Steve O's Photos' photostream  

New photos can be found here from the #OccupyCongress rally held in Washington DC earlier this week.

New photos can be found here from the day after NYPD removed the barricades from Zuccotti Park.

Images of OWS New Years Eve can be found here.

A little while back CNN laid off over 50 photojournalists under the premise that instead of paying professionals they would rely on free user provided content from i-Reports. Yes, the link is to Stephen Colbert but he drives home a good point of "you get what you pay for." CNN gets free crappy content with the hopes of every once in awhile some starving unemployed person with a little ambition and hopes of getting "discovered" will submit some hardcore investigative piece that will go viral on the internet. In return CNN provides us with crappy, unreliable news. We, the 99%, are screaming for jobs but we allow corporations to exploit us and our talents, trying to get something for nothing by promising the possibility of fame and fortune. Meanwhile, one of our brothers or sisters is losing their full time job so it's a win/win for CNN, free content and less overhead. If you support jobs please re-consider giving your stuff away for free.

This is not just going on at CNN, many corporations are now turning to us, the photo and journalism enthusiasts, for free content. Just yesterday I received mail from Yahoo Weather asking if I would like to submit my photos to their photo group on Flickr and in return for my hard work, my photos, would in their words "be showcased along with your Flickrscreen name and a link to each photo on Flickr, bringing a global audience to your photostream." WOW!!!! Really, they would do that for me little ole' me!?!?

A triple win/win/win for yahoo, they get my stuff for free and they get to reduce overhead and increase bottom line profit. The third win for Yahoo is that on top of the first two wins, I pay them for the opportunity. How's that you may be asking? Well, I have a Flickr PRO account. You would think that they would, at the very least, offer me a free year of a Flickr Pro account costing them less than $50.00 but no, they go for the brass ring of FREE by playing to my hopes and ambitions that some day my hobby will turn into a revenue stream for my family.

Now, on the flip side, I also got an e-mail yesterday from a non-profit group looking to use one of my photos in an upcoming print edition of their magazine and they are willing to pay me for it, it's not much but they are willing to pay me for my hard work. They actually went on in the e-mail to apologize in advance for not being able to offer more but because of budget constraints it was the best they could offer. I will no doubt take them up on their offer.

It's tough out there people and we need to stick together. You work hard to produce your photos and images, don't make them worthless by giving them away for free.

#OccupyFlickr

First off, let me apologize to all for the childish rant in my previous post, that's what I get for going near Flickr when I'm drunk and pissed.

I have been a member of Flickr for a little over seven years and in that time frame I have met some really nice and inspiring people. Every single one of your shots challenged me to shoot better and shoot more. THANK YOU!!!

But, it is time to move on. Flickr has and will be a great community to go to for reference but I've created my own site now and hope to expand my talents and my photography business. It still has some work to be done on it but I like it and I hope you will stop by and take a look. I probably won't be posting as often as I did here at Flickr but you will still be able to follow along with new shots here or on Twitter.

I hope everyone has a great new year and again, please accept my apologies for being me. I still think Flickr is censoring OWS stuff but hey, it's a free country!

I've decided to paint my Flickr stream black, I will not give Flickr any more content. From the beginning of the Occupy Movement Flickr and Yahoo have failed to recognize the Occupy Movement in their Explore stream even though it's a WORLD event. It's been photographed by citizen journalists over and over again and uploaded to Flickr yet Yahoo chooses to ignore.

Flickr "advertised" other revolutions.including, Color, Velvet. Arab Spring, and purple fingers . . . But -- for America they go black!!!!!!

Share, post and re-post if you are the 99%.