Lying Digital Bastards...

This is a photograph of my first serious camera. It was built in 1978. I bought it in 1996 for one hundred & fifty pounds from a pawn shop in north London. It still works fine to this day. Admittedly it's a little dented and scratched, but I blame the previous owners for dragging it around war zones, volcanoes and rain forests. It needs a new battery and a roll of film but I'm basically good to go. Somewhere. Somewhere you can actually still buy a roll of 35mm film. Somewhere you can still get a roll of 35mm film processed and printed. Maybe Poland? Liverpool? The point is that this lump of brass, glass and metal is still working after 38 years. Impressive.

It's particularly impressive when you consider that my digital Nikon D3X recently suffered a complete and catastrophic failure after just seven years on this planet. That's the same D3X which I bought brand new for four & a half thousand fucking quid. The same D3X which included the latest, state-of-the-art sensor board and custom functions and blah-blah-blahs but which didn't include a lens. A full-frame 28-70mm zoom lens set me back another grand and a half. That's the same D3X, then, which cost me six thousand pounds and lasted just seven years. That is not depreciation. That is fucking vapourization. My 12 year old German car cost less than the D3X and it is still working fine. My Italian scooter cost less than the D3X and that too is still running like a dream. And the Italians basically can't build anything.

I sent my very expensive and very useless D3X back to Nikon in the UK. It was deemed "beyond economical repair" due to "humidity & liquidity damage". Whatever that means. Maybe I dropped my very expensive Nikon camera in the sea and forgot? Maybe I popped my very expensive Nikon camera into the oven instead of a lasagne? How careless! Obviously my very expensive Nikon camera's warranty had expired. The warranty only covered the first three years' of "average" use. In a nutshell, then, Nikon only have to build a camera to last 3 years and 1 day in order to maintain their inflated position at the top of the reliability chain.

I have requested a private funeral for immediate friends and family. I'm going to send the bill to Nikon.

No colour correction.See image below.

All modern cameras are lying digital bastards. They are incapable of telling the truth. In fact they are so pathologically untrustworthy that any camera set to full auto mode is about as useful as a North Korean spokesperson after a failed missile launch. In order to get any semblance of rational information out of a modern camera you first have to unplug it's ability to predict. You have to turn your very expensive, sophisticated and "progressive" camera into something as docile and mute as a turnip. That is why you will see some of us waving grey cards and light meters around. We are not deranged. We are cultivating turnips.

The whole point of any camera is to capture the available light and colour in a realistic way. It is virtually impossible for any camera to master this fundamental function because all manufacturers have designed their cameras to recognise and accurately register mainly neutral colours. This is especially useful if you are predominantly employed to photograph stuff that is grey. Like England, for example. Or cheap trousers. Back in the real world of vibrancy and day-glo, however, auto white balance and exposure are rendered as accurate as a blind sniper.

The secret to faithful colour reproduction and accurate exposure in any photograph is to meter for something within the frame that is basically grey. 18% grey if you want to be pedantic. That in itself is a pretty simple concept. Unless you live on a Greek island. Unless you're photographing a sports car in the snow or a fashion model in the desert. Unless you're fucking colour blind.

Camera manufacturers have a habit of exaggerating their product's performance. This is understandable. Just ask the CIA. Unlike the CIA, however, camera manufacturers are supposed to be all grown up and accountable. So in the future I'd like to see these random, puffed-up gimmicks abolished from all promotional material. In no particular order:

Usable underwater depth rating up to 131 feet:  not without a separate watertight housing it isn't.

80 megapixels on a phone:  unless your phone has a sensor board the size of Canada instead of a pin head then you'll never notice the difference.

Auto smile detection:  WTF? Useful if you're photographing a kids' party. Not useful if you're photographing a funeral, a fashion show or a car crash.

Ultra High ISO:  it's a low light setting that delivers images suitable only for social media due to excessive noise.

Red Eye Reduction:  note the word reduction rather than removal. The only way to successfully tackle red eye is to either bounce your flash or remove the blood vessels from your subject's eyeballs.

Single servo auto focus: doesn't work if your subject is wearing something white, standing against something white or surrounded by something white. Like a wedding.

Continuous focus tracking: as above. Or the subject is moving too quickly. Like a snail. Or the subject is not moving at all. Because it's dead.

Any auto exposure mode: unless you're photographing the Birmingham ring road.

An old analog camera was basically a solid black box which could bend the light. If we approach all modern cameras with the same attitude then we might just be able to defeat the lying digital bastards.

