Photo careers in the 21st century?

[Sirius Glass]

I think you mean to say "why CAN'T you.," oh omniscient one.

 

[Sirius Glass]

That Sir, is the definition of Bad Form.

You may ascribe to Ansel's "If I am to photograph a rock, I must present a rock" (quote from memory) philosophy, but not every artist has to plod the same narrow path.

And that is the core of Jnantz's philosophy!

 

[removed account4]

Likely the same reason people talk about Thomas Kinkade and not Klee, Kline, Rothko, etc: because it's facile and abundant. It's very easy to prop yourself up and claim that the guy whose work you look at on your calendar or screensaver every day is the greatest thing that will ever come along. It's a bit more challenging to see beyond that.

yeah. ... I think a lot of people love their work! and I don't blame them, some of it is really sublime and beautiful, I am talking about both Adams and Kinkade. They both really had a way of making magical scenes. ... I think its a lot easier to have a conversation about things you can relate to...and it takes a lot of effort to relate to something you might not “get”…
YMMV

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

What about product photographers. Needed for sales brochures for clothes, jewelry, shoes, electronics, watches, and everything else you can think of. What's their salaries?

What about corporate annual reports for their stocks. They often have portraits of the key execs and photos of their factories etc. What do they get paid?

Travel brochures for hotel chains, BNB, countries advertising themselves or states, governments, etc?

Join the military and ask for assignment to photography before you enlist (if you can). The employer provides equipment, housing and food for free, nice salary, retirement pension after twenty years, even a rifle to shoot annoying subjects.

 

[Down Under]

Life is not at all easy for most commercial photographers here in Australia, at least out of the cities.

Out here in the real world - that is, in the small rural community (population <25,000) we live - there are three 'pros'. struggling on with their photo work.

One is a young(ish) lady who does all the news images for our local newspaper, popularly known as The Weekly Cat Litter Bin Liner. Her work is passably good, but in her work she is often abrupt and tactless, usually less than pleasant to deal with, and we avoid her. She is directly related to the publisher.

Our local council also has a photographer, with credentials from a reputable Melbourne photo school. She does quite good work and has an annual exhibition at our library, funded by the taxpayers who cover all the costs of printing and framing. She is a niece of the mayor, who is all-powerful and reacts aggressively and negatively to hints of nepotism. Her exhibitions are pleasant but unsurprisingly, few of her images sell, now and then the council buys one for the town archives but that's it.

A retired volunteer at the shire's tourist information office has done rail photography (almost entirely B&W images of locomotives) for the past 30 years. Formerly a high school teacher, during his school breaks he went off on rushed holidays to the USA with his Mamiya RB kit, for rail images. He has been published many times but never paid, only small print credits. He funds his own exhibitions but hasn't done one (says they are too expensive) for some years. Recently he told me he has 200,000+ film images (he hates digital), but doesn't know what to do with them as no library or research body wants his archive and VicRail declined his buy-out offer of A$50,000. His long-suffering partner suggested all his negatives will eventually go into a big dumpster, which upset him. I do feel for him.

There is also a fourth photographer in the town. Me. The fantasy queen who no longer sells any images but still buys Leicas, Rolleis, Nikons et al, and dreams of the good old days when... Enough said.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Old Gregg, I obviously don't know exactly where you live, but California a pretty large State with a stunning variety of topography and a considerable amount of open space, whether than be shoreline access, Forest Service and BLM lands, official Wilderness Areas, or Regional Parks. We have more open space here in the SF Bay area than any other major urban area in the country. I just returned from a hike with my 8x10 in a nearby one a few minutes ago. Yes, all across the US, private property is off limits without permission or specially negotiated trail easements. That's just part of the culture, the way property is conceived of, for better or worse, and often the only way to avoid a lawsuit if someone gets hurt on your land, even if it's their own fault. And I'd have to totally disagree with your assessment of our National Parks here. I walked an entire week in Yosemite without seeing another person; same goes for Sequoia and Kings Canyon. It's perfectly fine with me that 98% of the people flock like tourists to only 2% of the places, because that leaves the rest uncrowded for people like me. And there are oodles of stunning places outside those parks themselves. I've made hundreds of backpack trips into the High Sierra, and it would probably take me another eight lifetimes to even begin to see it all. One of the most popular NP holdings in the country, Pt Reyes Natl Seahore, is an easy drive from several large cities, and I have no problem finding solitude there either.

