I received an email the other day from some company's website, photographyjobscentral.com, hoping to induce me to sign up for their services.
I've never heard of these folks, I know nothing about them other than their emailed claims of having "the most photography jobs anywhere" plus some verbiage about instant access to 4000+ jobs and adding 600+ jobs weekly. They appear to be part of a parent company called, "Creative Jobs Central (dot com)" and I discovered they have other websites in addition to their photography jobs website. Their other URLs are for people seeking jobs and/or internships in Fashion, Interior Design, Music, Makeup, Modeling, Advertising, Architecture, Gaming, Graphic Design, Entertainment, Marketing, and PR.
(Whew!)
I didn't follow the links far enough to find out what it costs to sign up with these people and I'm pretty sure they aren't offering all their 1000s+ job leads for free. I have no idea if they're reputable or not. I'm not touting them or vouching for them. I'll simply quote Sergeant Schultz from Hogan's Heroes: "I know nothing." (I think I just seriously dated myself.)
Anyway.
What's this have to do with photographic prognosticating?
Well, in their email, the people at photographyjobscentral.com listed the 20 most recent photography jobs posted on their site and, curiously, 50% of those jobs, i.e., 10 of the 20, were for photography instructors.
Not for photographers.
For photography instructors.
So here's what I'm thinking: I'm thinking if anyone thinks the photography biz is already tough enough because there's way too much competition -- mostly due to the onslaught of the dSLR revolution -- I predict it's going to get worse.
Way worse.
If half the jobs listed on a photography jobs site are for photography instructors, it means those people getting those instructor jobs are going to be instructing even more people, probably by the legions, in the art and craft of photography until, eventually, all they'll be training are more future instructors or people who will be unemployed. Leastwise, unemployed as photographers.
In fact, there may come a time when the only actual jobs in photography will be photography instructor jobs!
You see, once just about everyone has an auto-everything camera capable of taking professional quality images, everyone will consider themselves a professional quality photographer. We're practically at that point already. Add some new technologies to the cameras and accessories -- like wireless everything where the camera's "brain" talks to the off-camera strobe's "brains" with text feedback to the photographer on the back of the camera's LCD telling him or her to move a light here, put another one there, modify that light, snoot this light, put a reflector over there, pan left, tilt down, zoom in, click the shutter...
You see where this is all going?
The only thing left will be photography instructor jobs because everyone else, that is those who are so inclined, will be photographers capable of producing professional quality photographs of, well, of just about anything simply by virtue of their gear. And the only people the instructors will be instructing will either be more instructors or those hard-headed, old-school, misfit/would-be photographers who take learning seriously and believe they might actually be able to shoot their own professional quality snapshots without their cameras telling them how to do it or doing it all for them or figuring everything out for them.
I'll admit my predictions are based on little evidence and there were no scientific methods employed while developing my prognostications.
I'm just saying.
The image above is Sarah from today. Sarah did her own makeup and I did my own assisting. I didn't shoot in auto-everything mode and I decided myself how to light her, what exposure settings to use, how to pose her, and how to frame the shots. I could instruct others to do the same but, eventually, no one will need to know any of that kind of stuff anyway. And yeah, I'm feeling a bit cynical today.
11 comments:
Back in the late 70's (or whenever the Minolta XG-7 came out) I remember reading about how "soon, everyone will be able to make professional pictures because cameras will be THAT smart and easy to use."
I was just starting to learn about photography at that point and thought, if this is true, what's the point? I had a hunch it wasn't about the cameras.
Since then, smart cameras are everywhere and very cheap. So, why are people hiring me? Because I can take a technically good photo?
They hire me for my ability to express something with my pictures.
It might be how I express the beauty and moments of their wedding, or their sensuality, or the charm of their children.
They hire Jimmy D because you can consistently deliver the "look" of their product, and you know how to find it, and bring it out of the girls in front of your lens.
Kind of like that guy who does the voice for all the movie trailers. Anyone can speak the words. But they want him to do it.
It's a great time to be a photographer.
