Back in the summer of 2006 I set out on a project to create a body of high-resolution photography that allowed the public to use it, even alter it, without my permission.

I initially hosted this project at Wikipedia, because back then very few articles had photographs for a lack of freely-licensed imagery.  I also wholeheartedly supported what they were doing at Wikimedia and still do.   I wanted to contribute.  So I focused on what I considered the most difficult subject to illustrate: biographies.  Photos of famous people.   Not only actors and athletes, but also politicians, poets, presidents, porn stars; nobody was off limits.  Within four years I photographed over 800 people.  Very few release photos of these subjects to the public, and almost never at my resolutions.

My recent CC portraits include the Time 100, the Tribeca Film Festival and Joan Jett.

Any new work I produce–which is sporadic–is hosted at my Creative Commons Flickr Photostream.  Over on Flickr, I compiled a list of my 100 favorite portaits. Click the image below to see the ones that meant the most to me.

I received a few e-mails from people wondering why I haven’t been blogging, and there isn’t really a reason.  I’ve been busy with work, I don’t have much to say and I’m in a creative rut.  I don’t enjoy writing about politics because of how absurd the national discourse is right now; it feels a little degrading to write when ‘terror babies‘ and U.N. conspiracies pass for mainstream issues.  If Jack Stuef and Josh Fruhlinger weren’t around, I don’t know how I would make sense of the right wing (Poe’s Law).  I’m in love with Jack Stuef.

Work is busy, though, and the few hours I’m not putting in at the office I am working on a story that’s been in my head for awhile.

I have, however, been keeping my Flickr Creative Commons photostream alive with randomness.  So, to fill the void in my political rants and meaningless observations, I include a few recent uploads.

COLD SPRING NEW YORK WITH SANDY ORDONEZ

If you are an old timer Wikimedian then you will remember the days when the public relations guru Sandra Ordonez was cutting her teeth at the Wikimedia Foundation in St. Petersburg.  Sandy and I have become good friends, and she and her husband José hosted a weekend retreat for various New York artists and intellectuals at their country compound in Cold Spring in the gorgeous Hudson Valley.

The property they rented for the summer has a main house, a four bedroom guest barnhouse, a boat house, and a private pond that you have to traverse by boat to visit the abandoned 19th Century graveyard that contains perhaps 30 graves.  All on their private property.

Above:  The boat house, with the main house in the background.  We were out in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by trees, nature and silence (except for our loud laughs and conversation).

Above:  Dave and Sandy in the abandoned 19th Century graveyard across the pond on the property.  There were about 30 graves there of people lost and long forgotten (until we were there).

Above:  Sandy and Maria laughing late into the night by candlelight.

Above:  The Little Man enjoying the flowers in the country air.

See more Cold Springs photos at my Flickr

FIRE ISLAND BIRTHDAY 2010

I was kind of surprised at how “racy” my sister said she found my Fire Island birthday photos.  Actually, both of my sisters found them…<ahem>…racy.  I asked the one why, because there are no shots of anything salacious like people fucking or doing anything other than dancing and having a good time.  She paused for a moment to think about it, and then she laughed and said, “Yeah, I know, but I guess it’s what I don’t see.  The mind fills in the blanks.”

Ha!  I was a saint and just enjoyed hanging out with my friends.  Here are a few more shots:

Michael Lucas, Nonie, Rafael Alencar, David Shankbone and Ernesto Altamirano at the Hotel Belvedere.

Michael and Nonie at the Belvedere.

I don’t know what we were thinking:  Judas carrying crucified Christ.

Michael, Nonie and Ernesto trying to catch fish on the Great South Bay.

See more of my Fire Island Creative Commons photos at Flickr.

