Everyone Is a Photographer - Is Access To Technology Helping or Hurting The Photography Industry?
In today’s day and age, where technology is so easily attainable for anyone and everyone, all of a sudden everybody is a photographer. This is constantly a hot topic of discussion on the internet and it periodically reappears and rears its ugly head. I have heard and read rants from other photographers in the industry about the fact that anyone with a camera fancies themselves a photographer. Even I have been guilty of venting about this very topic.
Digital Single-Lens Reflex or DSLR cameras have come down in price so much in the past 5-10 years that it has made it affordable for everybody from your Grandmother to your Aunt Josephine to Uncle Sam, to go out and purchase a camera and start taking pictures.
The cell phone camera has just exploded onto the scene now as well. We have people releasing books that consist entirely of iPhone photography. Albeit the people releasing the books like that are in fact professional photographers, it is another tool with which people capture images.
I think it’s a great thing that technology has become so affordable in the photography world and more people are jumping on the proverbial photography bandwagon. Although just because someone picks up a DSLR or an iPhone or a compact camera this doesn’t make them a photographer. It takes practice, hard work and frankly you just have to have an eye for it. Can someone develop an eye for “making” a photograph? Personally, I don’t think having an eye for capturing images can be taught to someone. It is innate and you either have it or you just don’t.
Having said my piece, I would like to leave you with a couple questions to ponder: Is the affordability and ease of accessibility to photographic technology helping or hurting the photography industry? Let’s be honest, are we really concerned about the Uncle Joe’s or others that go out and buy a DSLR just because they can, encroaching on our business and stealing work away from us? I think not but what do you think?
Image courtesy of lolroflmao.com