Seems unusually quiet on the photograph fora and blogs. Not much about new cameras, new shows, and new techniques. I wonder why?

 

A couple of favorite portraits.

APhotoEditor, a long lived site about the business of photography, recently posted a query on Instagram asking respondents to give opinions about their own, personal take on the photo creation markets this year. How individual freelance photographers are doing in their businesses. Are sales up or down? Is income up or down? How is this year compared to last year? What are their projections for the future of their own businesses. 

The responses were largely negative. A lot of "stiff upper lip" attitude. People who have been in the business and were, in the past, successful, were reporting everything from a "slowdown" to "falling off a cliff." The majority of respondents, many whose names I recognized, were....glum. 

This year, for me, has been interesting. I have garnered no new clients this year but have seen a resurgence of engagement with clients I've worked with for decades. Most of the work centers around environmental portraits for new website constructions, or new portraits for the ongoing process of "onboarding" new associates or new board members. I've done several "out of town" multiple day events; again, for existing clients. August, for example, was right on the average for late Summer work income but with a bit less time spent accruing it. 

The people I know who are still interested in the latest cameras tend not to be working professional photographers but are more likely to be company owners or people in other professions who practice taking photographs as a hobby, or a non-income producing passion. A trajectory that I think is likely to continue.

These are also the camera enthusiasts who are also retired from lucrative careers, and well situated financially, and I notice that their interests aren't budget-limited which is probably why Hasselblad and Leica stay in business and are, at least in the case of Leica, quite profitable. This cohort of customers is less inclined to be attracted to the glory of spec sheets and more likely voting with their $$$ for more elegant overall camera designs and also less complicated and befuddling camera menus. 

The review sites and bloggers seem less well grounded, financially, than their target markets and at the same time are suffering from the fact that most of the high end camera models, from at least those two camera makers cited above, are so far back-ordered that it makes no sense for the companies to send out sellable product to reviewers. They are already selling everything they can get out the doors. With no "free" product or borrowed product to write about there's less and less that the industry news sites have to attract those in the affluent end of the market. The part of the market responsible for a healthy portion of sales, affiliate link usage, and direct financial support for the traditional sites and blogs. Those readers tend to be more discerning and are looking for unique and in-depth perspectives about gear. Not a regurgitation of the maker's spec sheets.

There are always ups and downs in any market but I think the trend lines point to a general slow down in the photo producing industry. This is not to say that the high end of the market is also deflating. In fact, I think the higher dollar shoots for bigger and bigger clients have gotten more profitable as those companies seek to advertise to global markets now instead of local, regional or national markets. The guys at the top are still making bank. Things just seem desperate because the middle and bottom rungs of the market are being thinned out. Mostly by iPhone wielding Gen-Z art directors and "jack of all trades" digital content creators. And that makes sense because changing styles have reduced the need for complex technical mastery. Or even sophisticated seeing.

What does this mean for the rest of us? Well, first of all one hopes that all of the photographers who are or will be permanently aging out of the commercial side of photography have saved well for their retirement or have other business interests to sustain them. It means people on YouTube who were putting up content about photography on nearly a daily basis are now posting weekly and those who used to post weekly are now posting monthly, or even less frequently. Bloggers are scrambling to align content to their core audiences. And I think many make the misstep of veering away from their focused messaging about one industry and into more personal,  "lifestyle" blogs that are moving toward a mix of "on topic" and sorely "off topic" content as the writers try to divine some sort of new relevance for their readers. 

It's a bit sad for me. I'm not just a blogger but also a consumer of photography blogs. I loved the constancy of waking up every day to an assortment of new, fresh blog posts which I could read while having morning coffee or while taking a break from doing some tedious post production. Now the number of blogs focused unerringly about photography has dropped off precipitously. The ones that are left post one or two photo articles during a week while larding in lots and lots and lots of stuff that I give not a single shit about. It's sad. Like the unwanted cancellation of a favorite television series. Or the discontinuation of a printed magazine. 

There is no cure for the slow but inevitable deflation of the balloon. I guess I have to drink the early morning coffee quicker or change my morning reading habits and find other sources of interest. But you can only read the business news and the stock market news for so long... mostly because of its cyclical nature. 

Wouldn't I love to wake up, click on the dining room MacBookPro and bring up an impassioned and highly readable first person account of a hands-on adventure with the coolest, latest cameras? Where are the experts who should be writing experiential reviews about Fuji's and Hasselblad's slew of recent medium format cameras? Medium format cameras which are just now being offered at prices we couldn't have fathomed just a few years back? And who is currently writing definitive blogs about the wonderful range of medium format lenses that keep hitting the market like a micro-tsunami? Or is it just that the audiences don't care anymore? Or that the demographic came to a hard stop regarding purchases and would rather talk about cars and toasters and pocket knives instead?

I am still fascinated by all manner of lighting instruments but the last time I read about anything remotely resembling studio lighting or location lighting was......God! Forever ago. 

The content creators and bloggers I know personally say that the audiences just aren't there for that material anymore. I think it's more of a "chicken and egg" issue. Everyone got tired of writing about the tech but maybe they forgot to query their loyal readers to see what they really want to read. 

Or maybe there are just so few people who still exist in the blogging space who both have the energy and bandwidth to go out, use the new stuff, or even the recent stuff, on real, contemporary jobs, and have the energy and skill to then write about it. It's not like there's a lot of money in writing about photography these days.....unless you still have workshops, books, presets and other related stuff to sell. 

The paucity of readers, and the paucity of readable material may just be capitalism compensating for the transition from traditional photography to something else. Something different. We'll see. 

And, of course, here I am talking almost exclusively about the business of photography and writing about the business of photography. The art part can fend for itself. It always has....

One can only read so much about Nikons, Canons and Sonys...