randy olson
randy olson is one of the top Photography influencer in United States with 940204 audience and 0.28% engagement rate on Instagram. Check out the full profile and start to collaborate.
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The night of this photograph, I bedded down in the blind that was a cold, plywood shack. I typically photographed cranes in the morning because they land at night and fly away as it gets light. There were thousands of cranes landing in front of the blind—and then the storm rolled in, and there was significant lightning right behind the birds. I put the camera on a tripod and started pumping the shutter, making sequential 30-second exposures. This shot captured the lightning and the birds in motion. I’ve never photographed this many objects in front of lightning, even though in the past I’ve done entire stories devoted to weather. There’s often a feeder strike that’s barely visible, and then the lightning strikes. The lightning actually explodes from the ground up. So when you look at the birds, because of the long exposure, you actually see them twice. They are lit once by the feeder strike (blurs) and the second time by the blast of lightning where they appear sharp. - Available @natgeofineart #cranes #storms #lightning #Nebraska @thephotosociety #weather
2025-10-09
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Congratulations to Lazlo Kraszhanorkai, Nobel Prize for Literature. Announced today.
Hard to believe all travel is banned in India. On Tuesday, the Indian prime minister declared a national lockdown aimed at preventing the spread of the COVD-19 virus. Hoping our friends there are safe. @vinaydiddee #coronavirus #india #churchgatestation #railroads @thephotosociety @natgeofineart
2025-10-09
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Here’s a test—since education and socialization seem missing in ICE enforcement: Who in the two photos could have their rights suspended? Photo one—man with brown skin Photo two—couple with white skin Trick question. I’d love to see the answers. ICE is allowed to use skin color to harm; colleges are forbidden to use it to help. Photos, words @randyolson ICE will bonus you $50K and only requires a GED—most won’t bite, but what about those bent on waging their own race war? A GED doesn’t guarantee the socialization you get from attending high school—where beliefs collide and you are forced to ground-truth your reality. College, community college, and trade schools continue that process beyond academics. Sure, folks with GEDs can be socialized in diverse, non-academic ways and excel beyond PhDs. But the danger is in those who jump from one racist bubble to another. Now it seems we’re arming and masking men—many with the social skills of eighth graders—giving them power to slam elderly gardeners’ heads into the pavement—solely for the color of their skin. That’s the world Trump seems to have always wanted: finally realizing what he and his father dreamt for their tenants of color in Queens. Today’s Supreme Court echoes the 1920s KKK—openly enforcing Jim Crow then, and now in the 2020s they cloak it in law enforcement. In less than a decade, thanks to one racist and lap dogs, we’ve lost a century of progress. It’s so out of balance, Justice Sotomayor urges public resistance: “Advocacy starts with us.” Meanwhile, detainees face crowding, forced medical procedures, abuse, endless solitary—torture by UN definition. Twenty-three deaths since 2021, mostly medical neglect. Some chained for hours with no toilet, forced to urinate on the floor. ICE has arrested U.S. citizens—sometimes violently. 71 percent have no criminal record. 93 percent have no violent convictions. And Trump? He has 34 felony convictions and is libel for civil sexual abuse. The whims of a racist felon now mean locking up citizens who’ve lived more lawfully than he ever has.
