Ben, at a swim meet a long time ago.
We're living through a period of enormous flux and change. Everything we thought to be stable and routine has been more or less turned upside down. And while photographers moan about being sidelined by progress and innovations that allow most casual users to make really good photographs with convenient tools, like iPhones, the same convenience, coupled with machine competence, changes the very nature of our business, our personal business models, and our larger culture's engagement with our craft. And, generally, not in a way that we enjoy; either financially, or from our ingrained craft perspective.
The latest news from the camera organization, CIPA, is that camera sales have once again declined, year over year. Sales of cameras slid nearly 20% in 2019 and that follows several years of nearly as dramatic contraction. It's a huge chunk of the market. To put it into clearer perspective, there are now more people around the globe living middle class existences than ever before and the population (and potential market for cameras) is growing at an ever accelerating rate.
The problem is that the cameras nearly everyone chooses today are the ones in their phones. Most people just don't see the need to step outside that product for their imaging needs and most aren't interested in becoming more knowledgeable about the nuts and bolts of photography. I don't blame them, most of their uses are social sharing and family memories and the phones have provided such a frictionless and fluid way of achieving those aims. But what it means for us, inevitably, is fewer choices of new photography products in the future as well as declining production which will raise prices on the products that do sell.
In a more existential consideration, the move to the phones and to photography as a consumable (not collectible) undertaking means that we've flattened and democratized the process of photography in pretty much the same way that technology made typesetting available to everyone. Or the way the web gave everyone the opportunity to become a publisher of written content via blogs while, on the other hand, decimating traditional researched and fact checked journalism --- to the actual detriment of our entire societies. Feelings replace fact. A quick Instagram photo replaces an archival print.
I walked Studio Dog through the neighborhood with my wife this morning. We chatted about our work. She works in the art department of a large advertising agency that has, as a primary client, one of the large, international computer and cloud services company. Work for the agency is constantly moving away from print and traditional, broadcast TV, and is constantly increasing its reach into the social media realm, both in messaging and in visual content.
Some of the staff at the agency spend their days mining through online stock photo sites looking for images that align with their client's messaging and brand standards. The average purchase price for the images they find is miniscule. The reason and rationale for paying low sums of money for large numbers of photographs (and video snippets) is that the images no longer need to have any "legs" at all. No need for staying power. No long term use. The images are the equivalent of an order of French fries or a diet Coke. Or a cup of coffee at Starbucks. The images are used, placed for a few hours of prominence on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook, and then they fall back into the abyss and newer, fresher ones are inserted to take their place.
What this means for commercial photographers (if we extrapolate from the business model of this one ad agency with 100+ people in Austin and thousands of people in offices around the world) is that commissioned, original photo assignments are now enough of a rarity to cause a palpable buzz through the agency offices for the days leading up to a shoot. Some of the newer, younger graphic designers have been in the business now for several years and have yet to be invited to attend a shoot. Lost to a generation is any experience with art direction in real time, or actual, commissioned art buying.
As more and more work moves from technically demanding media (broadcast TV, four color printing, printed magazines and brochures) the rationale for using big, high resolution cameras declines, and probably at the same percentage rate as we're seeing in the decline of camera sales. If an image is an anchor for an Instagram post will it really make a difference if it started life as a 100 megapixel, medium format image? Not much.
I understand that the majority of my audience here are enthusiasts and a good portion of you are retired from jobs outside the creative content industry and are pursuing photography with no risk to your income, your livelihood or your sense of self. I feel lucky to have survived and thrived through thick and thin but even I am rational enough to understand that we're heading deep into a fundamental change to the way photography works as a business, and a complete restructuring of how the next generation will get paid for creating new work.
I feel like I've done my part to buoy up the camera markets (I've bought more than my share of new, expensive cameras and lenses) even as I see the number of "real" photography assignments slowly collapsing. I could chalk it up to my age or my tenure in the market but I hear the same from photographers who are half my (venerable and wise) age. It's a real seismic shift. Intentionally or unintentionally progress has sucked much of the marrow out of the bones of the business and redeposited it into a different construct.
