Walking through Old City, Philadelphia—brick roads underfoot, Ricoh GR III on the wrist strap—I find myself reflecting on street photography. What is it? Why does it matter? And why do I keep returning to it?
Beyond Candid Snapshots
I was speaking with another photographer recently. He told me he prefers portraits and lifestyle images, working when people feel comfortable around the camera. That’s valid. But for me, street photography has always meant more than candid snapshots or rushing into people’s faces.
Street photography is often misunderstood as invasive or disruptive. In reality, it can be empathetic. Sometimes I chat with strangers. Sometimes I blend in quietly. Both paths can lead to strong, candid work. My best photos have come from being present—working a scene, engaging with people, and giving time for meaning to emerge.
Photographing Humanity
When photographing people, you’re not just taking their picture. You’re photographing another human soul. Life. Meaning. To approach this carelessly—to just “take”—misses the point.
Street photography is less about rigid rules of composition and more about how you engage with humanity. The way you interact with the world reflects back in your photographs.
Street Photography as Philosophy
I don’t even think of street photography as a genre. To me, it’s a philosophy. An ethos. I’m a flâneur, a wanderer, a tourist in my hometown.
Street photography is about curiosity and intuition. You step into the world without preconceived notions of what to find. You embrace the unknown, cultivate courage, and carry a love for life and humanity. If you don’t love these things, perhaps street photography isn’t for you.
Finding Beauty in the Mundane
Street photography isn’t just people on sidewalks. It’s architecture, infrastructure, markings on the ground, light on glass buildings, sounds of church bells, and fragments of urban life.
It’s the parks, the lampposts, the signage, the posters. It’s everything that makes up human existence in the city. The role of the street photographer is to uplift the ordinary, to find beauty in the mundane.
Anywhere, Everywhere
Despite the name, street photography isn’t confined to streets or cities. You can apply its ethos in a rural village, on a mountain trail, or at the beach. It’s about approaching the world with openness, courage, and curiosity.
Ultimately, street photography is about sharing your unique point of view.
“The photograph is merely a reflection of your soul, of your inner voice, of your inner spirit.”
“You cannot make the same photograph twice.”
“This is where the imperfection in our compositions can sing.”
“When I click the shutter, it’s this feeling of life affirmation.”
“What we can control as a photographer is very simple: where you position your physical body in the world in relationship to the subject and the background, and when you press the shutter.”
“Ultimately, when I’m photographing things, I’m simply asking a simple question: what will reality manifest to be in a photograph today?”
“Maybe you can’t live forever, but at least you can make a photograph.”
Walking along the river in Philadelphia on a crisp October morning, I’m struck by how clear the reflection is, how the sunlight hits my face. Fall is here, and so is today’s thought: the snapshot is the ultimate form of street photography.
Spontaneity is the Name of the Game
Street photography thrives on spontaneity.
Walking into a new place
Meeting a new face
Chasing fleeting light
The candid snapshot is an instinctive endeavor. When I shoot, I’m not analyzing leading lines or perfect geometry. I’m simply reacting with my gut. Each photograph becomes a reflection of my inner fire — my thumos — rather than a diagram of the external world.
Stop Thinking, Just Shoot
Using a compact camera like the Ricoh liberates me from overthinking. Shooting from the LCD, from the hip, even without looking — it’s all play.
“I don’t really have anything to say, but it’ll be said in my photographs.”
Imperfection in composition is part of the music. Life is imperfect, and the snapshot lets those imperfections sing.
Control and Surrender
Here’s the paradox:
I can’t control whether an incredible scene appears today.
I can control where I place my body, how I move, and when I press the shutter.
That’s it. That’s the craft. The rest is surrender — to flux, to chance, to the unknown.
Flow State and Affirmation
Clicking the shutter is a kind of life-affirmation. It’s bliss, euphoria, a reminder that everything is fleeting. Seasons shift, light changes, and no photograph can ever be repeated.
You cannot make the same photograph twice.
By treating the day like a visual diary, the snapshot approach makes me a witness to impermanence — and to my own mortality. Maybe we don’t live forever. But the photograph? That remains.
Play Over Perfection
To shoot snapshots is to embrace play:
Throwing the camera around
Shooting lots of frames of the same thing
Letting intuition guide the process
It’s not about control. It’s about curiosity. The unknown. The joy of seeing what reality manifests in the frame today.
Closing
Street photography, at its best, is freedom. It’s instinct, gut, spontaneity. It’s the joy of photographing without overthinking — because in the end, impermanence rules everything.
Maybe you can’t live forever. But you can make a photograph.
👉 If you want to dive deeper into my workflow, check out the Books tab on my site — I’ve got eBooks and lecture-style videos waiting for you.
Fiat Food investigates how inflation and fiat money corrupted global diets and human health.
Builds on themes from Saifedean Ammous’ The Fiat Standard, extending the analysis into nutrition, food policy, and health outcomes.
Matthew Lysiak, an investigative journalist, frames the book as a crime investigation into how government, industry, religious ideology, and fiat incentives reshaped what people eat.