Colour balance and exposure with grey card

Rust Never Sleeps...

Only the criminally insane never sleep. The rest of us mere mortals are haunted by insecurity and inertia. We like to sleep and do nothing. You'd never catch the likes of Peter Mandelson or Paul Dacre or David Cameron snoozing in bed surrounded by the Sunday funnies and a cold Chinese takeaway. That's because they're too busy plotting ways to make life even more miserable for the wretched population. It was alleged that Margaret Thatcher only slept for about 13 minutes every year or something. It showed. Manic eyes popping out of her blue-veined skull on stalks like laser beams of utter hatred and contempt.  It's a sad reflection on democracy that things always seem to go bad when politicians get busy. Maybe the United Kingdom might now be a safer and more secure place to live if Maggie had just hit the snooze button once in a goddamn while.

Every photographer will wake up one morning and stare at the wall like a fool for a few hours, days, weeks...sometimes even years. Mick Rock hasn't snapped a decent photograph since 1979. Joke. Just a joke. But finding inspiration when nothing is piercing the fog is a desolate feeling. There are many self-help articles out there to help you back on track but all of these seem to have been written by Jehovah John and Feelgood Freddie. Every article basically boils down to two things: either buy a new lens or go out for a long walk. Thanks for that. I think I'll just lie here in bed with my self-harming scars instead. Joke. Just a joke.

But buying a new lens to drag you through the fog is not a bad idea. You have to justify the expense by actually bolting the thing onto the camera to see if it works. Murder, however, is probably more constructive. The problem with murder is that it tends to be illegal. Ripping the soul from another human being might very well be a kick-start to the mojo but the resulting coffee table book will be underwhelming. No one actually likes staring at grainy photographs of prison inmates playing chess.

So instead we've devised a few fail-safe diversions to get you back on that horse and keep you out of jail.

Drink Tequila

Drinking anything that can be heated and distilled into a synthetic diamond is always going to snap your brain stem. But drinking diamonds all night in a bar with no windows is probably going to make your brain think that it could crush the moon. That's actually not a bad photograph if you could just stop sweating and shaking like an epileptic.

Watch A Movie

Any movie. It doesn't matter. Just pick a movie at random and try and work out how the director lit each scene. You can tell by the shadows. Sometimes you can also tell because the director didn't realise he'd caught the lighting crew reflected in a window. Yes, you, George Lucas, Ridley Scott and James Cameron. You could even try combining a movie with tequila. Let us know how that pans out. Seriously. It might actually make Blade Runner worth watching.

Change Your Discipline

No Sleep 'Til Hammerfish

Fashion & Glamour not floating anyone's boat recently? Get your self to a war zone instead. There's something truly inspirational about snapping a few frames whilst dodging bullets, land mines and American rocket drones. Similarly if your recent landscapes suck then photograph someone's funeral instead. It doesn't even have to be the funeral of anyone you knew. Just follow the hearse into the cemetery and stand there looking sad. Technically you could be arrested but trespassing is only a misdemeanour and you could always raise the fine by selling your images to the bereaved.


Travel

We're not talking about embarking on some ridiculous spiritual journey of self-enlightenment. We're talking about a trip to the shops. Go out and stare at some food or some cars or even some people. Everybody has a story to tell and a few of them can even be quite interesting. Except squaddies. Never ask a squaddie to tell you a story. No one has given a flying fuck what a squaddie had to say since 1944.

Get A Job

There's nothing quite like a deadline to shatter creative lethargy. The dog didn't eat your homework. You're fired.

You get the idea. It's an amazing world if only we care to look beneath the mud and sludge. It's safe to sleep. Thatcher can't see you now. What was that thing she said? Something about crushing society, abandoning the impoverished and privatising basic human rights...?

Damn. Now I can't sleep.

World In Photo Awards 2015...Anarchy Pearl

Anarchy Pearl

We live in troubled times. This is nothing new. Mankind invented troubled times. Our weapons might have evolved from spears and stones, but our propensity for violence, hypocrisy and holy war remain undiminished.

We photographed Carly on the rocks at Windy Beach in Rhodes Town. I can't remember who came up with the idea to use the home-made Anarchy flag. Probably Karen. She enjoys throwing rocks at McDonalds! True to Greece's unreliable nature, Windy Beach was actually pretty tranquil that day. We got lucky with a wave that looks more dramatic in the photograph than it did in real life. It was a chilly afternoon in January on the island's West Coast. The Turkish coastline is approximately 20 kilometres away and the Anatolian mountains are clearly visible on the horizon.