LITTLE MAN & THE PIGEON

Finally, below are two shots of Little Man’s unrequited dream captured on film.  His lifelong goal, since he was little (he’s five and a half now) is to catch a pigeon.  He tries often, and never comes close to succeeding.  Then one morning we leave the building for his morning walk and right outside in our alcove is a pigeon with a broken wing.  Helpless, hapless, flopping about.  Little Man was so excited he could barely contain himself.  Alas, I did not let him realize his dream because it was not a fair fight.

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The FBI recently wrote the Wikimedia Foundation to demand they remove the FBI’s insignia.  The WMF and the Internet collectively laughed:

On the blog BoingBoing, Rob Beschizza writes that this is a no-win situation for the FBI.

“The part that’s hard to understand is why the FBI would seek to abuse the law in such petulant fashion,” he writes, “knowing that it will be subject to public ridicule for its actions.”

The magazine Vanity Fair posted the FBI’s seal on its website in a symbol of jest. And, as the blog Geekosystem says, an editor on the site aggregator Reddit jokes that maybe the FBI got Wikipedia confused with WikiLeaks — the site that’s been causing a stir lately over leaked war documents.

Cindy Cohn, from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told the New York Times, which first reported this story, that she found the whole ordeal to be “silly” and “troubling.” [CNN]

This reminds me of how the Bush Administration sent a similar letter to the satirical news organization The Onion over use of the Presidential Seal.  From the October 25, 2005 New York Times:

The newspaper regularly produces a parody of President Bush’s weekly radio address on its Web site, where it has a picture of President Bush and the official insignia.

“It has come to my attention that The Onion is using the presidential seal on its Web site,” Grant M. Dixton, associate counsel to the president, wrote to The Onion on Sept. 28. (At the time, Mr. Dixton’s office was also helping Mr. Bush find a Supreme Court nominee; days later his boss, Harriet E. Miers, was nominated.)

Citing the United States Code, Mr. Dixton wrote that the seal “is not to be used in connection with commercial ventures or products in any way that suggests presidential support or endorsement.” Exceptions may be made, he noted, but The Onion had never applied for such an exception. [....]

“It is inconceivable that anyone would think that, by using the seal, The Onion intends to ‘convey… sponsorship or approval’ by the president,” wrote Rochelle H. Klaskin, the paper’s lawyer, who went on to note that a headline in the current issue made the point: “Bush to Appoint Someone to Be in Charge of Country.”

It’s hard to understand how these sorts of letters to widely-followed media outlets like Wikipedia and The Onion do anything other than make the agencies targets of ridicule.

Besides, both the FBI insignia and the Presidential seal are widely reproduced all over the Internet.

You know what bothers me about (otherwise beloved) social media and online personal branding?

The fact that in 99% of the cases they are intentionally stripped of all depth and external complexity (both depth and complexity being intrinsic qualities of a developed human intellect). Primitivism is then sugar-coated as razor-sharp focus.

I don’t like the fact that most targeted messages are just a little bit retarded, literally. It makes me understand with my skin – not just with my head- that the society we live in is covertly and dramatically stratified – the divider being not the social class but the ability to think and live in stereo.

To me, this is physical. And personal: I’ve had a very formal and thorough education back in the USSR; I was systematically, year after year, trained to think, analyze and file data.

When I read my Twitter feed, I have Miklouho-Maclay glasses on. I breathe anthropology.

I notice social media stars. The bright ones: unshakable quality, solid. But I also see a lot of loud&proud naked kings (and queens). The ones who I wouldn’t be hanging out with if I had the honesty of a fifth grader (why? boring). Ironically, their standing in the media is just as impressive, and their sycophants as diabetic. I shake my head.

…Sometimes I meet people on the internet who I genuinely like, even admire – smart, throbbing, bubbly people; – but the things they say on Twitter, God! I cannot in my good taste re-tweet their truisms for brownie points, I have standards (no, really).

…I go back to the time when I was a little kid, and shake my head (again). I am amused. There is a naked king in the room, with a wobbly member, -  and a huge parade, with trumpets and balloons. Did I miss the memo? Am I the only one who is paying attention, or does everybody see the said member and well, am I…naive?