2025-10-09
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The @magnumphotos Square Print Sale is on until Sunday, October 27, in partnership with @thephotosociety. Link in bio. This is an excerpt from the Guardian story about these photographs: These bird hunters are near a Harappan archaeological site in the Indus River Valley and employ techniques depicted on ancient terra cotta pots from 5000 years ago. The region around Mohenjo Daro was notorious for kidnappings. It was a lawless area with groups of bandits operating together. We ventured beyond the protected area of the archaeological site and I saw a group of men carrying carefully wrapped bird heads, and arranged to join them the following day. I had been assigned a lone guard with an AK and I knew the bandits worked in groups of six. I asked the guard what would happen if they confronted us. He said “either they are lucky or I am lucky.” I got rid of the guard who was willing to start a firefight because the kidnappers hadn’t ever hurt anyone… they just wanted the money. I’d rather National Geographic ended up poorer than I end up dead. These people that do these ancient traditions are poor. They hunt to feed their families. They wear bird hats made from herons they’ve previously captured and eaten, and tie other live herons to hoops as decoys, as seen in the picture. They submerge themselves up to their chins, mimicking birds to attract waterfowl. When the birds approach, the hunters grab them by hand. Twice, I’ve woken up to find the airport I was supposed to fly into had been burned to the ground. And there’ve been times when I’ve gone to extreme lengths to get somewhere, like in Sudan, where dust storms thwarted my plans for aerial shots after weeks of preparation. Once you get through all the travel and finally are in front of a scene like this, the real fear is you will miss the opportunity to capture something extraordinary. Yet, the few successes make it all worthwhile.
2025-10-09
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Take away. Take away. Take away. In a slow-moving coup, there is a shift of millions of low- and middle-income Americans from PHOTO ONE to PHOTO TWO—from EXCESS to SCARCITY. It’s not just that White-Actual-Criminals go free while Brown-Legal-Residents are sent to gulags.There is also SO much loss to average Americans, and that loss is only offset by a savings of $136 billion—a mere 1.94% of the U.S. budget. These paltry savings flow to the police state: the National Guard, $75 billion to ICE and $795 million for surveillance. The rest—mostly the ultra-rich. Photos,words @randyolson Trump is bankrupting 250 years of American capital—thinking it’s his and his alone to squander. We now have fewer manufacturing jobs than before the pandemic. The good news is both Hitler and Orban turned around ailing economies. Trump is doing the opposite with only 24% that “strongly approve” and other approvals underwater. This is a PARTIAL list of LOSS: Cancer research CDC: $3.5B Civil rights, affirmative action Consumer Financial Protection Chemical & clean water oversight Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Dept. of Education Earth and environmental research EPA: $2.46B, environmental grants Family support, elder care, youth programs FEMA, NIH: defunded Global health (USAID): HIV/AIDS, malaria, TB, nutrition Medicaid: $400B cuts over 10 years Medicare: $540B mandatory (BCA) cuts over 10 years Housing: Section 8 and homeless assistance, Native American and rural housing Watchdog layoffs slash audits by 20–30% 58,000+ federal workforce jobs eliminated Meals on Wheels Military/security aid to protect Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania from Russia while Kremlin influence programs gutted mRNA research NASA/NOAA climate satellites canceled/decommissioned National Endowments for Arts, Humanities, Museums GAO investigations blocked Pell Grants, TRIO, GEAR UP, FSEOG, Work-Study Public health infrastructure, pandemic response SNAP, WIC, school meals Social Security Admin: security breaches Student loans Tariff induced inflation Vaccines University/hospital research grants
2025-10-09
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In a dark, dingy corner where I could barely see him, I sensed this emaciated man in my peripheral vision. I had been talking to his kids in Kayford, West Virginia, after navigating two LONG coal tunnels to get there—each only wide enough for one monster coal truck. I met one of those trucks in the tunnel midway and I WAS THE ONE that had to back up half a mile. The kids talked about their father’s black lung disease and how his benefits were dictated by a percentage of disability. They said if he was just 2% more disabled, his monthly check would be significantly bigger—or more “bigly,” as the most incoherent one in DC might say. Yes, the same one in DC who touts “Beautiful Clean Coal” while begging the fossil fuel industry for a BILLION dollars for his re-election. Black lung is serious: in central Appalachia, nearly 1 in 5 miners have it; the deadliest form is rising sharply—even miners under 50 are affected. Since 1970, over 75,000 miners have died. Meanwhile, Black Lung Benefits payouts have shrunk despite rising cases. Musk cut health workers, EPA rolled back protections, and coal companies fiercely contest claims while miners die waiting. Words, photo @randyolson I worked in W VA at a newspaper following politicians into mines and also freelanced for coal companies. It was TWO DIFFERENT WORLDS. Politicians like Jay Rockefeller would tour dry, pristine, beautiful mines while my corporate gigs sent me deep into wet tunnels with ceilings scarcely 36 inches high. I once asked a miner lying on his side putting in 36 inch roof supports what his job was. He was a mile in and a mile under the earth— he said, “I’m just trying to hold up this mountain.” Trump and his lapdogs have opened 13 million acres of public land to toxic coal mining and pumped $625 million into mines that many owners want closed. Coal supplies only 16% of U.S. energy—for a reason: it’s dirty, costly, and outcompeted by LNG and renewables. Trump has never seen this work and it’s horrific conditions. Not that he would care.