At the time Carly was almost 2 months pregnant. Today baby Vasilia Pearl is two years old. I hope that Pearl manages to grow up in this world without becoming either an investment banker or a tribal, war-mongering lunatic. I hope Pearl manages to roam free on this planet and live untroubled by hatred or anger. I hope Pearl manages to survive with an independent spirit and an open, hopeful heart. I hope Pearl manages to embrace every culture and admire every soul. But above everything else, I really hope that baby Pearl manages to avoid the poisonous web of modern politics and religious ideology.

It's as easy to pray to a god as it is to pray to a ghost. The spirit world moves in mysterious ways indeed. Believing, however, that anyone can win a holy war when even Mother Nature doesn't want to get involved, is a truly despicable vanity. And if you're going to pick a fight, then choose solid ground on which to make your stand.

So that is the brief story of Anarchy Pearl. On November 16th she won the Bronze award in the 2015 World In Photo competition. The day before the finalists were announced, ISIS claimed responsibility for the carnage in Paris. Somehow, pointing a camera at a mildly pregnant woman pales into insignificance. But I want to believe that the spirit of Anarchy Pearl could one day prevail. Anarchy means far more than pop-up street violence and opportunist disobedience. Anarchy should reflect a desire by an individual to live a life free from any centralised system of government and blood-stained religion. Anarchy should mean that every human being has a duty to care for their fellow man and to treat everybody as an equal rather than a target. There doesn't have to be blood on the streets.

Skyclad...Nude Photography & Other Myths.

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One Stop Beyond...Speedlights & Spinal Tap

The very first flashguns were dangerous. Who in their right mind would want to stand next to exploding ribbons of magnesium that could potentially obliterate your head and blind your subject? Me. I'd love a flashgun that could maim everything within a mile radius of my chosen location. Stylists, art directors, videographers, make-up artists, wardrobe assistants, runners, that girl who always seems to stand around in the background like a sad Goth-in-a-box and the flabby tourist over there with a Selfie Stick...all incinerated. Sadly, however, most modern flashgun manufacturers seem keen to play down the Power-to-Death ratio of their particular units.

The relationship between ambient light and flash power has baffled a lot of folk since the dawn of photography.The Grand Wizard and Ultimate Overlord of this mind-bending partnership is 50 year old American photographer David Hobby. It's all his fault. Blame him. David started the Strobist blog back in 2007. His particular passion is off-camera flash lighting and how it's possible to balance ambient light with artificial light. To prove this he once stuck a flashgun in a hovering helicopter at sunset and triggered it remotely from the ground. David does a lot of things like that. Central to this technique is the photographer's ability to deliberately alter the ambient light to create a particular effect.

The basic concept of Strobist lighting was also being addressed by a spoof Heavy Metal band as far back as 1984. In the movie This Is Spinal Tap, guitarist Nigel Tufnel is trying to explain to the documentary maker why all the band's amplifiers go up to eleven.

Nigel: "Well, it's one louder, isn't it? You see, most blokes, you know, will be playing at ten. You're on ten here, all the way up, all the way up, all the way up, you're on ten on your guitar. Where can you go from there? Where?"

Marty DiBergi: "I don't know."

Nigel: "Nowhere. Exactly. What we do is, if we need that extra push over the cliff,  you know what we do?"

Marty: "Put it up to eleven?"

Nigel: "Eleven. Exactly. One louder."

Marty: "Why don't you just make ten louder and make ten be the top number and make that be a little louder?"

(Pause.)

Nigel: "These go to eleven."

Strobist lighting - a bit like Heavy Metal - is not for the faint-hearted.  It's actually pretty easy to understand but it's a bastard to explain. So I'm going to condense David Hobby's mammoth labour of love into a flippant crib sheet instead. In order to be a Strobist, you're going to need:

1: A camera that you can use in manual mode
2: A flash gun that you can use in manual mode
3: Something to sync the two together.

As a sync device you can use brand-dedicated cables which are cheap. Or you can use brand-dedicated radio triggers which are not. But radio triggers are really the only way forward with all this stuff so, you know, suck it up and get yourself down to Walmart or something. Grab a smoothie whilst you're there. And some peanut butter. That way you'll feel better about the cost of the radio triggers. Maybe.

Stick one radio trigger (the transmitter) onto your camera's hot shoe. Stick your flash on top of the other (the receiver). Select manual mode on both camera and flash. Make sure both transmitter and receiver are synched to the same channel and then go and phone a friend. You're going out to do some Strobing.

