Is Everybody a Model Now?

Just a few short years ago you had to actually be working for a talent agency to be considered a model. I mean, you had to actually have face shots, and in most cases, a real, live, walking, talking agent.
But along came Myspace, Facebook, Bebo, Black Planet, and Xango, or whatever.
"Models" exploded out of the woodwork. Their credits were simply club shots that somebody took of them with a group of people on the dance floor. Some simply bought a new bikini, a lace front and slapped it on the Internet -- POW -- a model, just like that.
I mean, what would Tyra Banks say?
Now, don't get me wrong a person can choose to make a living or be as entrepreneurial as their work ethic allows, but com'on. All of a sudden the Internet is filled with fiddyleven models?
And the only pose they know? The booty pose, that's it.
Is it me, or can anybody be a model nowadays?


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Rise of the camera-phone photographer

Used to be when you wanted to "make a picture" (as they say down South) you had to send it in to be developed into a Space Station 13-type pod at the Kodak store or local pharmacy. That is, if you didn't have your own developing room, a pitch-black room illuminated with a scary red light and consumed with the smell of old bread and skunk pee.
But that's what it took to be a photographer, an art form that paid off big time in the form of magazines, posters and photo albums.
But with the rise of the do-it-all camera, photography is being set back a 100 years. Not only are people not interested in the "science" and "art" of photo-taking (quick, what does aperture mean?) but people are snapping photos with the phone in them.
It's become so common place that the art of photography as we know it is slowly dying. Curse you, Internet!

Upskirting: A Growing Trend

With the rise in camera phones a growing phenom has taken off with it: Upskirting.
Wikipedia calls it "a term referring to up skirt photography, images of the view up a woman's skirt (as seen from underneath), including shots of a woman's underwear or crotch, or exposing her vulva or buttocks." (The pic above is not upskirting, btw, but it's used to illustrate the point.)
It has received more attention lately as media outlets such as Huffington Post have even chimed in on the subject.
Now, although there is ta law against i but I don't think perpetrators realize it. And proving that you've just been upskirted? Forget about it. So, the question is, what would you do if you caught someone upskirting you?