2025-10-09
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I spent thirty years being shot out of a cannon. No matter how far I flew, I always seemed to end up in the same car, with two animated guys up front speaking a language I didn’t know. In the back were dusty camera cases, black beans, crates of potatoes balanced on AKs, and helper’s heavily worn luggage. It felt like the same car each time, but the view thru the windshield kept changing like switching channels on a TV. When I was away, I dreamed of home—the weather, the shared thoughts. But it was a dream, because out THERE, I was trying to shelter at 120 degrees in a bug net or something equally foreign. I’ve seen the mess of governments that were corrupt, incompetent, and treasonous. Now, Springsteen uses those words—calling out Trump and his lap dogs. I’ve worked in countries where the leader’s domestic police are a heavily armed military. Photos, words @randyolson I’ve worked in Russia, where they pay white Russians to have more babies while pushing out Jews, LGBTQ+ and brown workers from the “Stans.” Now, I see our pro-natalist-trump-accounts, as Miller brings policy parallel to the 1920s KKK. I’ve worked in Sudan and witnessed war crimes—starving civilians as a weapon. Now I see our support of starvation of Gaza. I’ve worked in Norilsk (first photo) that creates nickel used in Musk’s Teslas—called green—but creates 8% of all pollution in Russia. That income supports Musk’s MAGA AI—echoes his far-right ideas and relies on methane turbines—polluting and harming the health of communities of color, just like an unregulated Russian company. I’ve worked in Wuhan to document a steel mill sold by US Steel to China but the province didn’t have enough electricity to run it. I see similar stresses on our electric grid and alternative energy sources were JUST beginning to support the increasing demands of AI, but Trump chose to kill all that and bring back coal plants that were begging to be shut down. The windshield I used to see THERE is the one I now look through HERE.
2025-10-09
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Studs Terkel’s book “Working” says work is not just about wages, it’s an ongoing quest for dignity, identity, and meaning. He says work combines daily struggle, existential searching, and extraordinary dreams—this is fragile and can be devastating in any political movement where workers lose their autonomy and feel dehumanized. When I think of labor, here and across the world, my brain goes to this man in Kenya sitting under the scorching sun, day after day, making gravel by breaking big rocks into little rocks. He gave a nod to my camera but never spoke—his entire day focused maniacally on transforming stone. I also remember photographing labor in China at the beginning of this century and it seemed to me that a premium was placed on analytical skills over creativity. I’ve been told Chinese language, with all those characters, assists the formation of an analytic brain… but I’m not an expert. I met folks in China who craved creative lives but seemed lost in that system. And on the analytic side, factory workers often described themselves as just a wrench in a machine. The Trump administration has been undermining the basic dignity of workers by stripping federal employees of their rights to negotiate workplace conditions, challenging the power of unions to defend salary, safety, and respect. By replacing pro-worker officials with anti-union ones and promoting “right-to-work” laws, the administration made it harder for working people to assert their humanity and agency—transforming them into powerless, interchangeable parts in an already indifferent system. Photos, words @randyolson Whether in the gravel pits of Uganda or Kenya, the assembly lines of Shanghai, or the offices here at home, workers everywhere want to be seen, valued, and creative. The “factory” metaphor captures how individual dreams often clash with the machinery of the state, whether authoritarian China or America veering the same direction, the creative spirit strains against these constraints.
2025-10-09
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