There is no remedy to discuss here; no prescription to "weather" this trend. If you were wise you saw this coming and marshaled your resources to either retire or transition into something else.
There is still work out there and there are still clients paying for it. But I think it would be legitimate to suggest that the traditional work that we hung out hats on is declining at about the same rate as the decline of camera sales, worldwide.
Thank goodness it's such a fun hobby, because I'd do it even if I never got paid to do it.
My suggestions? I actually have none. Except that everything we think of, negative or positive, tends to become a self fulfilling prophecy so perhaps you and I should ignore everything I've just written and forge ahead with optimism and a gleam in our collective eyes. You go first, I'll watch and make sure it's safe......
Right.
23 comments:
As it happens, I still work as a photographer, in a large encyclopedic art museum. We have wonderfully talented, committed, experienced photographers here who make fabulous photographs of works of art on a day-in, day-out basis. We still have a publications department which makes excellent use of these images. BUT when one of the people in our PR department needs a photo of a piece on display for social media, they do not stay at their desks, download the convenient lo-res file of the studio's photo from the museum's database (this would be the work of a minute or two). Instead they walk down to the gallery, snap the sculpture through the plexiglass vitrine with its attendant reflections of the other works in the gallery or photograph the painting with its harsh frame shadow line and lighting glare and post the photo from there. You can find this amusing, you can find it heart-breaking, you can find it anything you want but you will never change their mindset.
It is possible that until/unless camera manufacturers get it through their heads that they are not merely in the camera-making business but rather in many other businesses (e.g. communicating, art-making, memory-making, money-making, whatever else people use their cameras for) and improve the user interfaces, ease of use and convenience of the entire process from seeing and taking to editing and posting, they'll keep losing customers to phone companies like Apple. Hobbyists like me (and in a few years, you) are too small and insignificant a share of the overall market to keep all the manufacturers afloat.
My wife made a decent living from photography until the big recession about a dozen years ago. By the time the recession was ending, phones had reduced demand for professional work to the point it just wasn't worth the long hours and the cost of running a business. She kept the business on the side so she can do a few shoots a year w/ favorite clients, and she still gets the occasional calls from long ago customers, but she has long since transitioned to IT (we're in our early 50s, so retirement was not an option). The work is not as much fun, but it is a steady paycheck - something being a photographer can no longer offer.
Then again, who knows, maybe I am just cluelessly rambling on like an old man (hey, you there, get off my lawn...)
Ken
I think a very hard working, smart marketing, people person with a passion can still make a living in photography but to earn a real living at it would be tough and the hours spent marketing and selling would be long. Then again, we're still shooting and billing here so I guess it's not as tragic and hopeless as I seem to have made it out to be...
I am retired and old enough that I don't need to worry about making money or whether I will be able to buy a new camera a decade from now. What I do worry about is that I won't be able to properly archive the work I have already done. The software, computers, and printers will probably go away, too. I am spending several hours a day organizing my work and making archival prints (and a few Blurb books). I hope to be caught up by the end of the year.
It will be interesting to see, what's on "the other side" of this transition phase (which really started in earnest, when typographers were booted to the eternal pastures in mainstream media ;-) I don't think, we've arrived anywhere near the "final destination" yet; maybe we're still in transition to a future, dimly visible on the horizon - if at all.
The current "media climate" in many ways looks similar to the landscape surrounding radio and propaganda leading up to the Second World War. Where "Fake News" - also - was dominating the airwaves (the "new media" on the block, then) - especially in Germany on the "Volksempfänger" ("peoples radio" - an actual, physical device in used in many/most homes). An approach still dominating a number of select "official broadcasters" - ahem - in the fifties and sixties - with the "western lies" propagated by i.e. "Radio Free Europe" and VOA, competing in the Fake News department with Russian, East German etc. "news outlets" in "reporting" the most outrageous departures from reality and truth - just like todays FaceBook and a large selection of the more fact-resistent blogs.
