I would have thought that DP Review would have chugged along until at least a couple of big players took Samsung's cue and exited the interchangeable lens camera market altogether. But I guess declining sales, bloated and costly staffing and a failed strategy toward maintaining profitability snuck up much quicker and more decisively than any of us imagined.
Photography is being re-invented yet again. I swam with a technologist from a major, major technology superpower company this morning. After our workout we got into a long discussion about all the disruptions taking place across many markets. He makes a living strategizing about technology trends. His take is that we are at an inflection point not just for photography but across a number of industries and we are never going back to the way it was only a few years (or even months) ago. And he was predicting that the disruptions, changes and creations of new tools (Dall-e, Chatbots, ChatGBT, A.I., Machine learning) and so much more is starting to look like the massive shift that occurred with the 2007 introduction of Apple's iPhone. But on a more diverse and expanded group of technologies. And across an even bigger playing field.
It's wise to remember that pre-iPhone we needed computers to function in the work space. We needed laptops for mobile computing and communication. We needed stand alone cameras. We needed music players to enjoy our music with. We needed hulking big video cameras to make movies with. We needed ATMs to do our banking. We needed maps to get to new locations in our cars. We needed phones to call people and to do primitive texting. Think ahead to now and how our phones have wiped out the need for so many peripherals we once thought to be necessary and practical. And so many services (banking, shopping, etc.) have been de-peopled and streamlined.
I wrote a blog post while flying back from the NYC Photo Expo in 2013 (also shuttered as no longer relevant) about societal change in photography and parts of the post were prescient. Here's a link: The Graying of Photography. Read it. It might make more sense now.
But it's not as if we didn't have clues and telltales about the onrushing inflection point we seem to be in the middle of right now. Here are two subsequent articles, each written eight or nine years ago pointing to exactly what is unfolding right now:
https://visualsciencelab.blogspot.com/2015/10/some-observations-after-speaking-to.html
https://visualsciencelab.blogspot.com/2014/09/after-gold-rush-where-is-photography.html
I'm going to go out on a limb and predict that commercial ($$$) photography as we know it is going to cease to exist in a couple of years. No one will be monetizing the work being created at anywhere near the scale we were able to in the past. But a new understanding and market for photography will emerge. We just have to be open to understanding it and willing to take part in it. Or....we can keep copying work like Ansel Adams landscapes and Robert Frank street photography, and considering a paper print to be the gold standard, until we all die off and head to visual Valhalla to commiserate with the buggy whip makers, the floppy disk engineers and the people checking to see if anyone left their change in a payphone booth. Me? Oh I'll be hanging out by the cigarette machines looking to pick up models for after-life retro portrait photography.
The closing of DP Review is just one of many sign posts and they weren't the first to go. Not by a long shot. They held on as long as they did because they were better capitalized. Not because they were better.
13 comments:
All inevitable and unfortunate. There's no escaping technology. In my teaching career, I am now beginning to see student submissions written by A.I. They are easy to spot, just as plagiarized work is easy to pick out. Most students understand why this is wrong and dangerous but there will always be those who simply do not want to do the work or who don't care. I teach various high school English Lit courses, one of them being a creative writing class. Those were always my best classes, filled with students who were eager and hungry to write and express themselves. I don't know how many times all of us left the room absolutely on fire from our sessions. My creative writing class this semester is lacklustre. The body language isn't good. Student interest seems tepid. I've been thinking it must be something I am doing or not doing as a teacher but for the life of me I can't put my finger on it. They are all extremely fascinated with their phones, TikTok and messaging each other incessantly. A Covid hangover or a sign of a permanent shift in the brains of our young people? They have turned into anonymous observers rather than participants, unwilling or unable to put themselves out there. If we allow machines to do everything for us, then what future do we have as a species?
