4 ms·

For Photographers, the Image of a Shrinking Path

31 points by ojbyrne 17y ago

tseabrooks 17y ago
This reminds me of something I realized the other day while shopping for artwork to decorate the guest room. I'd rather order a print of a photo from deviant art or some other such website than buy some medium quality picture from Target or other big box retailers.
- varikin 17y ago
  I agree with that, but also offer another option, local artists. In every good sized city, there will be an arts community. And within that community, there are events, art fairs, local shops showing art, galleries, etc. In Minneapolis, there is the North East arts district, http://www.northeastminneapolisartsdistrict.com/ http://www.northeastminneapolisartsdistrict.com/. Also check out local colleges. Most should have an art department that have a end of year student sale. There can be some great finds in those. I have nothing against Deviant Art or Etsy or SupermarketHQ or any other site to buy great art for the artists, but don't discount the local artists.
  - tseabrooks 17y ago
    That's a good point. As someone who does most of my shopping online I sometimes forget about the ability to purchase from local artists. In the past I have found a lot of local artists to be to expensive. Perhaps I should check out student sales like you suggest.
    - varikin 17y ago
      It can take a lot of digging to find good local art that isn't expensive, but it is out there. Generally, if you hit big art fairs, you have a better chance. My wife is a photographer/artist so I have become very familiar with the local art scene in Minneapolis and have gotten my hands on some great art. Some pricey, some very cheap.
  - blhack 17y ago
    A lot of the local artists are a bit insane with how much they're trying to charge for their prints. I've seen moderately interesting prints that cost >$500 and are from people who do photography as a hobby. I'm not saying artists shouldn't be paid, but when I cannot tell the difference between a $20 print from Target or a $500 print by some unknown artists that I bought off the wall of a coffee shop, I'm probably going to either just go for $20 thing, or spend $50 and print some of my friends' photos.
    - varikin 17y ago
      At $500 dollars, you might be paying for the framing, printing, and matting, plus the fact that the artist might be well known in the community and has people buying his work. Or they are just unreasonable. But I would hope there are local artists with more reasonably priced artwork.
daleharvey 17y ago
heh sounds familiar, I do gig photography (and travel), just because I like having the memories and was a fun skill to learn, I upload all my photos to flickr full size under the cc license, sometimes the bands come across them and use them for various things, always pretty appreciative. I have had quite a few sneers and emails complaining about ruining their livelihoods because I give stuff away for free, I found it pretty strange, like me going to github and complaining about these programmers giving stuff away. ( * http://www.flickr.com/photos/daleharvey/collections/72157600399774951/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/daleharvey/collections/72157600... my music stuff)
- ilamont 17y ago
  That's really good stuff. I was in a band in the 1990s and remember hiring some photojournalist friends of mine to take our publicity and live photos. We paid the equivalent of $50 for a few rolls (it was overseas) but I remember in the end we or some friends started doing it for us for free. Kind of wish Flickr had been around then, maybe we could have gotten some useful shots from a wider range of people and cameras.
roc 17y ago
>"Can an amateur take a picture as good as a professional? Sure," Ms. Eismann said. "Can they do it on demand? Can they do it again? Can they do it over and over? Can they do it when a scene isn’t that interesting?" An interesting re-occurrence of Steve Martin's observation in a recently posted article: "[It] was easy to be great. Every entertainer has a night when everything is clicking. These nights are accidental and statistical: like lucky cards in poker, you can count on them occurring over time. What was hard was to be good, consistently good, night after night, no matter what the circumstances."
- gaius 17y ago
  Yes that's exactly it. Every photographer looks at a professional shot and says "I could have taken that". But what makes a great lansdcape photo (for example) is that some guy for 6 months woke up before dawn every day and humped his gear up the hill and picked the right moment to take the shot, then sorted through dozens of images to find the shot and that's what appears in the calendar. Sure you could have taken that shot if by sheer coincidence you happened to be on that hillside at just the right moment, with all your gear and your wits about you. But you weren't...
  - wallflower 17y ago
    I attended a lecture once by Dewitt Jones, a National Geographic photographer. He says that people always ask him how many shots it takes to get that magazine-worthy shot. To which, he answered "Not shots. How many rolls" http://DewittJones.com http://DewittJones.com
  - ilamont 17y ago
