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Yup i just dont have what it takes anymore


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I have been in this business for 40 years. Made money until a few years ago. Made lots of money many years ago. Have been looking at newer work in a number of agencies. The new work is incredible. Particularly shots of people doing things. Beautiful creatively and technically. Amazing photographers and photoshoppers out there! The sports pics are just amazing! Look - i just dont have what it takes now. Gotta admit it. It takes a lot of initiative to do this work. I guess im too old. I guess im not motivated to do that level of work for the peanuts that it appears to sell for. At least thats my perception. Or do they bring big money? Look - im even amazed at the great pics people give away on social media or whoever wants it! My main point it - incredible photographers are out there today!

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There certainly are a lot more photographers (an understatement), and zillions more photos out there. However, I'm not sure that the images being produced are any "better" content-wise than they were in the past, just more technically perfect thanks to technology. That said, lately I've been thinking that this might be a good time of life to catch up on my reading.

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It depends which agencies you are looking at.  Most high end agencies worth their name are giving a photographers certain amount of help.  Some will be art-directed, some won't, but at proper agencies contributors arn't just left out in the cold.  Even at the US majors there is a lot of style/content advice for those who want to make use of it - far more than here.  Nor is it true that the work sells for peanuts.  Good agencies manage to achieve a fair balance between average pricing and volume of sales (often with the help of extensive distribution channels).  At a couple of well known firms, an image may sell for $1 this month on subscription and $1000 the next.  What really matters is the average annual revenue where photographers are going to some trouble to produce high quality work.  The $1 annual RPI that is the lot of many on crowd-sourced sites is obviously useless for anyone who wants to spend time on their images, and if that is what was on offer, then nobody but the retired, the rich and the insane would go to such trouble.

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I think Robert is correct, there will be agencies out there for more "career" photographers, I guess agencies like Alamy where you can just sign up on the internet, particularly with their Stockimo app, are increasingly full of enthusiastic amateurs like myself.

 

Good digital cameras are increasingly more affordable and have the advantage over old film cameras of not having the overhead of the cost of film or the time waiting for photographs to be developed. Smartphones all come with a camera too which take increasingly good pictures. You can just take a photograph, instantly see if it is good or not and keep or delete as you wish at no real cost (discounting shutter wear). The software to enhance images is also more accessible (I use GIMP which is free!). And the internet is full of articles and tutorials about how to get the best out of both your camera and the software which an enthusiastic amateur will find and utilise to improve their technique and quality. It all makes digital photography a much more accessible hobby and the domain of the masses rather than the specialised few.

 

So I guess this adds up to where 5 or 10 years ago professionals with a good camera and skills could earn good money from "every day" shots, the marketplace is now swamped and to make real money you either have to go above and beyond and be exceptional.. or know the right people! I guess it's a case of improving technology, changing times, evolution.

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Here is the work of one of the UK's leading industrial photographers, and this collection makes serious money.  It has an absolutely top ranking here, but because it (or part of it) is distributed to every major agency in the world that wil take it, the Alamy earnings will only be a small percentage of the total.

 

http://tinyurl.com/opkckeb

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I have been in this business for 40 years. Made money until a few years ago. Made lots of money many years ago. Have been looking at newer work in a number of agencies. The new work is incredible. Particularly shots of people doing things. Beautiful creatively and technically. Amazing photographers and photoshoppers out there! The sports pics are just amazing! Look - i just dont have what it takes now. Gotta admit it. It takes a lot of initiative to do this work. I guess im too old. I guess im not motivated to do that level of work for the peanuts that it appears to sell for. At least thats my perception. Or do they bring big money? Look - im even amazed at the great pics people give away on social media or whoever wants it! My main point it - incredible photographers are out there today!

 

I came to the same conclusion a couple of years ago. I did not know quite what to do so I (this is about me its not a reflection on anyone else) pondered. I realized that I was not a "photographer", I was just someone who owned a camera and had limited PS skills. But I loved taking pictures and wanted my pictures to have meaning or a use. So I decided to just concentrate on the type of photography that I loved doing (nature) and became a very happy "weekend warrior". I then decided to do something with all those pictures that I took and moved back to selling those pics through stock libraries but with a higher moral outcome for myself (you have to look at thailandwildlife.com to understand). And this then morphed into something more for me.

 

Its given me a great passion for my weekends, its given me something to do I love, its given me a cause to follow in my upcoming retirement, its made me happy and is very fulfilling and its helped/helps a cause. There comes a time to reinvent oneself - and being honest with myself was a turning point for me. I found a niche that makes me "happy" and I don't have to "compete" with "photographers" ;+)

 

I make meagre license fees from this (agencies and my own direct sales) which is all then channeled to others that hopefully can make more than a meagre impact with the money. 