As far as shoreline access goes, anything below mean high tide line is official open to the public. Sometimes that's impossible or risky simply due to steep terrain, and sometimes adjacent property owners put up a fuss. There are any number of lawsuits in play at any given time. But overall, public access to the shore is fairly easy. There are often narrow trails between fences or other kinds of official easements, much like in Hawaii. The same can be said for most of Oregon and Washington. On the East Coast there are different rules. Sometimes local don't want to divulge to much information because they like to keep some of those beaches more to themselves. Outright private beaches are rare or illegal here.

So here's what I routinely suggest to anyone traveling in the West and wanting a pleasant unique experience. Look at all those travel and picture websites, tour guides, collections of postcards, and lists of scenic turnouts, then map or memorize them in any particular region you plan on visiting - then when you arrive at any other those, go exactly the opposite direction! Works every time for me.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Don - any book store with a large photography section will have titles and monographs on Steichen, Strand, Evans, and many many more. They're quite well known figures in the photographic community itself. Not everyone needs to have a name familiar to nearly every American household. Part of that is just due to the cultural appeal of the West during a seemingly more iconic or nostalgic era (just like how Edward S. Curtis, Carleton Watkins, and numerous others catered to the nostalgia of the fading frontier ethos when they photographed); and some is due to the successful marketing strategy of his heirs. But I grew right across the River from Yosemite, was later featured by a particular gallery in Carmel, yet never saw an actual print of his in my life until I started wandering around that same town between gigs. All I had ever seen were a few images poorly reproduced in magazines. I had seen real prints by the Westons. I can understand popular misconceptions, but how AA is thought of as "the" penultimate photographer amidst something like a photo forum itself is a bit mystifying. He is deservedly holds his own particular niche, but there are plenty enough relevant niches to choose from.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Mike - you can't compare the ubiquity of AA's acceptance to anyone like Kincade. The photographic equivalent of Kincade is Peter Lik. In their respective categories, both are the worst colorists I've ever encountered. They both marketed the same sleazy way to unsuspecting "investors". Kincade hit a brick wall with the law, and Lik has had close encounters of his own. Nobody serious in the art pontification community takes either of them seriously, or ever will. I've heard Kincade mentioned by museum curators only as the butt of jokes too vulgar to repeat here; and Lik isn't even on their radar, despite him making the claim he's the greatest photographer who ever lived, who once sold a print for over a million dollars (with absolutely no collaborating evidence that it ever happened; it's his own website that publicized it, without divulging the probably fictitious client). AA on the other hand was integral to the development of the photographic dept of the MMA in NYC. He had been one of the few photographers specially picked out by Stieglitz to bring to public attention. He ran in the same circles as deservedly famous painters and their sponsors. Many of his companions were themselves notable photographer, as some of his assistants hence became. Whole different story.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Alan - many product and catalog photographers nearly starve. It's a dog eat dog game, especially now when digital output fetches just a tiny fraction of what large format film shots once did. But I do have a friend who became a multimillionaire that way. He turned workflow itself into a science - remarkable efficiency, very good eye, top-end clients, superb well-paid assistants, and his own in-house major lab. Never took a vacation in his life, even though he owns three resorts. Now in his late 70's, he's dialed back to just doing cookbooks for gourmet chefs - but then they get to eat if after the shoot! Has a gourmet kitchen right in the enormous studio.

About 30 yrs ago I had a friend who wanted me to partner in his studio in the DC area. All his clients were Fortune 500 companies, and he didn't need to beg for any of their business, or answer to any Art Dept. His secret? - a 20K per yr golf club membership where he golfed and hobnobbed every weekend with CEO's and Senators. I checked out the offer, had breakfast with the then CEO of Exxon/Mobil sitting next to me in a little diner in Levis and a plaid shirt - glad to be out of a suit and away from brown-nosers at least for the weekend, then in the afternoon helped a Senator load firewood into a beat-up old pickup, along with a big lobbyist for a different interest set. They were best friends on weekends; but during the work week, they went back to their official jobs calling each other the Devil.

