Photo careers in the 21st century?

Don Heisz said:

"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.

Click to expand...

I suppose that would only apply to the digital realm of photography. I would assume that anyone that can "nail" an exposure with analog means, could probably do so with digital technology as well, but it's probably not the same in reverse. I know a number of "photographers" whose eye's glass over when you start asking them questions that are anything more than "how do you turn your camera on?"

Don Heisz said:

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.)

Click to expand...

Today you have to know video in addition to stills since many couples want both. It's also not only about taking a picture. You have to know what pictures to take and how to assemble people. That's a practice that you have to learn. You have to know how to sell yourself, learn business practices, etc. Just having a camera doesn't make you a wedding photographer.

ChristopherCoy said:

I suppose that would only apply to the digital realm of photography. I would assume that anyone that can "nail" an exposure with analog means, could probably do so with digital technology as well, but it's probably not the same in reverse. I know a number of "photographers" whose eye's glass over when you start asking them questions that are anything more than "how do you turn your camera on?"

Click to expand...

It's more about the knowledge moving into the equipment, so that's why people zone out when you try to talk about technical details.

The damaging concept here for photographers is that the money only needs to go toward equipment and any full-witted person can be given the responsibility of using it to get required results.

Alan Edward Klein said:

Today you have to know video in addition to stills since many couples want both. It's also not only about taking a picture. You have to know what pictures to take and how to assemble people. That's a practice that you have to learn. You have to know how to sell yourself, learn business practices, etc. Just having a camera doesn't make you a wedding photographer.

Click to expand...

Of course it doesn't. But it does allow you to take photos at a wedding, and when everyone is in constant training regarding the kinds of photos people like (see Facebook, Instagram, etc., for the training), they know to keep pushing the button until they get a few. Operating the camera has just been fully revealed to be the least significant skill needed.

Don Heisz said:

Of course it doesn't. But it does allow you to take photos at a wedding, and when everyone is in constant training regarding the kinds of photos people like (see Facebook, Instagram, etc., for the training), they know to keep pushing the button until they get a few. Operating the camera has just been fully revealed to be the least significant skill needed.

Click to expand...

In the old days before digital, you'd leave a throwaway film camera on each table for the guests to take pictures. They love it and the couple winds up with some off-the-cuff neat shots the paid photographers don't bother with.

Alan Edward Klein said:

In the old days before digital, you'd leave a throwaway film camera on each table for the guests to take pictures. They love it and the couple winds up with some off-the-cuff neat shots the paid photographers don't bother with.

Click to expand...

That's still done by some people. You can buy those cameras from AliExpress. Of course, people would need to put down either their phone or their drink to use it....

Don Heisz said:

It's more about the knowledge moving into the equipment, so that's why people zone out when you try to talk about technical details.

The damaging concept here for photographers is that the money only needs to go toward equipment and any full-witted person can be given the responsibility of using it to get required results.

Click to expand...

I also think the placement of skills has shifted. Photographers "back then" focused their skills on getting things right in the camera, photographers "today" focus their skills on getting it right in the computer. Those of us who grew up in the middle were forced to choose between the old way, the new way, or some assembly of both ways of thinking.

ChristopherCoy said:

I also think the placement of skills has shifted. Photographers "back then" focused their skills on getting things right in the camera, photographers "today" focus their skills on getting it right in the computer. Those of us who grew up in the middle were forced to choose between the old way, the new way, or some assembly of both ways of thinking.

Click to expand...

Well, getting it wrong in camera was not something you could know until it was too late - event over, film developed, turned out blank or whatever. Now, the back of the camera will show you what you got. You can quickly review to see if it's good enough. And software allows you to fix up any image - digital photo or a scan of a negative or a scan of a print or even something you did in MS Paint. Are computer image manipulation skills photography? Seems that they are, now, just as much as darkroom work is photography.

I think most of the film that's shot only ever sees a scanner. So, its "print" stage is digital, anyway.

Don Heisz said:

Are computer image manipulation skills photography? Seems that they are, now, just as much as darkroom work is photography.
I think most of the film that's shot only ever sees a scanner. So, its "print" stage is digital, anyway.

Click to expand...

I guess that depends on which way of thinking you choose to believe - the old, the new, or some form of both. This is the argument that has been a plague for what - 20 years or so now?