Is it because I have an old fashioned multi-track mind? I think about mysteries of the Universe, masturbation, chocolate, love, heat, comparative anthropology and copulating squirrels all at the same time. In no particular order.

Aren’t you the same way?

But then, Twitter. Don’t get me wrong, I luv my Twitter. But even in 140 characters, it is possible to be a part of nature, no?

And another thing. Most things expressed on the internet are opinions (yes, this one, too). Personal preferences and sales pitches. Mix and match. And it’s fine. Even telephone psychics serve a purpose.

But that’s what they are – opinions. There are no dating experts. Its a myth. There are dating practitioners, trend setters and confusers. Some of them, on some days, have really enlightening things to say. But anybody offering universal truths is either stupid or a liar.

I know, I know – some people who I read regularly are definitely not stupid. They are brighter than Aurora Borealis. But do you seriously expect me to love pictures of ugly chicks just because they have breasts? (I am from Europe and EVERYBODY in Europe has breasts so I am not impressed). Or celebrate every tweet that has the words “sex”, “vagina”, or “social media” in it? Or tolerate the fecal streams of motivational quotes?

Lack of imagination annoys me. And so does slogan-talk, no matter the topic and no matter the intelligence of the narrator.

I suppose, that’s what I get for having ignored microblogging for so long. The cultural shock. May be I shouldn’t be looking for the truth on Twitter and just quietly do what matters to me – meeting Christian singles building my brand.

Probably, genius.

Allow me to share a bit of a thrill, because a couple of blogs that I follow–Wonkette and Towleroad–recently used my photos.  It’s cool to see blogs I read using my stuff.

The writing and comments on Wonkette helped me to stop taking my own politics so seriously, and that was incredibly welcome – thanks Wonkette!

Here’s my photo with their Chuck Schumer story from Josh Fruhlinger’s post (click to read):

Okay, the comments below about the Chuck “Moobs” Schumer photo were predictable, hysterical and I say in good humor to my senator: serves you right.

I was at the end of the 2007 New York Gay Pride Parade taking photos for Wikipedia articles (like the woman who illustrates “Dyke” – that woman died of cancer, and her friends wrote me to say how proud she was to be an encyclopedic example).

Senator Schumer finished the parade and I asked him if I could take a quick shot, and he ignored me.  He was just standing there waiting for his car (I overheard).  I asked again and he gave me a look of annoyance, and then started talking to one of his assistants.

Then I snapped this photo.

He flashed a look like You just don’t give up and turned away toward another aide, so I didn’t take another.  I was dejected.  Since I wanted to make my senator a part of my Creative Commons art project, this is what I had.  Maybe he was tired; maybe he was sick of people after New York’s gay pride; maybe he thought I was paparazzi; who knows.

It’s not the worst photo, but…there’s moobs.

Fast forward three years, and–lol–he should have been nicer to a constituent!  From the Wonkette comments:

and there’s more…click here.

Another favorite blog of mine, Towleroad, used my protest photo from the Ticked-Off Trannies with Knives premiere (also licensed Creative Commons).

I’ve photographed Andy Towle a couple of times, once on Fire Island and then at the massive anti-Proposition 8 rally he co-organized at Lincoln Center (both shots are on his Wikipedia article).  That protest also produced this cool shot of Whoopi Goldberg on “The View’s” article as well as the “Sexuality in Star Trek” article.

Interesting thing about the shots from Trannies - I was one of the only press photographers who went over to snap the protesters.  There were tons of press there, though.

Click the image below to read the story:

Click here to see all 2010 Tribeca Film Festival Creative Commons images hosted at Flickr.

Keep up with my Tribeca posts on Twitter.

Conservapedia and its editors are easy targets for ridicule.  It’s a place where dinosaurs hang out with humans and the danger of secondhand smoke is considered “junk science“.