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Here is the work of one of the UK's leading industrial photographers, and this collection makes serious money.  It has an absolutely top ranking here, but because it (or part of it) is distributed to every major agency in the world that wil take it, the Alamy earnings will only be a small percentage of the total.

 

http://tinyurl.com/opkckeb

 

thahks Robert. That collection is well worth a look if for no other reason than to see a bit of a master-class in the treatment of "similars".

 

dd

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I have been in this business for 40 years. Made money until a few years ago. Made lots of money many years ago. Have been looking at newer work in a number of agencies. The new work is incredible. Particularly shots of people doing things. Beautiful creatively and technically. Amazing photographers and photoshoppers out there! The sports pics are just amazing! Look - i just dont have what it takes now. Gotta admit it. It takes a lot of initiative to do this work. I guess im too old. I guess im not motivated to do that level of work for the peanuts that it appears to sell for. At least thats my perception. Or do they bring big money? Look - im even amazed at the great pics people give away on social media or whoever wants it! My main point it - incredible photographers are out there today!

 

I came to the same conclusion a couple of years ago. I did not know quite what to do so I (this is about me its not a reflection on anyone else) pondered. I realized that I was not a "photographer", I was just someone who owned a camera and had limited PS skills. But I loved taking pictures and wanted my pictures to have meaning or a use. So I decided to just concentrate on the type of photography that I loved doing (nature) and became a very happy "weekend warrior". I then decided to do something with all those pictures that I took and moved back to selling those pics through stock libraries but with a higher moral outcome for myself (you have to look at thailandwildlife.com to understand). And this then morphed into something more for me.

 

Its given me a great passion for my weekends, its given me something to do I love, its given me a cause to follow in my upcoming retirement, its made me happy and is very fulfilling and its helped/helps a cause. There comes a time to reinvent oneself - and being honest with myself was a turning point for me. I found a niche that makes me "happy" and I don't have to "compete" with "photographers" ;+)

 

I make meagre license fees from this (agencies and my own direct sales) which is all then channeled to others that hopefully can make more than a meagre impact with the money. 

 

 

I hear you. Well said. As I get older, I find myself wanting to compete less and less with anyone, myself included. Also, satisfaction becomes much more important than financial gain (but it's always welcome, of course). Everyone's situation is different.

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i think technology is the main driver, however i am only at the younger end of the scale, both in age and starting in this biz!

 

for example the dark(room) days, cost money, so only those with the skills perhaps got work out there, eg they had the skills so they had less wastage from the roll of film.

so amateurs couldnt afford to waste the development costs. because it COST money to MAKE the sales.

 

these days it costs nothing other than (as mentioned above), the shutter wear and perhaps depreciation of kit, and time, which to be honest most shots, digital allows you to check it out on screen, and reshoot if needed.

and everyone has a camera on them these days, in form of a mobile, it stands to reason imo, something somewhere will happen, and someone / anyone will capture it, gone are the days of a newspaper sending out a photog to get a "photo scoop", as you see in the movies, we see all the time that the news (BBC, ITV), use phone footage of an earthquake for example, whereas years ago maybe only the photo's of the "aftermath" would be submitted, we get the "as it happened" thanks to the camera in pocket etc.

also same goes for social media, syria for example, not too much of a need to send a reporter, they can pull info from people already there from twitter etc.

 

also think of the specialisms, if you wanted a "birds eye" view, you chartered a helicopter, which cost money, so therefore the shots got big money,

special drones were then used (less cost than heli, but still £££), and now, a consumer drone can be picked up (a decent one), for £500-1000 which lets you attach a dslr, so the specialists have gone, again many people can capture what was costly in times gone by.

 

same goes for video, i have personally seen people hire a mini film crew for car events (track videos), years ago, to now, they buy a £20 camera and mount it on the car themselves. the best in this area being undoubtedly go-pro, and even these are only £2-300, i dread to think what the film crew cost 20 years ago).

 

Dan

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Totally understand where you are coming from. I have totally scaled back my whole mindset on 'Professional photography' meaning, I was never really very good at the side of the business outside taking the shots and processing them. I still don't think I'm very good at processing them. I get bored and fail to have any vision for how I want a shot to look. Coupled with having zero time for photography now, I've gone back to just being a happy snapper taking holiday pics and uploading the 'good ones' 

 

There's such a crowd of amazing photographers out there, who don't even bother with selling their work. It's this i'm afraid that's going to kill this industry. I'll always let my library run on, and add to it in small amounts but as far as chasing goals, then, nope it's a stress that life rarely helps you with. 

 

I applaud the folk who can sustain an income consistently across years. Honestly just well done. You've likely seen many of us come in like a lion, and leaving like a mouse. 

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