(Incidentally, flash guns are actually called Speedlights these days. I don't know why. I think some insecure snapper decided long ago that 'flash gun' sounded a little weedy and simple. So he invented the word Speedlight to impress and baffle all his ex-friends who don't talk to him any more. His name was probably Clive. These days he murders prostitutes out in the woods. Don't talk to him.)

100 ISO, 1/160 sec, f11

The basic Strobing concept amounts to three separate adjustments. The first - and perhaps the most crucial - is to establish a base exposure. That means an exposure which is 'accurate' according to the camera. It's a kind of flat exposure...a solid exposure that would get average grades in Photo School. But it's nothing special. It doesn't pop. It doesn't shout loudly from the rooftops about anything in particular. It's just a basic exposure. Some people would walk away happy. The Strobist, however, wants to kick its ass.

100 ISO, 1/160 sec, f16

The second stage is to deliberately drop the accurate exposure into a black hole. How far you want to drift from the original exposure is a creative decision. In this case the ambient exposure has been dropped by one f-stop - from f11 to f16. The shutter speed remains unchanged. The sky is now richer and more dramatic. Obviously Ramona is now underexposed by one stop as well. You could take the ambient down another stop but at f22 you're going to struggle with Stage 3. So 1 stop underexposure is a pretty consistent rule of thumb for bright conditions out here on a deserted riverbed.

100 ISO, 1/160, f16 + flash

The third and final stage in all of this is to add off-camera flash light to bring the overall exposure back into the real world. You need enough flash power out of your Speedlight to match the underexposed ambient - in this case f16. Modern Speedlights can just about manage this at full manual power. If you drop the ambient down any more then you'll need to invest in some pretty hefty Strobe blocs to give you enough power to match the two exposures. Talk to the CIA. Or the Russians. By taking the Speedlight off-camera, however, the possibilities to light a subject are endless. It's now possible to literally paint with flash light rather than just fire it directly from the camera like a wet towel.

Some landscape photographers consider all artificial flash light to be the work of satanic forest demons and voodoo goblins. Since most landscape photographers spend their days sitting in fields waiting for the right clouds to appear, then this is probably a fair point. Back in the real world, however, off-camera flash has been around since the end of the 19th century. The advent of affordable flash radio triggers in the late 1990s has completely changed the creative options available to professional photographers. If you're serious about photography then it's worth trying to diffuse this particular mind-bomb above any other. As the headless Victorian photographer once said to his blind model: "No pain - no gain. Just one more!"

If you've made it this far then you deserve two fascinating snippets of trivia.

1:  The PocketWizard radio triggers came of age during Bruce Hornsby's half-time performance at the 1991 NBA Basketball Finals. Whilst moving Bruce's piano from the court, one of the legs snagged a bunch of cables. These were cut by the road crew and all power to the overhead Strobe lights (upon which the sports photographers relied) was also severed. That evening Jim Clark from LPA Design was testing a collection of prototype wireless triggers called FlashWizards. Following the power failure the only option for photographers at the stadium was to use these triggers. They proved so reliable and effective that evening in Chicago that Clark was encouraged to refine his prototype and this was eventually relaunched as the PocketWizard in 1999.

2:  In This Is Spinal Tap, during the infamous airport metal detector scene, bassist Derek Smalls is wearing a Shrewsbury Town FC jersey.

10 Photo Gimmicks Which Must Die Today

Photography is the learning curve of death. You're born. You learn. You keep learning. Then you die. You die frustrated and exhausted in a pauper's grave. You spent your life searching for that one perfect exposure which proved elusive and spiteful. Join the club. The club which has existed for around 175 years and dates back to the man who started this whole photography thing - Louis Daguerre. Daguerre was obviously a complete sadist, an utter bastard and the man responsible for ruining every photographer's life.

It's tempting, however, to simply ignore all the complicated stuff and head straight for that big toolbox in your computer labelled GIMMICKS! That big toolbox is there for a purpose. It's for monkeys to paint with cheap effects and stab us all in the heart. Go ahead. Make your day. Scribble with Software!

Admittedly, some gimmicks can enhance a photograph if used sensibly. Sensibly means subtly. Sensibly means not hurling every effect at an image regardless of whether it is appropriate, clever or remotely enhancing. Some gimmicks remain fashionable (vignetting and clarity, for example) because, basically, they're pretty cool. Some gimmicks, however, have not dated well. The following list of Photo Gimmicks Which Must Die Today have been around for far too long and are starting to stink the place out a bit. Essentially they are techniques which should really be taken out into a field and shot in the head like the knackered old pit ponies they actually are. Some of them are applicable to wedding photographers. Some are not. All, however, should now be put out of our misery.