Take this link here, where they removed the Nazi flag from their home page–there to illustrate a story about how in name-calling, it’s conservatives who correctly use the label ‘Nazi’–out of deference to Holocaust Memorial Week.  Thoughtful!

And the flag’s removal didn’t effect at all the cold-cock punch of a point that liberals really are the definition of Nazis in America.  Seriously.

Now you understand why nobody, not even most conservatives, take this blog-masquerading-as-an-encyclopedia seriously.  Nobody in the news writes about them, and blogs only write about them for ridicule.

RationalWiki, a watchdog site, is the place to go for the never-ending stream of unintentional hilarity that emanates from Conservapedia.  The two places to visit for comic gold are RationalWiki’s “What is going on at CP” and Conservapedia’s “Talk:Main Page“.

You probably don’t know this because you, like Google, don’t pay CP any attention.  Like the rest of us, Google mostly wants nothing to do with them.

Try Googling “Dihydrogen monoxide”, an article that exists on Conservapedia.  You and I know this compound as water (H2O), but CP has articles on both”Dihydrogen monoxide” and “Water“.

Because calling water by its chemical composition makes it sound complicated, Wikipedia has an article about the term as a source for hoaxes (such as kids passing around petitions for dihydrogen monoxide to be banned).  Good times!

Conservapedia, particularly its most gaffe-prone editor, Ed Poor, think that a joke ‘encyclopedia article’ on their blog for dihydrogen monoxide is hysterical.  However, they aim to be an encyclopedia, so why do they keep this piece of rib-rocking humor as an encyclopedia article and not with the site’s humor essays?  According to the blog comment section article talk page:

It’s Google bait!

Problem:  Conservapedia is only found in Google’s bowels.

Even if you are generous and use quotes around the term, you don’t come across the Conservapedia Dihydrogen monoxide article until the 10th page of results (making it the 99th hit as of writing), long after most of us have stopped looking because we stumbled across multiple mainstream news stories and two Wikipedia articles.

For such a specific, uncontroversial term, Conservapedia is completely off Google’s radar.

One writer at RationalWiki, commenting about the low regard in which Conservapedia is held across the human spectrum, mentioned that RationalWiki’s “job” has been made easier by the seemingly self-destructive tendencies of CP’s writers.  To that, another RW writer responded:

We don’t really have a “job”. We are not here to discredit Conservapedia for the good of mankind, or to show to the public how Conservapedia is preposterous, arrogant and extremely biased; this is rather obvious to anyone not entirely devoid of common sense, whether he is Liberal or Conservative. There is no danger whatsoever coming from Conservapedia.

No matter what Conservapedians say, their website will always remain a very, very, very minor Internet phenomenon, and it has more or less the same chances of overtaking Wikipedia than I have of becoming President of the United States… of Epsilon Schlaflii IV, in the Andromeda Galaxy.

Conservapedia has no credibility, no influence, no future. The bona-fide conservapedians are probably much less than half of the (few) visitors of the website. We are not here to destroy Conservapedia, but to laugh at it. –Maquissar (talk) 12:52, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Even the watchdogs are bored, and many RW editors now consider vandalizing CP (for which they were known in years past) the equivalent of punching a child.  Conservapedia goes unmentioned in the news, unfound in searches, unreferenced in conservative media, and it is only discussed by others for humorous examples of the bounds of prideful ignorance.  That’s why I sometimes read it.

For someone like me who grew up in the 1980′s to be a Catholic Republican (I was an associate chairman of the Georgia Federation of Teenage Republicans, and a youth coordinator for Newt Gingrich), it’s ghastly to see conservatives in such disarray today with their values.

Andy Schlafly: Before he can denounce, could you tell him if the molestation happened at a Catholic school or a public school?

Take Conservapedia.

I visit the site to get the mainstream conservative perspective on social issues.  While Conservapedia might seem like a ridiculous fringe site, laden with superstition and selective rationality, they do reflect mainstream conservative thought.