Part I: Personal Origins
Lysiak grew up in the 1990s, eating according to the Food Pyramid (6–11 servings of grains, avoid fats, replace with seed oils).
At age 16, he was diagnosed with cancer, sparking a lifelong question: What caused this?
Doctors denied diet was a factor, but intuition suggested otherwise.
The experience, combined with loss of trust in institutions (especially post-COVID), led him to dig deeper into food and fiat money.
Part II: Fiat Money and Food
Nixon’s 1971 closure of the gold window untethered the dollar, enabling unrestricted money printing.
Inflation allowed governments to mask the true cost of war and social programs.
Food policy was reshaped to hide inflation’s effects:
Cheap industrial substitutes were promoted over nutrient-dense traditional foods.
Official dietary advice shifted repeatedly but always in the same direction: less meat, more grains and processed foods.
Part III: Religious Roots of Anti-Meat Ideology
The Seventh-day Adventist Church, founded by Ellen White (who claimed divine visions after brain trauma), played a central role.
White taught that meat caused lust and sin; abstinence from meat preserved purity.
Dr. John Harvey Kellogg (yes, of Corn Flakes) worked to design foods that suppressed libido and replaced meat.
The Adventist legacy still drives institutions:
The American Dietetic Association and major nutrition studies trace back to Adventist networks.
Loma Linda University, Adventist-run, has received over $160 million in government grants to produce vegetarian-leaning studies.
Part IV: The Rise of Ancel Keys
Ancel Keys’ “Seven Countries Study” (1950s–60s) falsely linked saturated fat to heart disease.
Despite flawed and cherry-picked data, his charisma and lobbying made his diet-heart hypothesis official policy.
By 1980, U.S. dietary guidelines formally demonized meat and saturated fat, while elevating grains and seed oils.
The 1992 Food Pyramid institutionalized this with a disastrous prescription:
Base diet on grains.
Lump natural animal fats together with sugar as “foods to limit.”
Results: an explosion of obesity, diabetes, infertility, and chronic disease.
Part V: Industry and Fiat Incentives
Agribusiness and Big Food companies profited enormously from subsidized grain and processed food production.
Seed oils (soy, corn, canola) became central dietary staples because they are cheap to mass-produce.
Fiat inflation enabled:
Corn subsidies and grain overproduction.
Rigged science and PR campaigns to normalize fake food.
Shaming and guilt campaigns against traditional diets (e.g., eggs, red meat).
Part VI: Science or Pseudoscience?
Modern nutrition science mirrors climate science:
Funded to justify policies that hide inflation.
Promotes austerity in food/energy consumption while preserving fiat power.
Observational studies dominate (correlation without causation).
Data often comes from Adventist vegetarians or industry-funded research, ensuring predetermined conclusions.
“Everything in moderation” becomes the mantra, ignoring addiction and engineered hyper-palatable junk.
Part VII: Consequences of Fiat Food
Metabolic health collapse: skyrocketing rates of obesity, diabetes, cancer, and infertility.
Cognitive decline: processed diets impair clear thinking, creating a docile population easier to control.
Loss of autonomy: individuals outsource judgment to “experts” credentialed by fiat-funded institutions.
Cultural degradation: even family recipes, once based on ghee, tallow, butter, and meat, were replaced by industrial substitutes.
Part VIII: Resistance and Renewal
A growing counter-movement (doctors like Shawn Baker, Nina Teicholz, and independent thinkers) is breaking the illusion.
Results-based “bro science” often outperforms credentialed “nutrition experts.”
Carnivore and low-carb diets demonstrate cognitive clarity, health restoration, and improved performance.
Bitcoin offers an economic parallel:
Just as Bitcoin restores sound money, rejecting fiat food restores sound nutrition.
Fix the money, fix the food. Fix the food, fix the mind.
Key Takeaways
Inflation drives dietary destruction – cheap substitutes are promoted to mask rising costs of real food.
Religious zeal + industry profit = anti-meat dogma – Adventist ideology and Ancel Keys shaped policy for generations.
Credentialism is weaponized – “experts” justify policies serving state and corporate interests, not public health.
Fiat food makes people weaker, sicker, and easier to control – it is a slow war on autonomy and vitality.
Bitcoin and real food are aligned – both restore natural order and human flourishing.
Discussion Questions
How does fiat money directly incentivize the promotion of fake food?
The word spirit comes from the Latin spīritus, meaning “breath, breeze, air, life, soul.”
At its core, it derives from the Latin verb spīrāre, “to breathe.”
In early usage, breath and life were inseparable—breath was seen as the animating force of living beings.
From there, spīritus developed a broader sense: not just literal breath, but also life-force, vitality, courage, soul, or consciousness.
When the word entered Old French as espirit and later Middle English as spirit, it carried these same dual meanings—both the literal breath of life and the immaterial essence of a person.
So the etymology shows a progression:
Breath / breathing →
Vital principle (life itself) →
Soul, mind, disposition, supernatural being.
That’s why today “spirit” can mean anything from someone’s mood (“in high spirits”) to the immortal soul or even a ghostly being.