Ed Verosky
-- SLAP --
Thanks, Ed. I needed that.
Jimmy, it's a bit early in the New Year for a "we're all doomed" scenario, isn't it?
Ed, you're quite right, and very eloquently put. Please write a blog.
You aren't too far off the mark with the advancing technology, but there is the vision behind the camera that will always shine. If I hear "Wow, you must have a great camera!" again I might have to get rude.
Jimmyd,
No slap from me, but just a negative shake of the head in disagreement.
I have a car (actually a truck), but that doesn't mean that I can compete with the Formula 1 cars. I have a camera, but that doesn't mean that I can compete with you for the type of shots that you consistently get.
You'll never be out of a job unless you want to be.
There's no doubt that convenient technology has overtaken the market--not only in share but also in the subtle way it has undermined our perception of quality. It changed the benchmark while we weren't looking.
What brought this home to me were some Weston images that Lin posted a while back. Not having seen them in years, I had forgotten the range and richness of tones he was able to extract from a large-format negative--subtleties only barely possible, if at all, with digital.
That said, when photographing people, especially women (glamour, boudoir, or nudes), it's much more about chemistry than equipment. If the photographer and the model don't make that essential connection, great pictures aren't going to happen.
Which means, Mr. D., that your life as a premier pretty girl shooter is on really solid ground! But if that ground ever does start to soften, you could become the instructors' instructor!
Lin, Ed does write a blog.
Jimmy,
Absolutely dead on...a Photographer Friend of mine from Ann Arbor (corporate photographer guy...annual reports...etc) confided in me last month that he is working part time in a grocery store to make ends meet. His big studio?...shut down in 2002...his smaller studio?..shut down 2 years ago.
Everyone is a photographer now, I hope he took some Grocery Guys Job that just bought a camera to get into photography.
bt
It's a sad but true statement, that everyone and anyone with a digital camera now thinks they are a professional. Here in upstate New York, it's getting harder and harder to compete with those of less talent, less equipment, and no eye for photographs. People don't care if I own both a Canon and Nikon system, have Broncolor and Elinchrom strobes, they just want to spend as little money as possible and always spend more on a DJ, than they do pictures. I sure can't remember a single song at my wedding 30 years ago, but I certainly still have the photos. So I guess the bottom line is to keep our prices at a professional level, do professional work, and don't compromise our values. As I always tell people, photography is like an art form, if you don't have an eye for it, you'll never learn it in class. The same goes for the guys and gals with a digital camera in their hand, most of whom use Photoshop to clean up all of their mistakes. In the day of film, they would have never gotten a second job after people looked at their first job. So I tell all of my fellow pros to just hang in there and wait it out, I will, photography is in my blood until I expose my last picture. Thanks for listening Jimmy D.
Well, the photographic instructor jobs are a positive contribution to the photography job market. I would argue that most of the students in a photography night class don't intend to make a living doing photography. The most damage they would do is becoming another Uncle Bob shooting a friend/family/co-worker's wedding for free. Chances are, that wedding would probably have been shot by disposable cameras distributed to the guests anyway.
Plus, when Uncle Bob came back with his pile of pictures full of mistakes, there's money to be made by digital retouchers! When everyone and their dog owns a dSLR, people will stopping thinking professional photographers as operators of expensive gears, but rather as talented artists with a trained eye.
OMP and MM has certainly done very well for themselves in this digital wave, as tons of amateurs with a dSLR dream of shooting pretty girls. Maybe existing pros just need to look at the market demand and adjust themselves? Almost every programmer/engineer/accountant owns a dSLR and considers himself an amateur photography. Now if the pros can just extract some bucks out of their inflated ego...
True and false! Photographers in certain genre are having more problems that others. Wedding photographers may be the hardest hit because the customer is not a professional editor or person who normally even knows what a good photograph is all about. But the typical amateur that shoots a wedding would never even get in the door of a magazine that needs professional shots for their content. The soul of the artist will continue to be a human attribute (at least for a while more) and that is usually what has the ability to produce what qualifies as "Pro" photography.
Cheers,
rfs
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