That should frighten you: their senior editors are now ridiculing those who want to see pedophiles and those who protected them brought to justice.

One of their arch-villains, atheist biologist Richard Dawkins, recently said he would try to have the Pope arrested in Britain for covering up so much pedophilia under his watch (never mind the worse crime of doing nothing to help all those abused kids).

No matter to Conservapedia, though.  The idea that an atheist would “bully” the Pope outrages Conservapedia’s Terry Koeckritz, one of the site’s senior editors:

The more a person strays from the mainstream and the less followers they have, always look for a rise in silly, kooky stunts on their part to try and seem relevant. Dawkins has long ago ceased to be an intellect and more a silly tool. I’m hoping the guy succeeds in trying to arrest the Vicar of Christ. He will only seem foolish and petty, and might get to spend some time in prison as well. –ṬK_/Admin^/Talk 21:42, 10 April 2010 (EDT)

Sure, trying to bring the Catholic criminal conspiracy to justice is just a “silly, kooky stunt” that will make the amoral atheist seem “foolish and petty”.

Everyone knows the ‘Vicar of Christ’ can’t be touched, no matter how much touching of children he knew about.

Mr. Koeckritz makes no mention of the crimes against 200 deaf boys, or moving pedophiles around so that they can abuse more children, or that it still goes on today, or that the Catholic Church has repeated this pattern in over 25 countries, including Austria, Australia, Ireland, Canada, Germany, Spain, the United States, and many others.  So much for your “Vicar of Christ”, Mr. Koeckritz.

But even more jaw-dropping was Andy Son-of-Phyllis Schlafly, the man who is re-writing the Bible, who took such umbrage at Dawkins’ publicity stunt with the Pope that he thinks we’ll all turn our noses up at Dawkin’s ‘true colors’:

Dawkins’ role is to make atheism look popular and friendly. He made a big mistake by showing the true colors of atheism here. I guess someone can put on a good show for only so long, before the real person comes out.–Andy Schlafly 21:52, 10 April 2010 (EDT)

I think this is a little unfair. Much as Dawkins is not a nice piece of work, the current Pope is not whiter than white either. His defence of the perpretrators of those horrible acts is shameful. MikeSorter 11:10, 11 April 2010 (EDT)

Abuse of kids by adults in public school is far worse. Why aren’t you demanding that action be taken there to address that bigger problem? See the latest news item, for example.–Andy Schlafly 14:03, 11 April 2010 (EDT)

I don’t remember saying I don’t want action to be taken? Adults abusing kids in public schools is shameful, as you rightly say – if we are to shame these teachers, we should shame the priests doing similar things, and shame the man who is now Pope who attempted to cover the whole thing up – just as we should shame the headteachers who tolerate or tolerated it. MikeSorter 15:01, 11 April 2010 (EDT)

Andy Schlafly won’t denounce the Catholic pedophile conspiracy; he’ll denounce the straw man of abuse of kids in public schools.  At RationalWiki, a site that ridicules Conservapedia pretty much for the sort of stuff you just read, one postor pointed out the obvious:

I’ve been very pissed about this utter lack of law enforcement response to these people with power raping children since he story broke in Boston, what, ten years ago? Cardinal Law got a sinecure in the Vatican – moving him beyond the purview of local cops. He moved rapists with dog collars from place to place to cover up what amounts to a conspiracy to make it ok for grown men to touch children in ways we all despise. So what if the grandstanders happen to be atheists? In greater Boston a movement formed to make their “church donations” to a separate body pending the “outcome”… not up on the latest details because I stopped killing trees a while back. ħuman 03:10, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Who would you rather stand with here?  The supposedly amoral atheists who wants to expose the hypocrisy and pain caused by the Catholic Church heirarchy; or conservatives like Andy Schlafly and Terry Koeckritz, who are more bothered that an atheist has the audacity to question why this child molestation horror should not go unpunished at the top?