 

[removed account4]

You may ascribe to Ansel's "If I am to photograph a rock, I must present a rock" (quote from memory) philosophy, but not every artist has to plod the same narrow path.

And that is the core of Jnantz's philosophy!

that's right I don't plod the narrow path, because it is too narrow and I see nothing on it ...and the path is full of closed minded bitter people...
I'd rather plod on the path not taken, or rarely taken, better view and more interesting people

The photographic equivalent of Kincade is Peter Lik. In their respective categories, both are the worst colorists I've ever encountered.

Maybe ...
but both Adams and Kinkade had a beautiful way of rendering light and turning an ordinary scene into something otherworldly. Peter Lik too but he is more of a showman than art for every-man ( or woman ), Like Adams Kinkade allowed for people without much $$ to enjoy his work. Lik's slot canyon phantom photograph is absolutely beautiful at least as beautiful as any Ansel Adams image I have ever seen. Its too bad there is so much hatred thrown toward people who have made money using photography or people who don't use a camera like everyone else.. its really sad..

 

[MurrayMinchin]

I was doomed to never 'make it'.

We have an iconic mountain that backdrops our little town of 8,200 people at roads end on BC's north coast. Even as a teenager I never photographed it, even though my Mom kept prodding me. In some way it felt cheesy and/or sleazy to photograph something just because I knew it would sell.

Then, one day, I was photographing snow on rocks scattered about a creek when I noticed a full moon coming up over the mountains shoulder at sunset with the creek and a snow covered bridge in the foreground. As I was finishing up the rocks photo I started to think about Edward Weston's "boil the pot" (I think that's what he called them) photos he would take because they had a good chance of selling and putting some food on the table.

Our daughter was a teenager at the time, I considered what a pair of jeans cost, spun the camera on the tripod, and exposed a sheet to the mountain. Since then I've taken quite a few images of said mountain, but have never printed them. Been retired for 8 months now and haven't felt any financial pressure to exploit them, but might in the future.

I always chose to have a day job and keep my photography a very personal means of expression. Never felt a need for fame and didn't want to change my relationship with my camera to chase money by making it my job.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Lik is a sub-zero. Most of his prints are more gross fauxtoshop re-colorations than actual scenes. The quality of the printing is amateurish, though he does have a skilled mounting department. I don't know why he even bothers with a camera - fake, fake, fake. Sugar and gooey jam and sticky syrup piled atop a bowl of sugar cubed. No sense of color sophistication whatsoever. Just sticky-sweet postcards printed really big - mortuary calendar shots. Lik's slot canyon have-assistant-throw-dust-in-the-air is a dime a dozen setting. If you're gonna do it, why at the exact same cliche spot in a canyon that's such a predictable commodity that not even tripods are allowed anymore, due to all the people taking the same shot? And why colorize it solid red afterwards? Just plain corny. Done more subtly, it might have amounted to something. But smack in your face like a Three Stooges pie fight?

It's not hatred - it's called functional color vision. You'd need to be color blind to tolerate that kind of sheer kitch. I almost literally vomited the first time I accidentally stumbled into a Lik gallery on a business trip. What he does with natural beauty is to turn it into a cheap whore slathered with loud lipstick and a big blonde wig. If people actually took the time to dwell in the light, study it, and appreciate it for what it really is, instead of just conniving how to sell off a piece of it using a camera and computer station for sake of a marketable stereotype, then maybe they'd recognize the vast distinction between someone who actually took the quality time to appreciate the light, like Adams, versus a rank faker. Giant moon IN FRONT of a tree on a Hawaiian skyline??? El Capitan in Yosemite solid bright red? Just plain tacky.

Me bitter? Heck no. Just sitting in the glory of the light without feeling compelled to trip the shutter lest it interrupt the experience - even with the camera set up and filmholder in place - well that is a luxury I have often enjoyed, one which money can't buy. People like Lik don't see a damn thing - it's all just another piece of meat to them. So why on earth would I envy someone like that?

