Rivermist
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Tom RC wrote:
Yes you are correct and I’m sure there were photographers like yourself who benefited greatly from having access to affordable photography gear to start a career who might not have been able to do so otherwise. If you were established and on the other side of the fence during this time you would have experienced the downsides to this technological progress as all of a sudden a market primarily dominated by actual highly skilled photographers was flooded by so called “pros” a high percentage of which were anything BUT professional other than having a nice looking website and polished marketing skills. This did put a financial squeeze on established talented pros who in many cases lost business or had to lower rates substantially to compete. It is what it is…….or what it was and just a cycle seen in many industries over time.
Ironically, what happened 20 years ago around the time of the Canon Rebel in terms of the professional photography market seems to be happening today in the world of video. I would venture to say there are a lot of established professional videographers who are getting seriously squeezed by so-called pros with iPhones and other relatively low cost video gear and that has to be a tough market to compete in. Always pros and cons to technological progress but better IMO to be on the hobbyist side of the fence these days.
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Just getting the story straight (life is messy): I studied photography in high school as an elective and we were fortunate to have one of the top professionals of our city (Geneva, Switzerland) as our teacher. After high school, he asked me to help out assisting his assistant while he had surgery, and I was delighted to pick up experience using Hasselblad and Sinar rail cameras, Elinchrome flash. His studio's main activity was art catalogs for the many art galleries and museums, very high precision color work, 8x10 slides with his own Ektachrome lab, etc.. This also made me reconsider becoming a professional photographer because despite his well-heeled customer base, his costs were eating most of the revenue and this was a fifth generation studio. I studied geology and kept photography as an expensive hobby. And yes, even back then, customers would say things like "why is each picture costing $1000 when I can buy a Nikon camera for less money and do it myself". I kept my F-1 cameras and FD lenses and never got into the EOS system, for lack of time and other family distractions. So going digital in 2004 was a huge leap into an ecosystem where focusing, exposing and managing output were suddenly so much easier. Getting back into photography as a serious hobby had me spend (according to some family observers) large amounts of money on very nice gear, with no intent to sell pictures as I had a full time job. I did however come across people as you describe. One stuck out, a lady who asked me to help her understand her camera, a 12 MP Rebel XSi if I recall correctly, and a relatively basic zoom. She had no idea about aperture, shutter speeds, ISO, but her wedding pictures were nothing short of stunning, apparently all done in full automatic mode. Pixel peeping would probably show optical deficiencies in the images but on a website or in a book they looked great, her talent was getting people to pose naturally and to put them in photogenic locations at the events. So yes she was undercutting professionals who were carrying an order of magnitude more investment in equipment, lighting, post-production computers and software, assistants or second camera folk, all the accrued experience to operate the business and master the technology to its maximum performance, and carrying the insurances needed to protect their business. I don't think a large wedding party would have hired her, but people like her were probably earning their keep in the lower end of the market. And she would never be able to compete on studio photography, business photography for advertising, etc.., people who have those budgets generally know what they are buying.
So yes technology, and especially digital technology, has a track record of rapid progress, with the evolution of cutting edge expensive early systems into very affordable consumer products. This happens across just about every aspect of our lives, and the only way to stay ahead is to offer differentiating capabilities that are not solely based on the technology.
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