Bigtimers/Bigtime photographers; a very valid rant from another photographer

A great RANT from another photographer


I recently ran across a rant from another photographer. What’s he ranting about? Pretenders, huge ego assholes, who are absolutely obsessed with throwing the term “pro” around, but really just selling workshops or having a day job on the backend, which pays the bills. 

Take a look, read carefully. An amazing amount of good stuff both in the post, and the comments sections. It’s rare to find this sort of honesty in the LIE & ego-filled world of photography:

Bigtime Photographers

While he, (understandably), didn’t want to name names, I will. Here are some. You’ll recognize these assholes by their trumpet-blowing & lying on various online venues:

Marc Adamus
Mark Metternich
Kevin Mcneal
David Cobb
Adrian Klein
Ryan Dyar
Steve Sieren
Floris van Breugel
Jim Patterson


There are so many more, but these are some of the top bigtimers out there. They all make most of their “photography” money by selling bullshit workshops that don’t teach anything and are mostly designed to fill their own pockets. Worse, many of the images you see in their galleries are taken while teaching workshops (instead of concentrating on teaching their clients). None of them buy the necessary commercial use permits to teach workshops in parks. None of them buy insurance for workshop attendees. None of them operate anything remotely resembling a legitimate business. They are SCAMMERS and self-appointed Bigtimers who are tearing photography apart for their selfish vanity.

Thinking of becoming a professional landscape/nature photographer? Think, again, Gomer! A couple words of advice.

Thinking of becoming a professional landscape/nature  photographer? Think again, Gomer!

Forget professional landscape photography, an industry DESTROYED by Marc Adamus & his cronies.

 In these tough economic times, many are wondering what their next step will be in the search for a career, or a job to pay the bills. Times are desperate. I understand, truly. 

 You may have seen the online advertisements for art schools, especially the ever-present Brookings Institute ones. They use bullshit phrases like “follow your passion”, with a picture of a backwards-baseball hat wearing loser and a tripod/camera in a field, to describe one ad.
 Don’t even think about it! While many college degrees offer at least a chance of career advancement or a better job somewhere down the line, these photography degrees are worst than a waste of money. They’ll leave you deeply in debt, for nothing.

 In fact, even trying professional photography without a degree is a losing venture. Don’t believe us? Take a look at Flickr, for one. That’s thousands of losers you see, just itching to be published and have their “abilities” acknowledged publicly. Forget getting paid to be published; these losers will pay others to have “their” images published. You have no chance against these imbeciles! In fact, you have less than no chance, because these losers steal the compositions of real professionals, thieving hundreds of years of artistic experience, and throwing it away for pennies on Dreamstime (a de facto terrorist organization that wages economic terrorism against the USA). 

This is what Marc Adamus & Kevin Mcneal breeds: dozens of LOSERS who are desperate to be published.

See these losers? They’re all lined up, loser by loser, desperate for fame and fortune. They don’t care about being paid for these images. They will pay others for the glory of being published. You have no chance against these imbeciles!

 Look at the scum Miles Morgan. Earning mid to upper six-figures as a senior airline pilot for United Airlines just wasn’t enough for this ambitious artistic titan. No, he had to chase that elusive fifty cents an image that microstock offered. And so he did. This so-called pillar of the community was, in fact, waging a jihad against an all-American industry, all to satisfy his selfish, personal lusts for recognition and fame. He even exactly copied images Marc Adamus had taken, which Marc had no doubt hoped to license for hundreds of dollars, only Miles was offering them for cents. I wonder if Miles Morgan had any photographers living on his block. Photographers who would greet him and smile at him, without knowing that Miles was stabbing them in the back and undermining their work. Without knowing that his desire for vain recognition had no limits, even to the point of helping to destroy jobs and committing what can only be frankly described as acts of economic terrorism. What else would you call someone who steals something you made, and then tries to sell it for pennies on the dollar, only in this case it’s for vanity, not to pay the bills?

 Why am I telling you this story? Only to explain how the odds are completely stacked against you as a potential professional photographer. There is no hope, none, of employment in this field, at this time. Even if you are extremely good and manage to market yourself to the right audience, envious scum like Miles Morgan (and thousands of others on Flickr/photo.net/npn) will copy your work (ie, steal), and give it away for pennies. The photography industry is in rapid decline, and the unfortunate truth is that it may have to be completely destroyed, flushing out all the Miles Morgans/Darren Whites/Marc Adamus’, before it can be reborn and provide the jobs it once gave to decent Americans.


 Don’t make the mistake of investing thousands of dollars and hours of your time into a hopeless field. The scum that are currently ravaging this industry, the Adrian Kleins, Kevin Mcneals, Jim Pattersons, Steve Sierens, they just don’t care. Their personal quest for fame and money is far more important than anyone’s career, life, happiness, or anything else in this world. Don’t get caught up in this rat race. Don’t be another person stuck selling “workshops” or “photo tours” to pay the $6000 minimum bill for the photographic equipment you’ll purchase. Read more about that here.
 You are probably reading this blog post because you happened across it while searching Google on prospects in the photography industry. 