In no particular order they are:

Sloping Horizons

It's a little known fact that every now and then the world slips on its axis by approximately 7 degrees. It's a weird phenomenon which usually occurs when lazy photographers can't think of anything else to add interest to a photograph. Buildings are seldom straight. Trees are seldom straight. People are seldom straight. But it is an indefatigable truth that the freakin' horizon is always bloody straight! Christ, most cameras even have a grid in the viewfinder to help you get the horizon straight! Are you a god? Do you not obey the laws of mother nature? Are you somehow a grander and more enlightened species of photographer that is privy to an alternative universe which is governed by a whole different set of physical laws? No, you are not. Tilting the horizon was a popular technique back in the mid-1980s. Then everybody got sick of having to tilt their heads in order to see what was actually going on. So everybody abandoned that particular technique and moved on. It is still popular today with drunken sailors, one-legged paparazzi snappers and cheap wedding photographers.

Spot Colour

Oh god...just kill me now. Come rain your bombs on the facile brides and wildlife photographers who think this technique adds absolutely anything to an image. Selective colouring techniques were first pioneered by the Victorians. The Victorians were clever. Then the Victorians were replaced by computers and now stupid people think they can achieve the same effect with an iOS app or a paint brush tool. Spot colour looks clunking and ham-fisted. It is meant to draw the eye to a particular aspect of an image. It sure does. It draws my eye to the fact that the image has been ruined. It's as dated as Sin City.

Over-saturation

The world of colour is a wonderful place. Nature has a way with colours that is simple and satisfying to the soul. Whose heart cannot be warmed by the sight of a blue sea and a yellow rose? Awwwww...it's just crazy-beautiful out there, man. Nature also has a way of using colour to denote danger. Do not pick up a red bug. Do not eat green meat. Why, then, do some photographers feel the need to grab those saturation sliders and pump up their image with so much colour that you need shades just to look at it? On the whole, nature does a pretty good job of making sunsets look cool. I'm pretty sure that if nature wanted your help to make her sunsets look excruciatingly vivid and completely unnatural then she would have asked you by now. Hmmm? Maybe? Or maybe you don't actually know how to expose for a sunset? Like, you know, don't actually expose for the sun itself? Expose for the sky either side? That way you'll retain the colours and keep the natural contrast. Simply blasting the sky with artificial colour is what pre-schoolers do with crayons and vomit.

The Beach

I live on a Greek island. We have quite a few beaches. Sandy beaches, windy beaches, pebbly beaches, public beaches, secluded beaches...many. many beaches. You can lie on them when it's warm or simply walk along them when it's cold. All the beaches are pretty close to the sea. Look! It's the sea! And just beyond the sea is the horizon!
Don't be fooled by the notion that a beach makes for a good photograph. Beaches and babies are remarkably similar in many respects because they all look the same. One toddler in a buggy looks exactly the same as another to everybody except the mother concerned. Most beaches look exactly the same to everybody except the tourist concerned. So you need to do something with a beach to make it interesting. You could dig it up and make a temporary home for a thousand unicorns. That would be pretty neat. Or you could just walk along the beach for a while until you bump into something you could place in the foreground of your photograph. Like a tree. A jetty. A turtle. Anything, really, that leads the eye into the image. (Don't use beached whales, though...they gross people out. It's the flies and rotting blubber. Yuk!)

Lying On The Ground

This is a technique popular with Japanese pornographers and Russian village wedding photographers alike. I don't know why. On the whole I have more respect for Japanese pornographers. If you want to look up a girl's skirt on the bus then there are dedicated websites for you. Lying on the ground to shoot a gaggle of bridesmaids is just, well, weird. You'll never get an upskirt shot like that because it's pretty obvious that's what you're trying to achieve.  Plus...those chins! Yikes! Get up, man! You're freaking out the entire wedding party! They're thinking they've hired Pervy Piotr from Upskirt Collection.co.ck to document their very special day!