I can only speak to, and believe in my way of thinking.

And my answer to @BradS question is - I think there are photo careers out there, they are just diversified and not what is traditionally thought of as "photo careers". Todays photo careers require a host of other certifications in order to be successful - photographer, graphic designer, post production - you have to know what all of these positions do in order to understand what it is they want in a photo.

Apug for years is filled with fellows whining about the death of commercial photography. Still, at least here in Europe, academies of applied photography crank out photographers each semester. And over the last years I spoke with many of them quite open, and none ever was whining. They all had already during their study some job as photographer assistant or already an own business. And a regulated inquiry amongst assistants showed that they at average had a good and steady income.
But practically all commercial photographers in typical Apug age I come across and who started their careers over 20 years ago are whining too.

ChristopherCoy said:

I guess that depends on which way of thinking you choose to believe - the old, the new, or some form of both.

Click to expand...

The fact of a situation is not really dependent on what you think of it, though. The fact of the situation is well over 99% of photographs taken today are digital images, from digital cameras, subject to digital manipulation (either automated or manual), and displayed only digitally. If that doesn't have much to say about what photography is today, I don't know what could.

Don Heisz said:

The fact of a situation is not really dependent on what you think of it, though. The fact of the situation is well over 99% of photographs taken today are digital images, from digital cameras, subject to digital manipulation (either automated or manual), and displayed only digitally. If that doesn't have much to say about what photography is today, I don't know what could.

Click to expand...

More importantly, you need to add at the beginning words that refer to remuneration of some kind.
In other words, "well over 99% of photographs taken today for a fee or as part of a job assignment are digital images, from digital cameras, subject to digital manipulation (either automated or manual), and displayed only digitally."
I was probably the case before that well over 99% of all photos were not taken for a fee or as part of a job assignment.

Don Heisz said:

The fact of a situation is not really dependent on what you think of it, though. .

Click to expand...

I beg to differ. Images have to be consumed, and more importantly respected in some form or another. If they aren't consumed as "photography" or even art, then are they really?

I'm very glad at the current time I'm retired and I don't need to rely on photography to provide for myself and my family, because in the more than sixty years I have been a photographer I can't think of a worst time, when every owner of an entry level D.S.L.R. sees the ownership as a way to increase his/ her income and take on professional work that is far beyond their capabilities, and when they make a mess of it, it just gives professionals who can do the job a bad name.

ChristopherCoy said:

Images have to be consumed, and more importantly respected in some form or another.

Click to expand...

No they don't. They just need to be produced. You don't need a viewer for your photos to be photos - you don't even need to look at them again. They exist independent of your perception. What they signify or mean is a different matter.

ChristopherCoy said:

If they aren't consumed as "photography" or even art, then are they really?

Click to expand...

They are exactly what you presuppose them to be in your statement: photographs, but ones no one ever looks at.

Don Heisz said:

They are exactly what you presuppose them to be in your statement: photographs, but ones no one ever looks at.

Click to expand...

Vivian Maier comes to mind.

John - there is a vast philosophical and emotional difference between doing your best within the realistic limitations of your medium to somehow bring out, or carefully bring to attention, something you actually perceive with your eyes, versus preempting that whole process by grossly imposing something afterwards. Many great photographers like PH Emerson, Edward Weston, and AA truly respected what was in front of the lens. People like Peter Lik make roadkill out of it. They're painters using a computer rather than paintbrushes, but unfortunately, tend to be really bad painters. Lik's work is color-crude, period - outright kindergarten level. And his backlit transparencies remind me of tacky backlit Hamm's Beer signs in dive bar windows, just oversized. But it's apparently the kind of decor Ma Kettle gravitates toward after she wins the lottery, takes a cruise ship excursion, and finds something appropriate to hang on the wall beside her black velvet Elvis rug.

Don Heisz said:

No they don't.

Click to expand...

I disagree.

ChristopherCoy said:

I disagree.

Click to expand...

So you discount the activity of the photographer altogether and only count something as a photograph from a viewer's point of view?