Don’t be another statistic, saddled with tens of thousands in debt from a photography school, or thousands in debt for equipment you can’t use to create enough revenue to buy a soda pop, thanks to the SCUM, THUGS, and fame-seeking MORONS out there.

Do you actually enjoy photography? Are you getting into photography for the right reasons? Read this to find out

Doing photography for the right reasons?


 There are many self-styled “photographers” on Flickr, photo.net, photosig.com, and other online sites. Almost without exception, they are LOSERS who feed on the “comments & critiques” they get, from other losers like themselves.
Anyway, almost all of them profess an incredible “passion” for photography, particularly landscape photography. This is almost always a scurrilous LIE. We’re writing this post to help YOU discover whether you’re doing photography for the right reasons.

1. Do you actually enjoy photography? Would you still do it if you weren’t able to post the photos online for “critiquing” by others?
This is the most important point of all. Far too many get “involved” in photography for nothing more than the inane pleasure of reading the “hurrahs!” from other, semi-anonymous losers on a variety of online sites. This is NOT photography. Ansel Adams didn’t have, or need, Flickr or photo.net. Neither did Galen Rowell, Carter-Besson, or any other famous photographer. Flickr or any other online “critique” site is nothing more than the needle that delivers the heroin to the drug user, the drug being “comments & critiques”. If you can’t enjoy your photography for yourself, and need to post it online, you are wasting your time and money. These are tough economic times. Your money is far better spent on building a rainy day fund, investments, education for your children, or other meaningful pursuits. Spending thousands (sometimes tens of thousands) of dollars in pursuit of Internet adulation is sheer stupidity.

2. Have you sunk yourself into a spending pit? Are you trying to make money from photography?
Like any other drug addict, the vicious cycle of addiction leads to the adoption of harder and harder drugs (to keep the high going). Photography may start out with a Nikon D40 and the kit 18-55 lens. Because the “users” of Flickr and photo.net are almost never real photographers, but a bunch of LOSERS, they judge others based on the camera & lens they use, or the amount of “noise” or detail in the photographs, or whether they did a good job of stealing someone else’s composition. Anything but the composition and artistic validity of the photograph, which these losers would not be capable of evaluating, in any case.

This leads the impressionable and gullible to “invest” in fancier equipment, often in misguided efforts to “earn” the respect of the LOSERS on these sites. Let’s break down the usual progression of equipment purchases:

Step 1: Nikon D5000, 18-55mm lens, 70-300mm lens, cheap tripod: about $800-900

Step 2: Nikon D300s or D7000, decent superwide lens, mid-range lens, semi-professional telephoto: $3700 (!)

Step 3: Canon 5D Mark II, 16-35mm II, 24-105mm, 70-200mm F4, mid-range tripod: $6300 (!!!!!)

The average American doesn’t have $1000 to spend on meaningless crap that won’t produce anything
of value, much less $4000 or over $6000. And this doesn’t even include printers or anything else these turkeys buy to make themselves feel like “real pros”. Which should tell you a thing or two about the assholes out there who buy thousands of dollars in photography gear to use to steal the compositions of real pros, and compete against at a subsidized level. 

 The worse part? No amount of Internet comments or “print it & hang it!” hurray’s is going to pay back that Visa bill when it comes due. So the average bozo, stuck with all those bills and all that money spent for nothing, starts worrying about the hole he’s dug himself into. Which is where the selling of workshops and the offering of images on microstock sites, and elsewhere, comes from. Now it’s not fun anymore. It’s just one more tedious job he has to do, but of course the LOSER has to plaster on a smile and claim that he enjoys “teaching” workshops or whatever else he does to stop the tsunami of red ink. 

 And of course, since these turkeys have no business acumen of any sort, and aren’t paying all the bills a real business pays (like say, taxes or business licenses), they severely undercut the real businesses, offering images on microstock sites for 25 cents a download, or prints for $75 for a 20x30, or workshops for $100. 

 Is that what you want to be doing with your spare time? Running a pretend business that bleeds red ink? Cheating on your taxes because you don’t charge enough to run a real business? And worse of all, putting real businessmen out of work, due to your selfishness and addiction to meaningless comments & critiques?

3. What does photography mean to you? Is it a means of reflection and pleasure, or a source of addictive activity?
 Ansel may have spent months in the backcountry, looking for the perfect shot. He didn’t need to rush home from Yosemite to look for a wifi connection to “share” his latest and greatest. For many real photographers, enjoying their own work was enough for them. Selling the images was mainly a way to fund the continuation of their passion, not an end in itself, or a tool for bragging rights.
And yet the turkeys you see in national parks, lined up 10, 12 at a time at popular viewpoints, each thinking they’re really hot stuff, can’t live a day without a Internet connection to “share” what they think is their astute vision and their view of the world. They imagine themselves rugged individuals, explorers, and wilderness advocates. Their expensive websites promote these lies. All these losers constantly toot their own horns. 