    While it's unlikely one amateur could have coincidentally matched the pro's efforts, a few thousand amateurs working independently could have come up with at least a few pro-quality shots -- and not demand professional wages to do it. Note also that not all pro work is concentrated around difficult shots or situations. Gabe Rivera of Techmeme tweeted a few weeks ago about Agence France-Presse flying a professional photographer out to the U.S. to shoot him as part of an interview package. The photo they used online? His hand holding a mouse: http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jj324Ei1-ngJUBVLfVYLMjwofwFQ http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jj324Ei1-...
eric_t 17y ago
I think it's wrong to say "Amateurs, happy to accept small checks for snapshots of children and sunsets". It's more of a democratization of the tools needed to do a successful photo shoot. Anyone can buy a DSLR, the strobist movement means good-looking lighting for cheap and excellent post processing tools are available for free. This means that amateur photographers in many cases can do just as good a job as a professional. It's pretty much the same reason why magazines and newspapers are declining, the internet and social networks have lead to a democratization of news. To be successful as a professional photographer, you have to offer more than what amateurs are capable of, and in addition be able to educate your customer why you're worth the extra cash. As always, it's about staying competitive, instead of weeping over the past.
- lokijuhyghj 17y ago
  Most stock usage isn't sunsets - how many sunset photos do you need? It's smiling attractive people sitting at desks, or smiling in front of power poles wearing hard hats. There is still a business of stock photos for people that want it. You just have to know what the market wants - and it isn't another misty dawn view of the Golden Gate.
- _delirium 17y ago
  Yeah, despite the protestations, I think in a lot of relevant ways the amateur stuff is up to par these days. There is plenty of professional photography that really is unlikely to be replicated by amateurs, but from a market perspective, the photographers' biggest problem is that they don't have a monopoly on the profitable mid-range stuff anymore. It used to be that to have even a decent looking shot of like, a computer on a desk, you needed to pay a professional. Amateurs owned the "shitty snapshot" market, and professionals owned everything above that. But these days there are 100 decent shots of computers on desks on the internet, and professionals only really still own the high-end market, which is much smaller.
- ja27 17y ago
  For a while I've been trying to think of other fields where this will happen. iStockPhoto has already expanded into stock video, stock illustrations and stock audio (environmental and music). It's also clearly happening with written articles and perhaps even entire books. What's next? Software? 3D models?
Adaptive 17y ago
I was a pro shooter for three years and 90% of what set me apart was being a nice guy to work with, being professional and being consistent. * Other pros that I took work from were often jerks. Being a nice, direct and reasonable individual takes you a long way in that business. * Being professional meant having a studio, quoting and billing clearly, being a good communicator with clients. Things amateur shoots don't always do well. * Being consistent in terms of quality, turn around time, etc. There is still work out there if you have a stable of good clients that need and value the above. But in cases where stock photos will do, you're screwed.
jawngee 17y ago
I'm the CTO for an image archive (http://trunkarchive.com/ http://trunkarchive.com/). You could sort of consider us a boutique stock agency, but that would be sort of demeaning to the stable of photographers we rep. Interesting article, but I doubt professional photographers have much to worry about. The amateur will fill a niche, perhaps compete with the low-end of the spectrum of professional photographers, but - ultimately - the kind of image licensing that nets the most cash, and makes the most careers, is celebrity and high end editorial.
Groxx 17y ago
Shrinking market due to this trend? Certainly. But who are you going to hire for your wedding / magazine cover / bikini model shoot? This strikes me as the market realizing that, when they just need a photo, there's plenty out there. For cases where a professional is needed, say for a photo shoot, professionals are still hired. Most of the rest of this seems like an increase in stock photo use (which was previously unfairly snubbed) combined with the economy troubles. It's happening everywhere, photography isn't alone in this. Pages are at a premium, and there’s more competition to get anything into a magazine now, and the bar is just higher for excellent work. Is this somehow a bad thing? Lack of competition to improve may very well have caused this whole trend.
hopeless 17y ago
I've often long said it: there's no money in photographs but lots of money in photographers. More photographers = more competition (if you're also a photographer) OR a bigger market (if you sell to photographers) which would you choose? I'm an enthusiast photographer but have no intention of going down the pro route. Instead, I'm building http://shutterscouts.com http://shutterscouts.com -- an idea notebook and weather forecasting service for landscape photographers. Just went live for beta this week!