Unnecessary HDR

HDR stands for High Dynamic Range. High. Dynamic. Range.  It's a way to capture the shadows and highlights under high-contrast circumstances using a series of bracketed exposures and then blending them together into one image using dedicated software. It's a faff-and-a-half but can be very effective. It is particularly effective when photographing property interiors on a Greek island. The contrast between the bright sky outside and the interior space is a scenario that HDR software like Nik Efex can easily overcome. Once you get your head around HDR, however, it's tempting to use it for everyday scenes that have a very limited dynamic range (such as a cloudy day). It's very easy to over-bomb an HDR image and create something which looks over-saturated and cheap. Most half-decent, modern cameras (basically cameras which you can't use as a mobile phone) have a sophisticated sensor system which can easily capture highlights and shadows between a 5-stop exposure range. This means that if your exterior is f11 and you're interior is, for example, f2.8, then your camera will capture details in the whole scene and there is no need for HDR. Personally I find the results without resorting to HDR to be far more natural, crisper and truer to the eye. So there.

Naked Women In Forests

When was the last time you saw a naked woman strolling through a forest glade with a faraway look on her face? Never. It's as dated as Emmanuelle. Yet it's still popular with amateur male photographers of a certain age who like to think they're capturing the sensual spirit of mother nature. Or something.  I know what the model is thinking. The model is thinking: "Yuk! This is uncomfortable. My feet are getting shredded and my ass is being bitten by insects. Why didn't this old jerk want to photograph me in bed with a strategically-placed white sheet covering my nipples like all the rest of them. Bastard. I'm gonna charge double next time. Eeeeek! Was that a snake?"

Instagram

Instagram is god's own way of telling you that you've failed. You and 300 million other people who access the website every month. Not all of them are drug dealers. Some are, though, because they've figured out a way to post pictures of illicit substances and then sell them via What'sApp and the rest. Good. I'd rather stare at photographs of drugs than a billion selfie trout-pouts. Similarly, I'd never post any photograph to a social network site which boldly states that it can use that image for whatever purpose they want, without legal recourse, without recompense and without credit. So Instagram are basically cheap techno bastards who sold out to Facebook in April 2012 for 1 Billion dollars. And threw in a few hideous filters (Mayfair, Willow, Perpetua, etc...bleurgh!) to give the masses some sense of diluted creative vanity.  It's a phone. Call someone.

Photoshop Filters

Let me see...what's in the toolbox? Neon Glow? Cut Out? Liquify? Ripple? Shatter?

WHAT THE FUCK HAVE YOU DONE TO MY PHOTOGRAPH? GET IT BACK! NOW!

Kissing The Moon

This again is a popular technique with Russian wedding photographers and love-struck hillbillies from the Deep South. It goes like this. Photograph the bride with her palm outstretched. Photograph the groom seperately kneeling down. Superimpose the groom onto the bride's hand and...voila!...one of the most terrible techniques known to sentient photographers. There are infinite variations. The mini-groom standing inside the bride's big shoe.The mini-groom being squished between the bride's big hands. Both mini-bride and mini-groom standing inside champagne glasses. The bride and groom as centaurs on a beach. The mini-bride poking out of the groom's top pocket. The bride and groom both kissing the moon.

I'm gonna move to Minsk and throw a few more out there. Like the mini-wedding photographer kidnapped and trapped inside the bride and groom's big torture chamber. The mini-wedding photographer facing the bride and groom's big family firing squad. Oh, wait, those aren't actually photographs...






                                                                                                                                                                

Decapitate Kylie...End All War.

Motorhead On Ice

So beheading is back in the news after a few centuries' absence. How practical. How efficient. How very Ikea. It must be re-assuring for some people to know that the old ways really were the best. You simply don't need nuclear submarine fleets and stealth technology when you own a big fucking knife. It's not often that we're inspired by medieval murder techniques at Shark Infested Waters, but anyone who cannot understand the undiluted impact of public decapitation needs to be hot-wired into the real world. There is no remote control anymore. You don't like it? Tough. Switch channels? Tough. You going to be all grown up now and negotiate around a table in the desert? Tough. We've got a foreign aid worker in an orange jumpsuit and you're all going to watch. We'll make it real easy for y'all and even send the fucking TV schedule. Got it? Good.

Both the East and West are obsessed with propaganda. The West has Rupert Murdoch, ISIL has the al-Hayat Media Center and both sides would probably agree that the battle for hearts & minds is not panning out entirely as expected. The West can send bombs and drones and achieve nothing at all. Al-Hayat can send just one video over the internet and cause instant mayhem. The West has yet to understand that in this day and age there is nothing particularly shocking or awesome about watching a conventional war on TV. We've seen it all before. It wasn't very good. Especially the ending.