 And yet the real photographers of old, those men & women who captured the scenes that grace coffee table books, were nothing like this. They could spend a week meditating and smoking their pipe at the side of a lake. No rush to get back home and post the images on some meaningless website. Instead, they could pen their thoughts slowly and precisely, unencumbered by worrying about workshops or photo tours, or ensuring the world thought they were the best in the world, or walking up to strangers and boasting about their “talent” and publications.
And photography should be the same for you. A source of peace & tranquility, a way to establish a connection with nature. This has nothing to do with finding wifi to post your stolen copy of Art Wolfe’s famous image so you can jerk off to “comments & critiques”, or that “epic” sunset you had to “share” with your loser buddies, or flogging your bogus workshops online because you were stupid enough to spend $10,000 on photography gear, and now the bill is due.

Conclusion:
 Think very carefully before stepping too far into the trap of photography. It can be a lot of fun with a small camera and a kit lens that helps you capture what you see, without being expensive and giving you ideas of “going pro”. If you are looking around for ideas on going pro, or buying marketing ebooks, or taking workshops, you are never going to be a professional photographer. You are never going to sell more than a few hundred in prints or a few hundred in images. You are going to waste valuable time and money, frittering it away in search of meaningless online praise and affirmation that isn’t worth the electrons used to display the characters. The truly talented don’t need all the bullshit out there, being sold to gullible morons with huge egos. The talented can create books with iphone camera images, and publish those images in magazines and newspapers. 

 And the worst part, in the end, isn’t just the financial damage you’re doing to your own wallet. It’s the damage you will do to real professional photographers, the ham & egg type that sell images to newspapers, magazines, and online venues, who use that money to feed their family and pay their bills. Why let your ego guide you to a destructive place where you use your money to destroy, instead of create?

A moment of reflection on the anniversary of the 9-11 attacks

A moment of reflection for 9-11

On this date which will live in infamy for decades, if not centuries, let us put aside our petty differences and honor the men and women who gave all on September 11th, 2001.

This is a day to reflect on the sacrifices of the firemen, police officers, and other officials who gave their lives and health on that day, to safeguard the public's safety. We will remember

them for generations.

 On the other hand, what of the mental (and real) masturbators currently on Flickr, photo.net, or earth shots? Those who jack off to "comments & critiques"?

Who will remember Marc Adamus, Ryan Dyar, Steve Sieren, or Miles Morgan 20, even 10 years from now? No one! They have not contributed anything of any value to society, only tearing down & destroying whatever they touch, merely for the purpose of glorifying and honoring themselves on meaningless online venues. In some ways, they resemble the destructive terrorists who struck at our country on that date.

 

 The THUGS & MORONS we talk about today will have moved on to running scams in other areas, leaving the twisted wreckage of the photography industry behind them. Because the scam-based workshop fervor will only result in the utter eradiction of professional photography as we know it. And these losers just don't care!

 Even if you are a THUG or MORON, don't post on Flickr  or any of the other hundreds of forums you salivate over. Honor the fallen heroes who gave all on this date ten years ago. Shut your trap, stop writing self-glorifying bullshit on your Jack Brauer websites, and reflect on real heroes, unlike yourself, who are so self-absorbed that you would destroy the livelihoods of thousands of photographers for "comments & critiques".

 Cowards like Marc or Ryan would have run the other way from the WTC disaster, probably to quickly post the shots on Flickr so they could be "famous, bitches!". There will be plenty of time tomorrow, and the days after, to masturbate to your meaningless photo.net comments. 

Breaking news! Loserphotographers.com Blog is back in action!

 Loserphotographers.com Blog is back!


 Since April 2011, many have probably thought that Marc Adamus LIES 2.0 and the LoserPhotographers.com Blog were finished. We don't blame you. In fact, we thought we were done, too. Bear in mind that we have received multiple death threats and threats of bodily harm, as well as wild speculation as to our identities. The threats are visible right here on this blog, for anyone to read. The threats have all been published, but for obvious reasons, any posts seeking to "identify" the purported individuals behind this blog have not been approved. We're sure the THUGS & MORONS understand.

 Anyway, after much reflection, the decision was made to continue Marc Adamus LIES 2.0 and Loserphotographers.com Blog. There's simply too much lying and fraud out there! THUGS & SCUM who have been previously profiled are simply chomping at the bit to make up boasts about themselves and their buddies. They haven't stopped their campaign of lies at all. We've decided that the risk is worth it; we're back!

 We look forward to taking the next couple weeks to get back into the swing of things and go back to what we do best: reporting on the LIES & inventions of Marc Adamus and his THUG buddies.

A special message to THUGS & CRETIN MORONS: So if you think images can’t be copyrighted because natural scenes can’t be copyrighted, right?

A challenge about copyright to cowardly THUGS.

A special message to THUGS & CRETIN MORONS: So if you think images can’t be copyrighted because natural scenes can’t be copyrighted, you probably also think books can’t be copyrighted and songs can’t be copyrighted. It’s just words (and musical sounds), right? You can’t copyright words or musical notes! Hey, go ahead and copy that Michael Connelly book under your name, or publish that Rihanna song under your name. As your entire, “special ed” defense, tell them that words can’t be copyrighted. Copy their work word for word. You’ll see how far you get. They might just think you’re a flaming moron and let you off the hook because of that. Well, once you are held liable for millions in damages, that is.