Exactly. And with cell phones it's not just the younger generations. I was at my gym yesterday and three or four older guys were sitting on exercise machines, not using them, just taking breaks to check texts or call someone back. Then I was at a grocery store and most, not some, but most of the moms were actively on their phones chatting while shopping for groceries. Dads weren't talking to anyone but were also rigidly fixed on their cellphone screens second by second. I walked downtown. Sometimes on forums I read about people who are deathly afraid to walk anywhere with their expensive cameras for fear of being robbed. Not to worry. No one looked up from their cellphone screen. Even the homeless seemed transfixed to their cellphones. An amazing time when being anonymous to the crowds in the streets can be accomplished de facto. Just by everyone else not paying attention to any part of life passing them by that's not on their little screens. Tragic.
In retrospect will Steve Jobs be remembered as the man who single handedly destroyed human to human interaction? And by extension our collective culture?
I like the portrait, and as I was sitting here looking at it, it occurred to me that one reason film still appeals is that it it more eye-like. When you're looking at something, your eyeball keeps moving: it never quite fixes. That means you never really see things as a digital camera does, sharp, sharp sharp. I think I mentioned Robert Capa's D-Day photos a few days ago, and the fact is, what those show is what you'd have seen if you'd been running across the sand of that beach humping a rifle, ammo and pack and getting shot at. They are a frightened glance, and a glance is human. Digital photos that were sharp sharp sharp and grain-free would have looked phony.
I would disagree that commercial photography is going anywhere. Even still photography will remain. The people who do it just aren't the old-fashioned ones, they are people who communicate rapidly with the net, with TikTok, have elaborate Facebook and Web sites, who pay skilled communicators to get the jobs. In other words, the big crew you used to have on shoots, is now out in front of the job, instead of standing behind you. They are getting the job for you, not supporting the shoot. Look around: you see still photos everywhere. You cannot walk a half-block in a major city without seeing something produced by a professional photographer.
There will come a time (5 years, 2 years, sooner?) when commercial photography will be replaced by AI and DIY cell phone/software technologies. The vast majority of ever declining camera sales will be to the hobbyist who would still rather put something that looks like an SLR or rangefinder up to their eye, even though the actual results from any phone will be better.
karmagroovy, I think, in Austin, that moment has already arrived. We are a tech hub and I'm already seeing tech forward companies using A.I. image tech such as DALL-e to input cellphone images and retouch them for enhancement and consistency. I think we're on the awkward edge of the future here. Booking across specialties are declining rapidly. For young and more experienced photographers alike. Some high end weddings are still around but headshots are about to vanish as a profit area for just about everyone.
I have also been forwarded a number of food shots done with A.I. and they look fine. We're in for a wild ride. Glad I'm nearing the end of a long and rewarding career instead of being caught midway. My sympathy goes out not only to the people in the mid-point of careers but to all the folks who aren't photographers, per se but make a living writing about it or making videos about it. I think the pool of people who want to know about still photography in a narrow silo are going to be devastated.
A good reason for business owners to accept the notion of not investing in their own businesses but in traditional investments. The returns can be up and down but at this juncture I'd rather bet on the S&P 500 than on a brand new camera and new lenses...
Old Chinese curse: «May you live in interesting times!»
JC. I appreciate and acknowledge your optimism. There will always be a "top of the market" but there are very few seats there to share. Yes, we see photos everywhere but we have no real understanding of their provenance. Could be from a working photographer but now, in these times it could just as easily be an art director's composite, a digital AI construction or something re-purposed. It may be that in NYC, etc. one sees a lot of big fashion images out on the streets but I would wonder how this affects all the second and third tier city shooters and regionalists. And how much clients are paying for fashion forward imaging versus doing the old editorial: "We can't pay you much but you'll get great promotion."
Glad I'm out and have my money working for me. Photography, real photography, is now really fun and will probably make me just as much money as if I was trying to compete with AI etc. ie. no money.