 

[greg zinselmeier]

I can't imagine why anyone would pay money for someone other then "themselves" to take a picture of someone, something, or some event, etc, , , , as "SERVICE" . The "capture" moment has no value to soooooo many people, as service. Yes, there might be some people who "get" the capture moment requires a skilled person to perform the task. BUT seriously, those people are few and far between. not enough to support the photographic community, even with those (people) who are "weird" and use film! Is "film" a word? still?? is it still the dictionary?

 

[removed account4]

Lik is a sub-zero. Most of his prints are more gross fauxtoshop re-colorations than actual scenes.

im not sure why it matters that much? did he say or suggest it was an archival documentation ??
I hate to tell you the digital photograph./ process is not he anti christ ... it really doesn't fly anymore,
the ship sailed like in 2006...
and before you go on about how I might be some "film hater". I make my own emulsion
I am sort of invested in the old ways. ....

It's not hatred -

sure sounds like it... you might want to read how you come across...
just you using the expression "fauxtoshop" pretty much paints your picture...

have fun!

 

[DREW WILEY]

Remove fauxtoshop from his tool kit, and almost nothing is left. It's all faux. Documentation has nothing to do with it. The specific process has nothing to do with it. The sheer superficiality of the mentality does. Do you walk up to a beautiful lady and say, hey, let me cut your head off and replace it with a bright orange Halloween pumpkin? That's essentially his mentality toward natural beauty. He doesn't even see the real thing.

 

[AgX]

There have new markets emerged.
Before the internet there was a whole world of businesses that hardly ever had a photographer in house: retail. The moment they present themselves on a website they typically need photographs.

 

[David Polanski]

Here in the UK (and I suspect in the US as well) there's a somewhat "booming" market for dance photography.
There's a constant stream of dance mums willing to shell-out regularly so their little child puppet's insta account can be continually fed.
It's all seems, to me at least, rather grotesque and exploitative, but then so is the dance world at large (not to mention the horrifying absurdity of "social media" in this miserable century)... but it appears that it's at least keeping a number of photographers happily in business at their craft as a functional livelihood.

 

[Don_ih]

Don - any book store with a large photography section will have titles and monographs on Steichen, Strand, Evans, and many many more. They're quite well known figures in the photographic community itself. Not everyone needs to have a name familiar to nearly every American household. Part of that is just due to the cultural appeal of the West during a seemingly more iconic or nostalgic era (just like how Edward S. Curtis, Carleton Watkins, and numerous others catered to the nostalgia of the fading frontier ethos when they photographed); and some is due to the successful marketing strategy of his heirs. But I grew right across the River from Yosemite, was later featured by a particular gallery in Carmel, yet never saw an actual print of his in my life until I started wandering around that same town between gigs. All I had ever seen were a few images poorly reproduced in magazines. I had seen real prints by the Westons. I can understand popular misconceptions, but how AA is thought of as "the" penultimate photographer amidst something like a photo forum itself is a bit mystifying. He is deservedly holds his own particular niche, but there are plenty enough relevant niches to choose from.

I was asking specifically why everyone here was talking about Adams - pretty much all the time - and rarely mention anyone who took interesting photos. Frankly, even as perhaps the most famous photographer, he's not and never was a household name. Photographers are largely only famous among photographers (which includes hobbyists) - Annie Leibovitz is probably much better known among non-photographers than Adams ever was.

In the world-out-there, no one cares who took the picture or what they used to do it.

 

[removed account4]

Remove fauxtoshop from his tool kit, and almost nothing is left. It's all faux. Documentation has nothing to do with it. The specific process has nothing to do with it. The sheer superficiality of the mentality does. Do you walk up to a beautiful lady and say, hey, let me cut your head off and replace it with a bright orange Halloween pumpkin? That's essentially his mentality toward natural beauty. He doesn't even see the real thing.

Remove burning and dodging / darkroom / camera FX from your favorite analogist's tool kit and its all faux too, no difference, and there's really no difference between the work Lik makes and sells and the work that was routinely published in View Camera magazine or the color work you used to present on your website, other than one is done with film and the other using 21st century techniques

I was asking specifically why everyone here was talking about Adams - pretty much all the time - and rarely mention anyone who took interesting photos. Frankly, even as perhaps the most famous photographer, he's not and never was a household name. Photographers are largely only famous among photographers (which includes hobbyists) - Annie Leibovitz is probably much better known among non-photographers than Adams ever was.

