Definitely don’t move…
Margaret Bourke-White was on the cutting edge of a lot of change.
She was a woman photographer when there were almost none.
She was a war correspondent, photog for Life Magazine, member of Magnum.
She traveled the globe with camera in hand gathering some of the most iconic images of the 20th century.
What a fantastic career.
Never again.
Never again because technology, of several stripes, has rendered her work if not superfluous, then merely commonplace. I am not talking about her images. Those were and remain stunning. I am talking about the rarity of someone who will travel to India, camera in hand.
When Margaret Bourke-White went to work for Henry Luce at Life Magazine in 1929 the images that she and her cohort of professional photographers brought back were of places and people most readers in the US had never seen before. Images from Africa or India or indeed the Second World War were so unusual that they became embedded in our national consciousness.
Few Americans had been to India or Africa or Japan.
You would pay a lot to see Kyoto or Shanghai or Kenya.
So you bought National Geographic or LIFE or LOOK, and there they were.
And the people who went out and gathered those images had great careers – adventure that paid well. And artistic to boot!
Now, photography as a career is pretty much dead.
The New York Times reported as much today, though as usual with The New York Times, when it comes to technology and trends, they are about 10 years late. Maybe more.
Newsweek and Time Magazine long ago gave up their contract photographers. LIFE, of course, folded, as did LOOK, and ( understand that National Geographic is no longer going to foot the bill for sending some of the world’s best photographers to go out and gather images for them.
The reason, as the Times story makes so abundantly clear, is that everyone and their brother has a cheap digital camera which is capable of getting pretty good pictures. That, and the fact that for $600 or so, pretty much anyone can go to India, or Japan or Australia or Africa.
Nothing is so far away, so mysterious, so unknown that anyone would pay good money to take a look at it.
A flood of photographs, some terrible, some fair, a few good – married to agencies that will snap them up off of sites like Flickr and pay the owners for the rights. Who wants or needs or is willing to pay for professional photojournalists?
Answer: no one.
Which is tragic, because an art is being lost, but a democratization of image creation is being found.
Now, what you see happening with photography is also going to happen to video, only bigger.
Bigger because the market for video is about twenty million times the size of the market for photography – maybe even larger. Photography may have dominated LIFE and LOOK and National Geographic, but video dominates ABC, also CBS, NBC, CNN, TBS, TLC, A&E and pretty much any other combination of letters you can throw together.
And while LIFE was a weekly and National Geographic is a monthly, ABC and NBC and TLC and the rest are hourlys.
That is, they come out with a new edition every hour on the hour.
Now, in the olden days of photography, the gear was big and heavy and expensive. Just look at the camera Margaret Bourke White has schlepped out onto the gargoyles at the Chrysler Building. The camera is in fact the size of a Chrysler (are they still in business?)
Today, every single person with a cell phone can get a pretty good image. And for a few bucks more, you can go to digital. I just shot a series with my Leica M9 in RAW (18 mpls) and then ran it through photoshop to see how the resolution is at 5 foot x 6 foot.
Look out Andreas Gursky!
It’s pretty astonishing.
And we’re still riding that curve into better and better technology.
The new digital Hasselblad gets a mind blowing 60 mpls, or so I am told.
So what does this mean for video?
What happened to photography in the last decade is going to happen to videography in the next. Except the market and demand for videography is huge. Huge!
It’s going to be THE growth industry of the next 20 years.
As iPads and iPhones and the web and 2000+ channels all demand fresh and new video content 24 hours a day, who is going to make it?
Most likely, you.
4 Comments
kenny March 31, 2010
Well, great images are still being purchased…over & over again on the photo sites you mentioned and of course Getty Images & the like. Actually, it’s probably the best time to be a good photographer…the demand is huge. And you don’t have one client or employer who pays you the big bucks, you’ve got tons who pay you small royalties. Today it’s not about getting paid for the JOB, it’s owning the intellectual property. For photography, that can mean big bucks from one great shot. For video it can mean syndication rights for a terrific series that you produced (with your handhelds in the ER for example!)
Vanessa March 30, 2010
Hmmm, I have to disagree a bit. So maybe “professional” photographers are no longer being paid the big bucks…but no one wants the all important day – a wedding, child’s birth, graduation – to be photographed or filmed by some yahoo who keeps moving the f***ing camera. Sure, any idiot can grab a cellphone, digital camera or whatever and take a picture, hell, even video. But who is going to take the time to make it look that much better? Everyone has access to better technology, EVERYONE – but does everyone want to take a picture from their Leica M9 in RAW and then spend the time to photoshop it? Nah, they don’t. Look at all the videos on YouTube, unedited because some people just don’t want to take the time.
Professional video filmmaker…..will it ever be the biggest money maker – probably not. But there are still people, lots of people, who will fork over the money for that quality shot, the video that captures just the right frame, etc. Hence the reason why some people pay YOU, and others, to teach them how to hold the camera and get the right shots.
Mark Joyella March 30, 2010
I think the saving grace for good still photographers and video pros–just like reporters–isn’t that the technology exists to give anyone the ability to take a picture, capture video, and publish it all online. The difference is which picture do you take, what does your video look like, and when you publish, what do you have to say?
My wife and I have been shopping around for photographers ahead of our first child’s birth. Just like picking a wedding photographer, there are LOTS of options if you just want digital pictures that are in focus, have the right colors, and are suitable for framing. But what we wanted was an eye–a person who can see something that others would miss. And we paid a lot for it.
Everyone can access this technology now, but there will always be a reward for those among us who can find the story, the shot, and the video that sets us apart.
Michael Rosenblum March 30, 2010
Hey Mark
Congrats!
Good for you!