The treadmill is now running at lightning speed. One needs to be extremely nimble and able to change direction very quickly with little to no assets that can't be repurposed. Having a "career" in a certain field will no longer exist. Today you are doing X to make a buck, tomorrow Y and by noon Z.
Time to pack up Peggy the Dancing Hippopotamus and head out for a stress free adventure.
Eric
Great post. When I thought about this I soon realised that for me my enjoyment of photography is simply envisaging an image in my mind and putting the camera up to my eye and going through the act of trying to make it happen. Sometimes I achieve it but if I’m honest not as often as I should or would like.
Buying a Leica CL 15 months ago has helped this as the history and “provenance” of the brand very much adds to the enjoyment of taking the picture. Perhaps for this reason Leica may come out best from the photography upheaval being forecasted.
Of the Japanese brands Nikon and Pentax hold some aura, mainly thanks to Paul Simon (Nikon) and those old Pentax Spotmatics with the screw Mount I ached for when starting out. The other brands while more than capable don’t hold any special attraction even though I still own a Sony.
To be honest the idea of seeing an image in my mind, lifting up a cherished camera to take the picture, then using AI to make it exactly as I want it to look hold a lot of appeal. After all is that not we try to but only a few have the skill to make it happen consistently? And could you not class Lightroom or it’s alternatives as primitive AI now?
I recently bought the fully remastered 4K version of Casablanca. Still the same art only better.
“The Graying of Photography”, posted a decade ago, was an amazing bit of writing based on brilliant insight. It is as clear and correct today as it was then. I’d go so far as to say just about everything written on the topic since then has been redundant.
A bit of reinforcement for one example - how technology and changing tastes have completely revised the music industry. You suggest that we of a certain age may cling to Stan Getz and “The Girl From Ipanema”, but doing so just about guarantees we will not connect with the current market.
So true. The Girl From Ipanema, Astrud Gilberto, is now 82. Each of us old guys who still has a pulse can remember at least part of the lyric, “Tall and tanned and young and lovely, the girl from Ipanema goes walking, and when she passes each one she passes goes ‘ahhh’”. Not even socially acceptable these days, let alone a thought to be celebrated. Sigh.
I felt something was already coming as the pandemic began to rage. Others were scanning every inch of their film archives. Dusting out all the neglected SEO corners of their websites. Trying to shoot new portfolios of something, anything, to prove they still had “it”. One photographer broke out his 8x10 (like I’m gonna compute a bellows factor again …) and shot leaves. Good for him for flexing the creative muscles.
My choice was to “go to ground”. As my wife aptly said, there was no guarantee what, if anything we recognized, would be here once we came out the other side. So why waste effort and money pounding against an unseen wall?
It all is, indeed, imploding, winding down and changing as you have said across several posts. My plan was to keep at it part time, commencing in the next few years, as savings and social security kicked in. But that plan feels far fetched.
Until, this year. Little on the schedule initially. But many, many, albeit smaller, jobs keep coming in. Last minute and booked for later in the year. Editorial, event and annual report style. I’ve always applied for staff jobs over the years, you know, just in case. In case something came along that was interesting, lucrative or just right. And places that for years ignored me are suddenly calling with interview slots. I’m not getting the jobs. But suddenly they ALL respond to an application.
I can only conclude that in my small market region that few people any more are doing this commercial based generalist Photography For Money thing. And by still being in the game, that I’m in demand as one of the few survivors (left behinds?) and am in that gentle glide of froth and foam that takes a body surfer to the shoreline after the race and violence created as the most powerful part of the wave builds.
I caught it and rode it. I survived the impact as it broke gliding giddily to shore.
And now, barely able to keep up with billing and getting dead end requests for interviews left and right, I’m riding that gentle leftover but still moving foam right up onto the beach. Waiting for that moment when suddenly and gently the forward movement imperceptibly stops.
And you are left grounded, and sandy, on the beach as the water recedes then the leftovers from the next wave barely reaches you.
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