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 p.2 #12 · Reality of today's photography market | |
Micky, I'm taking into consideration the whole market beyond but including commercial/advertising/editorial. Of course this is all anecdotal because there is no data where you can get an accurate number aside from just taking a step back and looking at the market. My initial comments were aimed at the photo industry as a whole in LA but also touch on your lop-sided comment. There's a lot of different photo markets (weddings leading the pack in terms of shear numbers of photographers) as well as headshots, seniors, baby, pregnancy, real estate, architectural, corporate, food, heck porn is an industry full of photographers. Ad to that the interesting phenomenon that editorial photographers are now dabbling in weddings because their industry has collapsed, wedding photographers dabbling in editorial, advertising photographers are starting to do pregnancy/baby, actors are becoming wedding and headshot photographers, San Diego photographers are going after San Francisco clients, Santa Barbara photographers going after San Diego clients and a very bad economy spawning a lot of unemployed people claiming to be photographers that have taken work away from real pros. LA photographers are leaving LA to continue being an LA photographer from out of city or state. Out of state photographers are vying and successfully getting LA jobs (often times at the cost of travel just to have an LA wedding on their portfolio. Conversely, a lot of LA photographers are doing work in other states. Anyway, this is simply what I see, hear and read from people I know in all kinds of photo industries. Hundreds of thousands seems pretty accurate to me! 
For some reason, the NY photo market seems to have much less of this chatter and as a whole seems to be doing better. I wonder what the differences are aside from economy issues?
Micky Bill wrote:
IMHO (this is about the commercial/advertising/editorial market)
First of all there are not "literally hundreds of thousands of amazing photographers in LA vying for hundreds of jobs" it may seem like it, but thru-ought history the number of photographers has vastly outnumbered the available jobs. Not as bad as actors:acting jobs but close.
LA has a lopsided market, there is a lot of production done here but many of the jobs originate elsewhere. The weather and production support still brings clients in to shoot when the weather sucks in NY or Detroit or London or Frankfort.
There is always room at the top and the bottom but the middle where most of us toil has been decimated in the last 7 or 8 years, for various reasons.
First of all the tech skill needed to create your vision is amazingly easy thanks to the progress of digital cameras. Someone with good ideas and a modicum of tech savvy can, with some effort and some help produce really good work much easier than before digital.
Secondly, clients can find photographers (or stock photos) who in the pre-internet would never be found. It used to be photographers would push their skill towards the clients they want to work with, that took a lot of time and money, most of it wasted.
Today the client can pull the photographers to them, an art buyer can find 10 photogrpahers in about an hour by searching the various sites who are the perfect fit to their project, then decide who they want to work with. I have a client who says there is a short list of people who do the jobs to his standards and there is even a shorter list of people he wants spend days or weeks working with so don;t kid yourself into thinking you are the only one who can do a job, Annie and Mario, Heisler and Platon all have competition.
Edgy is over rated. It may get you noticed but for the most part "Edgy" and it's sister "Slick" are short lived answers to long term questions. (take a look at the Dave Hill look form 3 or so years ago, all the rage for about 8 months until everyone copied it) But if you are noticed for your edgy work you may get booked for the non edgy ad shoot because the client likes you and your ideas. Take look around, edgy work is rarely produced and the further up the food chain the less edgy you get! The only edgy car commercial I recall cost between $5-7m was the Eminem Chrysler super bowl spot from 2 or 3 years ago.
It depends what you consider Business and what you consider Photography but I call BS on the 10/90. If you are only devoting 10% of your time to the lifeblood of your business, the photography you, with all due respect are either a lousy photographer or a lousy business man/woman. ...Show more →
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(hence the indication that it was an over-exaggeration). Whether it is a 10:90 or 50:50 or 90:10 isn't the point of 10:90 ... just that without a diligent recognition of the business demands that accompany the photographic talent, the photography alone won't always carry the day long term.
) good for them and I wish you luck but it doesn;t affect me or my work.