The interesting thing will be the outcome - on the other side of this madness - when (more probable: if) sanity, reality and truth prevails. Along with new media formats and distribution channels. The current "commercial internet" is not really new - just a well-known approach moved from the physical realm to the virtual media zone on the net. With scarce reflections on the long term viability; which has dawned on many commercial media organisations (not that that would affect their long term thinking in any way, it seems. "Damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead". That we don't use steam anymore, seems not to have reached the "upper echelons" in media. Yet ;-)
But... photography will have to adjust. Just like the (would be) Michelangelo's of yore, had to adjust to pesky photographers stealing their rightful monopoly on portraits. A solid income and craft destroyed by mass produced and quick reproductions of the lowest quality by the brothers Lumiére and their ilk (recognise the situation? ;-)
Smile and hopefully many years left in your pursuit of your chosen craft.
Lets look at opposite ends of the market for commercial photography -- your dentist and Porsche.
Your dentist needs a professional photographer for a few head shots and a few pictures of the office which will be updated every five or ten years. It has always been thus and will always be. Not a market that will put your kids through college.
Porsche needs a constant stream of product shots, lifestyle shots, and environment shots. Stills and video. Used on-line (web, instagram, facebook, Youtube et al), print (brochures, magazines, handouts) and showroom/show booth graphics. A market where skill, talent, experience and reputation can lead to a nice life.
If I was young and wanted to be a supplier of commercial photo and video graphics I would prostrate myself in front of every imaging supplier that was Porsche quality and offer to work for free (financially no more destructive than four years of college) and become a real pro with experience, contacts and a portfolio.
The above may be worth exactly what you paid for it or it might be one road to a nice career. I'll never know but someone will.
It will only get worse for camera sales as the current crop of millenials actually get some buying power once they hit their 30s. They aren't spending their money on cameras that's for sure, mirrorless or otherwise.
Recently departed drummer and lyricist for Rush, Neil Peart, wrote in their great song Tom Sawyer...changes aren't permanent but change is.
For what it's worth, I think the camera market will draw down to about where it was in the 1970s and '80s, and stay there. We will have good cameras to use and will not be made to feel that we have to buy new cameras with new menus to learn every year.
As for the photography business, there will always be some with superior sales ability and superior photo skills who will do well. Certainly not as many as in the past, of course, because many of the traditional markets, such as studio product shots, have mostly vanished.
I have enjoyed my life in photography and am thankful that I was able to live and work in the (probable) best days of the profession.
Professional photography was doomed once regular cameras started doing everything for the user. AF, auto exposure and built in auto winders. With Canon flogging Rebels to anyone with even a little bit of disposable income the "moms with cameras" industry exploded. Two major barriers to "professional" photography were swept aside in a very short period of time.
The perceived value of a paid photography came way down. People figured that if some part timer with a Rebel could do a wedding or some mugs shots why pay a real professional. It's the Walmart mentality, people want it NOW they want it CHEAP and they don't care about the quality for the most part.
So that only left the large corporations who had an image to protect. They would still shell out the bucks to get good images for print and media. Now social media is taking over so there really isn't that same need/demand for well crafted professional images.
There will always be a market for REAL professional image makers. But it will be very small.
How does this effect cameras sales. Well the numbers tell the story. The only relatively bright spot is mirrorless sales. They didn't increase, actually went down, but the profit margin went up so it was a wash. The rest of the industry is bleeding bright red blood.
I believe the golden age of professional photography has already passed on. Probably ten years ago actually.
Eric
It’s interesting, if you take time to look closely, to see how many online photography sites make heavy use of dollar stock photos. Add in the free-to-use manufacturers’ product shots and the thumbnails from other creators’ videos. Their budget for photography dwindles to near zero. “Fstoppers” is a prime example. The photo topping their lead article recently, “Why Camera Manufacturers Are No Longer Relevant”, was sourced from Unsplash, a free Creative Commons site. Pretty much makes photographers no longer relevant as well.
There is another way of seeing this. I'm not noted for my optimism but here goes! One of the biggest problems I faced with my business was people who had recently bought a DSLR and after a few weeks (or even a few hours in one case actually known to me) decided they were a professional photographer. This has forced me to move up market. However all is not lost. As image making migrates to phones this particular element of competition will tend to disappear so some work may actually come back. It will also differentiate us from the phone toting brigade. The market may become smaler but it may also become better quality.