The Catholic pedophile apologists at Conservapedia are looking pretty disgusting (and Andy Schlafly teaches children, although if you’re a girl student he insists on giving you an easier test because you shouldn’t compete with boys).

Angie Jackson was the first to do what we all knew was inevitable in the age of social media and exhibitionism: she tweeted her abortion live on Twitter.  From the Daily News:

In an attempt to “demystify” abortion, the 27-year-old shared her experience on Twitter, YouTube and her personal blog.

“I’m doing this so other women know, ‘Hey, it’s not nearly as terrifying as I had myself worked up thinking it was.’ It’s just not that bad,” Jackson said on her YouTube video.

According to Jackson, she has received a negative response.  From an interview with the woefully misnamed website (for this story) Frisky:

A lot of them are sort of these throwaway statements in the comments of conservative blog and things like that. “Someone should put a bullet in her,” or “If the whore can’t keep her legs closed …” People have threatened to call Child Protective Services and take [my son] away from me because [of the abortion]. They’re either calling me a killer or calling me a monster, which is their right, but … I think we need to say quality of life matters. I don’t think an embryo gets to trump the life of my live son. I see this as risking my life.

Scott Lamb did a pretty cool post comparing the blizzards of New York’s past with the most recent.  Evidence that all three of these blizzards have been over-hyped for my city.  Take this shot from the 1899 storm:

Scott used this photo of Little Man from my blizzard post to represent 2010; click on it below to see more blizzard shots through time:

This website receives an average of 800 to 1,000 article reads a day.  On days when I have a particularly interesting story, such as the Stefan de Rothschild Huffington Post hoax, it jumps to near 10,000 hits; whereas during periods of inactivity and neglect, it plummets to around 250.

Where does the traffic come from?  The answer is: not Wikipedia.

From the lead photo on Madonna’s article to that on the Dead Sea, my photography illustrates over 4,000 subjects on the English Wikipedia alone (far higher if you count all global Wikimedia projects).  On each of those photos are links back to this website.

And while Wikipedia is one of the 10 most-visited websites in the world, the reality is that it provides very little traffic to here.

I’ve run this blog since 2008 and I’ve long known that Wikipedia’s ability to drive traffic is relatively limited, at least when it comes to the author links on imagery.  In fact, the Google Analytics for my website tell me that Wikipedia is responsible for only 7% of all my traffic, despite having some very high profile photographs on the site.

As an illustration, yesterday, February 14, my photograph of Salman Rushdie was featured on the main page of the English Wikipedia for their “On this day…” factoid box:

1989 – A fatwa was issued for the execution of Salman Rushdie (pictured) for authoring The Satanic Verses, a novel Islamic fundamentalists considered blasphemous.

Wikipedia’s home page is one of the most viewed Internet pages in the history of the Internet; yesterday it received 4.4M hits.  Placement on this page immediately brings a wealth of visitors to the subject articles presented. Whereas Salman Rushdie’s Wikipedia biography typically receives 2.5K hits on an average day, Rushdie’s biography yesterday skyrocketed six times that number to 16.3K hits.

What about my portrait of Rushdie that also made its way on to this highly visible piece of web property? The photo on the article is hit–as in a person clicks on the image itself to make it larger–an average of 25 times a day on English Wikipedia. On February 14, the cropped version on Wikipedia’s home page caused that number to jump to 7,000.

How many of those 7,000 hits then went to explore the author of the photograph’s website?  Two (2).

The lesson is that if, like me, you are an artist who cares more about having his work seen, there are few better public places than Wikipedia as long as you are willing to be loose with the copyright.  But if you are reading Chris Silver Smith’s blog post about the “powerful” effect of traffic to your website via Wikipedia photography, I can attest that I have seen very little of such an effect.

In contrast, Andrew Sullivan at The Atlantic writing two short blog posts–Stefan de Rothschild and Susan Sarandon doesn’t know what Wikipedia is–brought tens of thousands of hits.  Sullivan drives more traffic than Wikipedia.