You are not born to live a long life. You are not born to succeed.

You are born to go through puberty, reproduce, and die.

Exerting effort for any other purpose than producing more children is a deviation from the natural order. It’s against your programming.

Every push to improve yourself is an act of will against the universe.

So without effort, without willpower, you are just a shell for your genes.

How you behave, how you react to this, is up to you. Making safe decisions for yourself and your children is telling yourself (and them) that what’s important is to survive and reproduce for the next generation.

If you create unique experiences for yourself and your children, if you strongly deviate from the path, you are also creating someone unique, someone who can give back to the world in a singular and powerful way.

We need both kinds of people, of course. We can’t have all iconoclasts, all rebels, or all deviants.

- Julien Smith

On February 24th at 12pm EST, you’ll discover you’re not the only one. It’s a global day of photographing your food!

The Meal is calling all foodie photographers to participate in a global food photo exhibit. Your simultaneously shot photos will be collected and shown at The Brooklyn Art Library on March 31st.

It’s for a good cause, too! The Meal has partnered with Action Against Hunger, a non-profit who battles hunger around the world.

It all comes full-circle: your hunger-induced photo helps end hunger for others. Not even scarfing down a grilled cheese sandwich could beat that satisfaction.

I think one of the dynamics at play is that work that was recognized in the past triggers interest in similar work in the present. In other words, we have this library of images in our minds and when we see images that are similar to the images that we think are great, there’s an association, a connection that is positive. These are derivative images. But instead of being a negative aspect, these images get elevated, often to the highest awards and often without realizing we’re just awarding what worked in the past.

“A photo editor”

We are lucky enough to be some of the first of a certain agency/design company that is becoming the norm. New ideas are emerging and as a group we want ro explore them in a way that certainly will make the creative world feel very proud. Our influence has been very clear on a generation of creative practitioners and that makes us feel good; this is our time. 

The truth is no portrait of substance has people smiling. Look at the history of painting, Rembrandt, Titian, Goya, Velasquez, Sargent, Vermeer, DaVinci, etc., the subjects gaze to the viewer is neutral at best, neither inviting nor forbidding. It is there for the viewer to see and feel. Smiling is like much of American popular culture, superficial and misleading. It is part of our vernacular, but it should be expunged in photographs.

-Rodney Smith

You must have something to say. You must be brutally honest with yourself about this. Think about history, politics, science, literature, music, film, and anthropology. What effect does one discipline have over another? What makes “man” tick? Today, with everyone being able to easily make technically perfect photographs with a cell phone, you need to be an “author”. It is all about authorship, authorship and authorship.

Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules, and they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify and vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as crazy, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.