Some other factors paint another story. Photography workshops fill up. Conventions like Photoshop World and WPPI are well attended. Youtube channels and websites that cater to those interested in photography get thousands of views and Hugh Brownstone's street photography gathering is sold out. The times and tools have changed but photography is alive and well.
I have to believe that this has happened before. Maybe everyone who was going to buy a D-SLR already owns one that sits in a drawer most of the time. Not much to do about that. What might happen is that once production volumes decrease, then the price of each individual camera will go up a bit. There was never a guarantee that they would be cheap for ever, it's just that we got used to it.
Technology advancements, and changes in how we consume media of all types, irreversibly disrupted the traditional photography business. Working in the tech industry I see this all the time, you must become somewhat agile in your view of how to produce revenue when the buzzwords and solution of the year constantly cycle. The irony is that most of the fundamentals are the same; engineering good technology solutions requires a consistent set of disciplines. But everyone wants to ignore that, just as they do in photography. You demonstrate in post after post how mastery of the fundamentals provides consistent, marketable results. But business wants to ignore that, always looking to shortcut to faster results and faster paths to profits. So the community sourced and/or employee produced image wins over paying a photographer, even though the result never matches the output of the professional.
Photography will live on, but the shape of it as a commercial pursuit will continue to change, mostly by shrinking into a small, somewhat worn resemblance of what it once was.
Reading an article about the app-crash for the Iowa primary, there was a discussion of tech companies releasing products into the wild with something like 'minimum basic functionality'. Just make it work, barely,get paid, and we'll fix the problems or the things people complain about later if they even come up. And in the interim we're off to the next money making thing. That ethos seems to be pervasive in 21st century life. And photographically speaking, that's why we'll snap something with our phones and if somebody complains, we'll do something about it.
I've been debating, with years still to go before retirement is even an option, how I might utilize the newest tools including cameras and software with AI to take more of a low cost volume approach. Shoot on P for professional (I jest, but only partially) and occasionally throw in a little bit of lightweight radio controlled strobe or continuous based on my decades of knowledge of dynamic range or nuance if required. And boom, off it goes via WiFi to their phone/tablet, we Venmo or PayPal on the spot and I'm off to the next adventure. Would you like the archiving add on where your photo stays in the cloud? That will be $8.99 per year.
Considered how to do this with weddings and other consumer photography too.
After all, if people want frictionless, and I have to eat, why not give them frictionless? Now that 8K is arriving, how long will it be anyway before everything is frame grabs taken from some brief footage rolled on set after the video is done while the lights are still up and the talent is still warm? And how soon before one o' these frictionless 'kids today' is offering just that as they've been cutting their own iPhone video and editing their own Instagram stuff in their own custom apps since they were like 4. It will be especially frictionless for them since they know nothing of how photography is "supposed" to be done.
Railroads got in trouble because they believed themselves in the business of running railroads. Whither the commercial photographer who believes themselves in the business of setting up tripods and operating 100mp medium format cameras.
Oh and car advertisements? Can't speak for Porsche specifically but many of those went to CGI for both stills and video a long time ago.
I saw the writing on the wall about 10-years ago as digital really hit the market. I was shooting nature and natural history stock photos for 2 big photo libraries. But; they re-licenced your images to other agencies they collaborated with so you never knew where your work was being published.
This made it difficult to market your own work as you never knew until after publication where your work was going to show up. Which meant you could never guarantee that exclusivity for a cover etc to a mag. There was always a chance that another similar mag could use the same images inside or on the cover at the same time. You had no control over the images.
Once I even found out that I was competing with myself for a mag, because an agency had sent them the same pics as I was pitching to the mag privately!
Digital also really heralded the royalty-free image market which drove prices down everywhere.
I decided to write and shoot and deliver a complete package to mags and still do a reasonable number of photoshoots for mags too. But I specialise in ag/farming, organic, homesteading type stories. Have a solid reputation now; and those mags look after you well and know they can rely on you.
