How many photographers will be left without an income because they tried to apply their tried and true approach to a market that changed under their feet? No one wants to be the last holdout in a dying market, but what if the market isn’t dying? What if it’s only changing in ways for which we have not yet adapted? Photographers are seeing the symptoms and missing the diagnosis. Since the change wasn’t in image production but the market itself, the effect has been much more insidious. The caveat to this is that not all exposure is created equal, and no one is ever compelled to accept exposure in exchange for work, but ignoring this shift in the economy of image-making and the changes making this shift possible is turning a blind eye to the warning signs. This means that being able to speak to a network comprised of potential clients has actual value. Even huge corporations are diversifying their advertising to appeal to individual markets. A captive audience is potential income waiting to be leveraged. Attention is the reason companies pay millions of dollars to run ads during the Super Bowl. In an economy where people are freer than ever to curate their information intake, mass marketing is slowly losing ground to niche interests who can gain and keep that most valued commodity: attention. Outside of the hyper-availability of quality (read: technically sound) imagery, I think it’s incumbent upon us to recognize that social capital has become a true currency. In addition, the shift toward potential clients offering exposure as a form of payment has to be understood in context. Even if such advice reached every photographer on the planet, there would still be hobbyists and non-photographers who have no compunctions sharing their photos with news outlets and brands on Instagram. To my mind, this is as futile as tilting at windmills. Articles are being written and statuses shared about the value of photography, which are aimed at other photographers in an effort to convince them to stop devaluing the industry by working for free. Competition of this level also forces business to compete based on price, which leads to a downward spiral and desperation to get work in front of more eyes by any means necessary. Of course, the basic concept of supply and demand tells us that overabundance drives down price.
Once a high-quality camera reached the fingertips of everyone with a cell phone and social media allowed us to instantaneously share images of our everyday lives, the inherent value of photography was bound to change. What kind of compensation should I expect for a photo like this?Īuthor Andrew McFadyen-Ketchum at Great Sand Dunes National Park. Rather than taking such requests, which are not only made by private clients but major news outlets and big-name brands as a personal offense, we might want to see these requests as a symptom of an alteration in the way society views and values photography.Īn image that took months to plan, finance, and coordinate. While we are busy taking offense, we’re missing the flashing red sign that’s warning us of a curve in the road ahead. I’ve been thinking about this issue for a while now, and I’ve come to suspect that we, as photographers, are missing the point entirely. We gather in Facebook groups to rail against the temerity of anyone entitled enough to ask us to trade our hard work for something as nebulous as “exposure.” The memes abound. Articles, tweets, blog posts, and Instagram stories about potential clients trying to exchange exposure for goods and services are released daily. The collective blood of photographers the world over begins to boil at the mere mention of exposure.
KEELING MODELMAYHEM PROFESSIONAL
Are professional photographers aboard a sinking ship, or is it simply time for us to learn to swim on our own?
Everywhere in every hand is instant access to high-quality image-making technology that has forever altered the landscape of photography from what it means to be a photographer to how the viewing public perceives the value of images and image creation.
The photography industry suffered a seismic shift with the advent of digital cameras, yet it may be the ubiquitous camera phone that sounds the death knell of the industry as we know it.
0 kommentar(er)
