Obviously photography as a whole has never been bigger and still growing. The vast majority of it on smartphones, which the industry, especially Apple, has push

Obviously photography as a whole has never been bigger and still growing. The vast majority of it on smartphones, which the industry, especially Apple, has pushed to incredible levels of quality. But I'd say "serious photography" is about where it's always been, maybe a little reduced. It's always been expensive to have a proper setup. The huge difference is that the new consumer stuff (phones) are just much much better than it used to be (point and shoots). There's still a big difference though between what you can get out of a phone and what you can do with a "real" camera. I have never seen anything out of a phone that can match what you can do with a full frame and a fast 55 or whatever. Sure you can add fake depth of field in software but I'm not sure it will ever be possible to really duplicate in a phone. Especially the interface - phones just don't have the physical controls you need to play some of the tricks "real" cameras can do, like grabbing focus or white balance from somewhere else then holding it as you compose your real shot. At some point just the lack of dedicated buttons is holding you back. I know there's apps that can give you more control than the default apps but with a physical body I can set up that shot in 1 second. I actually felt this acutely just last night. One of my friends went all out with halloween makeup and wanted me to take some pictures, but I only had my phone on me. They came out OK, pretty good even, but I know for a fact I would have been able to do much better with my half-broken old a7sii and a decent lens. Much, much better. But it's the camera you have with you...