In the world-out-there, no one cares who took the picture or what they used to do it.

I think people here &c like to talk about Adams all the time is because its a lot easier to talk about Adams if you can related to his images. Most people ( or so it seems ) love photographing rocks and trees, there are lots of hobbyists who now have what used to be expensive large format gear that was purchased on Ebay or Craig's list &c for very little money compared to years before and its a lot easier for many people to make landscape photographs and connect with AA than it is to do something different than that. While I can appreciate AA's work and his place in the grande scheme of things, I'd personally rather have conversations about other photographers and image makers because I get kind of bored when its all Yosemite all the time... but to each their own ...

 

[foc]

She is a niece of the mayor, who is all-powerful and reacts aggressively and negatively to hints of nepotism.

Sounds exactly like rural Ireland

 

[Don_ih]

I think people here &c like to talk about Adams all the time is because its a lot easier to talk about Adams if you can related to his images. Most people ( or so it seems ) love photographing rocks and trees, there are lots of hobbyists who now have what used to be expensive large format gear that was purchased on Ebay or Craig's list &c for very little money compared to years before and its a lot easier for many people to make landscape photographs and connect with AA than it is to do something different than that. While I can appreciate AA's work and his place in the grande scheme of things, I'd personally rather have conversations about other photographers and image makers because I get kind of bored when its all Yosemite all the time... but to each their own ...

I can relate to images of rock and trees and leaves and flowers - I take enough of them - so I can appreciate the things you mention. But respect and appreciation fall short of the adulation Adams is routinely given - a la, "None of you riffraff will ever hold a candle to the magnificence that was Ansel" said above (I paraphrase).

And I have to agree with you about photo manipulation. There's no reason to expect a photo to be anything other than what it is - an image. Do whatever you want to it. If people like it and want to give you $3500 for a 1 meter wide print of it, yay! Those with supposed finer sensibilities neither have to like or purchase the images.
Some people like to have oversaturated pictures of palm trees with gigantic moons as decor. It goes well with the porcelain statue lamp.

One thing digital automation has done is dislodge the pride associated with being able to "nail" the image - the exposure, the composition, the focus. Because all of that is, for so many people, the work of the camera, the preciousness of the capture has diminished. Fewer people make fun of subbed in skies than actually want to know how to do it, for example.

Has that made photography better? Some people think so. One thing it's definitely done is take a lot of work out of the hands of specialists and put it into the hands of the uninformed.

 

[removed account4]

I can relate to images of rock and trees and leaves and flowers - I take enough of them - so I can appreciate the things you mention. But respect and appreciation fall short of the adulation Adams is routinely given - a la, "None of you riffraff will ever hold a candle to the magnificence that was Ansel" said above (I paraphrase).

And I have to agree with you about photo manipulation. There's no reason to expect a photo to be anything other than what it is - an image. Do whatever you want to it. If people like it and want to give you $3500 for a 1 meter wide print of it, yay! Those with supposed finer sensibilities neither have to like or purchase the images.
Some people like to have oversaturated pictures of palm trees with gigantic moons as decor. It goes well with the porcelain statue lamp.

One thing digital automation has done is dislodge the pride associated with being able to "nail" the image - the exposure, the composition, the focus. Because all of that is, for so many people, the work of the camera, the preciousness of the capture has diminished. Fewer people make fun of subbed in skies than actually want to know how to do it, for example.

Has that made photography better? Some people think so. One thing it's definitely done is take a lot of work out of the hands of specialists and put it into the hands of the uninformed.

I agree with what you've said, and I don't really get it either people are as adamant about AA as they are about the fact that their Nikon or Hassy or Ebony or D'orff is so much better than anything else. Regarding the pride associated with nailing an image, that was eroded more than 100 years ago when exposure latitudes and materials started to become more forgiving, its not a modern phenomenon.
Im not sure it makes anything any better or worse, it just gives us all more things to opt in and opt out of ...I'm happy with a smorgasbord of everything, a little 1826, and a little 2021. .. I don't tend to hero worship because usually afterwards heroes are burned in effigy and I don't really want to be part of that.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Alan - many product and catalog photographers nearly starve. It's a dog eat dog game, especially now when digital output fetches just a tiny fraction of what large format film shots once did. But I do have a friend who became a multimillionaire that way. He turned workflow itself into a science - remarkable efficiency, very good eye, top-end clients, superb well-paid assistants, and his own in-house major lab. Never took a vacation in his life, even though he owns three resorts. Now in his late 70's, he's dialed back to just doing cookbooks for gourmet chefs - but then they get to eat if after the shoot! Has a gourmet kitchen right in the enormous studio.

