The photography industry is really focused on the ‘industry’ part and not so much on the ‘photography’ part. This is the greatest moment in the history of photography if your dream is to distribute as much photography as possible to as many people as possible, or if your goal is to make it as easy as possible to become seen as a photographer. There’s never been a time like this before.
So if your focus is on photography, it’s great. If your focus is on the industry part and the royalties, the lawyers, the magazine features and the print campaigns, it’s horrible. The shift that is happening right now is that the people who insist on keeping the world as it was are going to get more and more frustrated until they lose their jobs. People who want to invent a whole new set of rules, a new paradigm, can’t believe their good fortune and how lucky they are that the people in the industry aren’t noticing an opportunity… [click the ‘continue reading’ link below…] —
The above is an excerpt from an interview that information-age guru, Seth Godin, gave about the music industry, only I’ve hacked it. (Seth don’t sue me.) For purposes of illustration, I’ve simply replaced each occurrence of the word ‘music’ from his statement with the word ‘photography’, along with a couple contextual tweaks.
I’m guessing there’s no lack of opinions on the results of my edit, but I could be wrong…
@anonymous paranoid just above: chill! that’s been going on forever and you just know get the feeling that something’s going on? no revolution led to progress, at least in the long term. I aprecciate you being alert, but there’s no need for a call to arms…
anyways, my 2$ are: I’ve studied journalism (that didn’t work) so I’ve started photographing as well, but i still feel the difficulty of not being business savy… trying to change, but most times i’d rather shoot than talk business….
keep it going chase, you help a lot
There are many many many organisations that photographers can join to give them a professional body to support them. They always involve an annual membership fee and most of them don’t actually do much for the industry (in my experience).
Also, supposing there was a union we could all join, there would still be those who didn’t want to join. These independents could then still undercut any price structure we have, and could perform below any standards we set, but they could still be known as a photographer, and potentially still make a living.
I kind of see your point, but surely all these PWA’s (People with cameras) who have chosen photography as “a fun alternative to their office job” will give up pretty soon when they don’t find it as easy as they thought, leaving the only the experienced professionals?
A lot of people have been made redundant recently and I’d imagine some of them will be using any payout they get to fund camera equipment in an effort to become “a photographer”. Going back to the music comparison, it’s strange how none of them go out and buy guitars or a microphone and call themselves a musician. 😉
Idk about you guys but I think the change is very apparent now. It’s something that’s hard to verbalize (at least for me). It’s one of those things that you can kinda feel coming. It’s the kind of thing that makes you very excited for the future as a photographer and an artist
@ekim
Holga’s rock! I’ve just loaded some film in my 1950s box brownie. Should be fun….. and isn’t that what it’s about? Enjoying the process of making great images?
I’m sat here 100 miles from home on my iPhone about to do a job for the first issue of a new magazine. This tells me that there’s new clients and new work out there to be had! The trick is getting the work. Trouble is, sometimes people only want McDonalds….