31 points by ojbyrne 17y ago

This reminds me of something I realized the other day while shopping for artwork to decorate the guest room. I'd rather order a print of a photo from deviant art or some other such website than buy some medium quality picture from Target or other big box retailers.

varikin 17y ago
I agree with that, but also offer another option, local artists. In every good sized city, there will be an arts community. And within that community, there are events, art fairs, local shops showing art, galleries, etc. In Minneapolis, there is the North East arts district, http://www.northeastminneapolisartsdistrict.com/ http://www.northeastminneapolisartsdistrict.com/. Also check out local colleges. Most should have an art department that have a end of year student sale. There can be some great finds in those. I have nothing against Deviant Art or Etsy or SupermarketHQ or any other site to buy great art for the artists, but don't discount the local artists.
- tseabrooks 17y ago
  That's a good point. As someone who does most of my shopping online I sometimes forget about the ability to purchase from local artists. In the past I have found a lot of local artists to be to expensive. Perhaps I should check out student sales like you suggest.
  - varikin 17y ago
    It can take a lot of digging to find good local art that isn't expensive, but it is out there. Generally, if you hit big art fairs, you have a better chance. My wife is a photographer/artist so I have become very familiar with the local art scene in Minneapolis and have gotten my hands on some great art. Some pricey, some very cheap.
- blhack 17y ago
  A lot of the local artists are a bit insane with how much they're trying to charge for their prints. I've seen moderately interesting prints that cost >$500 and are from people who do photography as a hobby. I'm not saying artists shouldn't be paid, but when I cannot tell the difference between a $20 print from Target or a $500 print by some unknown artists that I bought off the wall of a coffee shop, I'm probably going to either just go for $20 thing, or spend $50 and print some of my friends' photos.
  - varikin 17y ago
    At $500 dollars, you might be paying for the framing, printing, and matting, plus the fact that the artist might be well known in the community and has people buying his work. Or they are just unreasonable. But I would hope there are local artists with more reasonably priced artwork.

daleharvey 17y ago

heh sounds familiar, I do gig photography (and travel), just because I like having the memories and was a fun skill to learn, I upload all my photos to flickr full size under the cc license, sometimes the bands come across them and use them for various things, always pretty appreciative. I have had quite a few sneers and emails complaining about ruining their livelihoods because I give stuff away for free, I found it pretty strange, like me going to github and complaining about these programmers giving stuff away. ( * http://www.flickr.com/photos/daleharvey/collections/72157600399774951/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/daleharvey/collections/72157600... my music stuff)

ilamont 17y ago
That's really good stuff. I was in a band in the 1990s and remember hiring some photojournalist friends of mine to take our publicity and live photos. We paid the equivalent of $50 for a few rolls (it was overseas) but I remember in the end we or some friends started doing it for us for free. Kind of wish Flickr had been around then, maybe we could have gotten some useful shots from a wider range of people and cameras.

roc 17y ago

>"Can an amateur take a picture as good as a professional? Sure," Ms. Eismann said. "Can they do it on demand? Can they do it again? Can they do it over and over? Can they do it when a scene isn’t that interesting?" An interesting re-occurrence of Steve Martin's observation in a recently posted article: "[It] was easy to be great. Every entertainer has a night when everything is clicking. These nights are accidental and statistical: like lucky cards in poker, you can count on them occurring over time. What was hard was to be good, consistently good, night after night, no matter what the circumstances."

gaius 17y ago
Yes that's exactly it. Every photographer looks at a professional shot and says "I could have taken that". But what makes a great lansdcape photo (for example) is that some guy for 6 months woke up before dawn every day and humped his gear up the hill and picked the right moment to take the shot, then sorted through dozens of images to find the shot and that's what appears in the calendar. Sure you could have taken that shot if by sheer coincidence you happened to be on that hillside at just the right moment, with all your gear and your wits about you. But you weren't...
- wallflower 17y ago
  I attended a lecture once by Dewitt Jones, a National Geographic photographer. He says that people always ask him how many shots it takes to get that magazine-worthy shot. To which, he answered "Not shots. How many rolls" http://DewittJones.com http://DewittJones.com
- ilamont 17y ago
  While it's unlikely one amateur could have coincidentally matched the pro's efforts, a few thousand amateurs working independently could have come up with at least a few pro-quality shots -- and not demand professional wages to do it. Note also that not all pro work is concentrated around difficult shots or situations. Gabe Rivera of Techmeme tweeted a few weeks ago about Agence France-Presse flying a professional photographer out to the U.S. to shoot him as part of an interview package. The photo they used online? His hand holding a mouse: http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jj324Ei1-ngJUBVLfVYLMjwofwFQ http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jj324Ei1-...