As for wedding/portrait photography? I think you have to aim at the top or higher end of the market as there are so many "I've got a camera, a website/FB page; I'm a photographer" types driving down the prices.
I recently saw one quoting $250 for a wedding, all images back to the client on a flash stick. They won't last long in business; but they drive the price down and as soon as they give it up, someone else will spring up to carry on. I even saw a portrait photographer offering a one hour location shoot and images on a flash stick for $80 a little while ago!
Most I've seen shoot weddings with no back up gear whatsoever! That's all just the way it is now and I suppose you either adapt/change, or throw in the towel
Not to be glib but the only constant is change. If we could predict a market as complex and turbulent as the creative market for photography we would have very special powers indeed.
The camera companies are struggling because they took advantage of the film companies customer in the age of digital, I have said it before, most people don't want to own a camera, they want to take pictures. They had a boom like they had never seen before, thinking their customer would keep buying more megapixels every year. They didn't see the writing on the wall when the first terrible cameras arrived on phones, or when the cameras were a little less terrible and the screens got bigger. Of course they won't all go out of business, but their business will adapt and we will pay a very real price for future tech.
As to photographers and the business. I suspect a lot of the frustration is with adaptation. The technology is easier to master, the risks lower thanks to the feedback cycle... So we have more superb photographers than ever before, it isn't good enough to be good, the bar is raised and you must be great today and you must compete hard. The market movers faster than ever before and if you want to command stratospheric pricing, you have to offer exceptional vision, not just exceptional craft.
A difficult market for sure, but that is what happens when technology democratizes a market. I am sure the scribes were happy when everyone could read and write.
Image making potential is better than it has ever been before, the question is, are you taking advantage of it to showcase your talent, or do you want people to pay you to operate a camera?
(Obviously not directed at you Kirk, but as an idea in general)
great photo!
Just as I read your comment on T.O.P. regarding PDN ceasing publication "And professional photography has now left the room....", I wondered about your thoughts on when it leaves the building.......and here you are. I've been curious about the rapidly increasing technology and merging in the fields of digital imaging, CGI, and AI and what it might mean for the future of photography as a profession. Taking a cue from real estate photography, where 3D scanning and imaging is becoming more common for interiors, it seems likely that high end commercial photography becomes handled directly by the ad agency. The product/person is lit, scanned, and imaged to create a fully 3D model that can then be manipulated into infinite possibilities for final images. This will trickle down into increasingly lower end markets. The final stand for professional photography might possibly be catering direct to small local business and consumers whose unique needs scale below the ad agencies and scanning services. A quick search will show that horse carriage and buggy whip manufacturers still exist, but it's a niche market. Regarding the future of the photography we know and practice, as a business proposition it appears bleak at the moment. Hope I'm wrong.
Keith I am here still because of momentum, habit and good planning on the part of my partner. Not because of any real adaptation to the ever-changing markets. Most of my clients are older, entrenched and habitual. When they die off I'll just have to bite the bullet and become an ART photographer. That wouldn't be so bad. Right?
ART as in “Angry, Retired Tosser”? (Brit version ;-)
Sorry Kurt, no anger here. Not retired. And don't understand; "Tosser." Also revile the ongoing British destruction of the English language by truncating every word in what used to be a nice vocabulary. Right "togs"?
Your closing thought reminded me of the line, "Asps. Very dangerous--you go first." --Sallah, from "Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark."
I like portrait photography best, and this has been the progess::::::::ion. First, I couldn't get people to pay a lot for a portrait. Then, clients wouldn't come to me at all. Then, I started having trouble finding people to model for portraits when I gave them away for free. Then, people started being very bossy and demanding about their free portraits. (After a two hour shoot and proofs, one woman decided she didn't like her son's haircut. "I'll just get you to come do it again," she told me. "I mean it's free, right?") Finally--latest stage--people are puzzled that I'd want to shoot a portrait of someone I don't know, as if that was somehow weird. That is, they sometimes no longer grok the very concept.
Things are indeed changing!
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