This originally being a thread about how to make money at it, at what point does promoting one's "art" for sake of income become deceptive and unethical, or as defined by outright legal codes, illegal? The combination of both painter and fauxtographer I mentioned certainly accomplished things technically, and deserve due credit for that. Kincade devised a particularly high-end method of mass-producing his paintings both print press style and via a fancy paint-by-numbers assembly line. He kept a tiny bit of toenail still inside the legal definition of an original painting, but by teasing authorities in that manner, put a big bullseye on himself. Once people realized that their "investment" in mass-produced images was a charade, and Kincade's financial empire began collapsing, he resorted to distinctly illegal means to keep it going, got indicted, and drank himself to death. Is that success? - not in my opinion.

Then the clone of his marketing model, Peter Lik, likewise came up with a real contribution to technique in the specific methodology his "factory" is capable of handling really big prints for sake of decor display. But the manner in which he promotes this, including a lot of "investment" hype and malarky unverifiable giant sales figures, puts a bulleye right on him too, as far as tempting indictment. So is that really a successful business model, or more of a gamble? I'm not surprised he's based in Vegas and juggles in the real estate market there, which might be a significant portion of his personal wealth. I dunno. I do know he's played awfully dirty driving competing galleries out of Lahaina where those cruise ships dock.

But, with certain exceptions, tourist hubs like that are rarely where one finds quality work. Yes, I myself displayed in Carmel for awhile, but never sold a single print to a tourist - they all went to locals, including some notable photographers, or to people who actually flew in for those little events. It was a town known for great photographers and photographic galleries, but also for slick kitchy painting galleries so egregious that a full-time FBI was planted there for awhile uncovering all the art fraud. One instance was a gallery which featured a fictitious famous seascape artist, which actually turned out to be an assembly line in Mexico. Same kind of slippery nonsense occurs at Fisherman's Wharf galleries in SF, where suckers will "invest" thousands of dollars for a mass-produced poster worth far less than the frame it's put it. Entirely predictable.

I'd far rather make an honest living doing something else, and therefore have the liberty to photograph and print what I please, which is exactly what I did. But I did supplement my basic income with incidental commercial photography, print sales, and architectural color consultation, among other things. All of those activities were interrelated, so networking itself was almost automatic.

I don't know how common this knowledge is, but these days, much product photography may not actually be photographs, but renderings:
https://www.screenage.com.au/ikea-catalogue-3d-renderings/

4season said:

I don't know how common this knowledge is, but these days, much product photography may not actually be photographs, but renderings:
https://www.screenage.com.au/ikea-catalogue-3d-renderings/

Click to expand...

It's easier to show different colour and fabric options via renderings than with photos. So, it makes sense.

DREW WILEY said:

John - there is a vast philosophical and emotional difference between doing your best within the realistic limitations of your medium to somehow bring out, or carefully bring to attention, something you actually perceive with your eyes, versus preempting that whole process by grossly imposing something afterwards. Many great photographers like PH Emerson, Edward Weston, and AA truly respected what was in front of the lens. People like Peter Lik make roadkill out of it. They're painters using a computer rather than paintbrushes, but unfortunately, tend to be really bad painters. Lik's work is color-crude, period - outright kindergarten level. And his backlit transparencies remind me of tacky backlit Hamm's Beer signs in dive bar windows, just oversized. But it's apparently the kind of decor Ma Kettle gravitates toward after she wins the lottery, takes a cruise ship excursion, and finds something appropriate to hang on the wall beside her black velvet Elvis rug.

Click to expand...

im always amazed that you don't consider darkroom manipulation manipulation but the same actions done with a computer are a no no..
very hypocritcal. "bad painters/ kindergarten level" that's quite comical .. seeing he and others "like him" seem to be doing just fine.
who cares who is buying his / other "like him" 's work.
its very sad the only way you can have conversations is by calling people names and insulting them.

ChristopherCoy said:

I also think the placement of skills has shifted. Photographers "back then" focused their skills on getting things right in the camera, photographers "today" focus their skills on getting it right in the computer. Those of us who grew up in the middle were forced to choose between the old way, the new way, or some assembly of both ways of thinking.

Click to expand...

Maybe I'm prejudiced, but thinking you'll get it right later in the computer makes you sloppy at the time you need to do your best. If the angle is wrong., you can't correct that later. If the composition is wrong, or the subject isn't acting "right", you can't correct that. You can't make a silk purse from a sow's ear.