eric_t 17y ago

I think it's wrong to say "Amateurs, happy to accept small checks for snapshots of children and sunsets". It's more of a democratization of the tools needed to do a successful photo shoot. Anyone can buy a DSLR, the strobist movement means good-looking lighting for cheap and excellent post processing tools are available for free. This means that amateur photographers in many cases can do just as good a job as a professional. It's pretty much the same reason why magazines and newspapers are declining, the internet and social networks have lead to a democratization of news. To be successful as a professional photographer, you have to offer more than what amateurs are capable of, and in addition be able to educate your customer why you're worth the extra cash. As always, it's about staying competitive, instead of weeping over the past.

lokijuhyghj 17y ago
Most stock usage isn't sunsets - how many sunset photos do you need? It's smiling attractive people sitting at desks, or smiling in front of power poles wearing hard hats. There is still a business of stock photos for people that want it. You just have to know what the market wants - and it isn't another misty dawn view of the Golden Gate.
_delirium 17y ago
Yeah, despite the protestations, I think in a lot of relevant ways the amateur stuff is up to par these days. There is plenty of professional photography that really is unlikely to be replicated by amateurs, but from a market perspective, the photographers' biggest problem is that they don't have a monopoly on the profitable mid-range stuff anymore. It used to be that to have even a decent looking shot of like, a computer on a desk, you needed to pay a professional. Amateurs owned the "shitty snapshot" market, and professionals owned everything above that. But these days there are 100 decent shots of computers on desks on the internet, and professionals only really still own the high-end market, which is much smaller.
ja27 17y ago
For a while I've been trying to think of other fields where this will happen. iStockPhoto has already expanded into stock video, stock illustrations and stock audio (environmental and music). It's also clearly happening with written articles and perhaps even entire books. What's next? Software? 3D models?

Adaptive 17y ago

I was a pro shooter for three years and 90% of what set me apart was being a nice guy to work with, being professional and being consistent. * Other pros that I took work from were often jerks. Being a nice, direct and reasonable individual takes you a long way in that business. * Being professional meant having a studio, quoting and billing clearly, being a good communicator with clients. Things amateur shoots don't always do well. * Being consistent in terms of quality, turn around time, etc. There is still work out there if you have a stable of good clients that need and value the above. But in cases where stock photos will do, you're screwed.

jawngee 17y ago

I'm the CTO for an image archive (http://trunkarchive.com/ http://trunkarchive.com/). You could sort of consider us a boutique stock agency, but that would be sort of demeaning to the stable of photographers we rep. Interesting article, but I doubt professional photographers have much to worry about. The amateur will fill a niche, perhaps compete with the low-end of the spectrum of professional photographers, but - ultimately - the kind of image licensing that nets the most cash, and makes the most careers, is celebrity and high end editorial.

Groxx 17y ago

Shrinking market due to this trend? Certainly. But who are you going to hire for your wedding / magazine cover / bikini model shoot? This strikes me as the market realizing that, when they just need a photo, there's plenty out there. For cases where a professional is needed, say for a photo shoot, professionals are still hired. Most of the rest of this seems like an increase in stock photo use (which was previously unfairly snubbed) combined with the economy troubles. It's happening everywhere, photography isn't alone in this. Pages are at a premium, and there’s more competition to get anything into a magazine now, and the bar is just higher for excellent work. Is this somehow a bad thing? Lack of competition to improve may very well have caused this whole trend.

hopeless 17y ago

I've often long said it: there's no money in photographs but lots of money in photographers. More photographers = more competition (if you're also a photographer) OR a bigger market (if you sell to photographers) which would you choose? I'm an enthusiast photographer but have no intention of going down the pro route. Instead, I'm building http://shutterscouts.com http://shutterscouts.com -- an idea notebook and weather forecasting service for landscape photographers. Just went live for beta this week!