days and hours on Earth for the past decade-plus moderating more than 200,000 comments here on TOP. The comments on that post veer fatally off topic from only the second one, and the commenters get into a ongoing back-and-forth squabble that has very little to do with the opinions the article author specifically asked for. It demonstrates the problem with comment sections and shows how not to moderate comments. For the record, Brandon Cowart's subversive two-word comment, second from the top, would never have seen the light of day here.

I hope somebody follows through and reports on what becomes of Mr. Gordon. And I'm glad no one was hurt.

Mike
(Thanks to Rob Spring)

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Marcus Peddle: "The truck driver is a scary person and should be punished for using his truck as a weapon but I wonder if Alex got fined for blocking the road with the car he was photographing. I know it's nothing compared to what Mr. Scary did but it's the first thought that popped into my head when I started watching the video."

Eamon Hickey: "Although in this case it doesn't seem to be specifically the photographer's camera that sets off this Angry Man, it's still a useful reminder to all of us that a camera is sometimes seen as a threat, or at least as something to be suppressed. I think it behooves all of us to make some mental preparations for this kind of thing—to think, beforehand , about what you'll do in various likely scenarios if you're confronted when you're taking pictures. I have my own set of responses loosely worked out, depending on the situation. (I do not respond to unjustifiably aggressive rent-a-cops the same way I would to a real police officer or a drunk, enraged, or mentally ill person, or a protective parent etc.)."

Dan: "Many years ago when I was but a wee clod-kicker in high school, I had amazing conversation with a pretty blonde girl in english class about the 'news.' She stated proudly that she didn't pay any attention to current events...bragged actually. I was flabbergasted. She reasoned that since she had no plans to do anything about what she read, why bother. I had no retort beyond stunned indignation. All these years later she now appears as a wise woman in my memory. If only I could resist having my emotions hijacked by stories like this one. Why be angry? I'm not going to do anything about it."