About 30 yrs ago I had a friend who wanted me to partner in his studio in the DC area. All his clients were Fortune 500 companies, and he didn't need to beg for any of their business, or answer to any Art Dept. His secret? - a 20K per yr golf club membership where he golfed and hobnobbed every weekend with CEO's and Senators. I checked out the offer, had breakfast with the then CEO of Exxon/Mobil sitting next to me in a little diner in Levis and a plaid shirt - glad to be out of a suit and away from brown-nosers at least for the weekend, then in the afternoon helped a Senator load firewood into a beat-up old pickup, along with a big lobbyist for a different interest set. They were best friends on weekends; but during the work week, they went back to their official jobs calling each other the Devil.

Drew, You mention joining a golf club to get clients. The art of success is not usually how excellent you are at your craft. I mean you have to be good. But sales and business relations are the key, especially today with much more competition. Lik and Kincaid may be bad colorists. But they are or were excellent salesmen who knew how to connect with the public. Networking is important and most photographers, even the good ones, don't do this particularly well. It's really the same in many fields, getting your name out there, making connections, frankly kissing ass at times. There's no point having the goods if no one sees it and gets to know you.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

that's right I don't plod the narrow path, because it is too narrow and I see nothing on it ...and the path is full of closed minded bitter people...
I'd rather plod on the path not taken, or rarely taken, better view and more interesting people

Maybe ...
but both Adams and Kinkade had a beautiful way of rendering light and turning an ordinary scene into something otherworldly. Peter Lik too but he is more of a showman than art for every-man ( or woman ), Like Adams Kinkade allowed for people without much $$ to enjoy his work. Lik's slot canyon phantom photograph is absolutely beautiful at least as beautiful as any Ansel Adams image I have ever seen. Its too bad there is so much hatred thrown toward people who have made money using photography or people who don't use a camera like everyone else.. its really sad..

Kincade draws Heaven and Eden in that otherworldly light that attracts people. It has spiritual and religious overtones.

Lik is a salesman, a showman. I've visited his galleries a couple of times, once in Hawaii and once in La Jolla. He's got these hot salesgirls who take you through the gallery. By the time they're done, you think they'll come home with you and be the one to hang the picture in your bedroom. Most of his pictures are back lighted if I recall correctly. There was one where you're looking out of this cave on the high desert. Lik mounted in back lighted in a small dark room with the picture on one wall and across from there about 8 feet away is a soft couch you can sit in and imagine yourself looking out of the cave into the desert. Add soft music. Very dramatic. When you finally tell the girl you're not going to buy, your think you may have broken her heart so good is her presentation.

Photographers should go just to learn how they should present their own work if they want to make money. His galleries will teach you a thing about salesmanship. He's sold something like $400 million in pictures. Not a bad day's work.

 

[Don_ih]

Regarding the pride associated with nailing an image, that was eroded more than 100 years ago when exposure latitudes and materials started to become more forgiving, its not a modern phenomenon.

Not what I'm talking about, which is the everyday perception: 25 years ago, "My wedding photos look so good because I hired a pro." - last week, "My wedding photos look so good, 'cause my cousin has a Nikon DSLR." The skill, for the most part, has moved out of the person and into the equipment. And 100 years ago, the everyday notion was, if you wanted a proper photo, you got a photographer to do it. Chances are, he knew the proper exposure for his setup to get the result he wanted - and he viewed that as a result of his work. So, along comes something like the Zone System, which elaborates on exactly how it is your own work to determine proper exposure and composition. Apparently, that was well appreciated - since it's still well appreciated.

You can use Zone System with a digital camera (at least the exposure part - develop on the computer?) - but what would be the point? Just blast off a range of bracketed exposures and pick one later - or combine several. (Not that people weren't doing that with film.)