Photography is fucked…
Hopefully my headline caught your attention. It may not be as black & white as it sounds but professional photography is in serious danger of changing irreversibly, drowning in a sea of corporate greed and personal desperation.
Over a series of articles I’m going to try to open your eyes. To bring the future of the photography industry into focus…
I’ll start, on the penultimate day of a decade, with a quick introduction. I’m Alex, the goof in the photo below. Home is Edinburgh, Scotland and I’ve worked in editorial and commercial photography, as both buyer and seller of photography services for 20 years.
Six years ago I put most of my redundancy cheque from a newspaper picture editor job into commissioning a prototype of our photographer marketplace www.findr.me
Back then I believed that we could use technology to democratise and simplify the process of booking photographers. To work for the advantage of all the freelancers out there who just want to make great photographs.
I still dream that it’s possible but the more I see and learn the less I believe.
Like a lot of photographers, I’m not a natural writer
In over 2000 days working on findr I published two relevant articles, one of which was co-authored primarily by my right hand man Christian. For a founder of any company that’s an appalling record.
It’s a serious problem, my introverted personality and general lack of self confidence gives me zero belief in my ability to put a point across succinctly in prose.
The problem is, I think visually. I’m confident of my ability to tell stories through photography. Give me a brief and I’ll translate it into still images but give me a topic to write about and I’ll usually find so many tangents that inertia gets the better of me until something more urgent comes up!
Forgive the preamble, I want to illustrate that I’m writing because I feel I have to more than I want to.
I’m far more comfortable quietly fixing problems than talking about them but I finally realised that someone needs to put their voice out there to counter the slow but certain degradation of professional photographer’s interests and, if there’s one thing I know well, it’s the business of photography.
Be warned, we’ve left the golden hour, the sun is setting on current ‘normal’ practices in photography.
Over the coming decade well organised greed with deep pockets is going to see photographers extorted and exploited beyond any semblance of acceptability.
When the decade ends, unless you’re an extremely lucky or canny photographer, there’s a very high chance that you’re going to find yourself with very little control over your business, certainly no rights to the photographs you produce and quite possibly, no clients of your own.
If you’re currently a successful freelancer you will surely scoff at this statement but mark my words, when big photography business is done with their current corporate takeover they’re coming for your clients!
To save our sanity (both yours and mine), I’ll write articles in digestible chunks and cover a wide range of relevant topics. Platforms, pricing, marketing, copyright, technology, quality, accessibility to name a few.
Over time, as my warning becomes clearer I hope you’ll add your voice too. The only way we’ll survive the homogenisation that’s coming is by working together.
Ax
