Being a photographer today
Photography has never been cheaper and more accessible than today. The market is booming but it’s also overcrowded. How to stand out in such an environment?
Digital photography has enabled millions of people to do something that up to 15 years ago was limited to few professionals.
Beyond the technical aspects, the advent of digital has incredibly democratized photography, making it cheap and with an ever increasing technical quality. The advent of cell phone cameras has accomplished and consolidated this revolution. Today billions of people have small cameras in their pockets, sometimes with excellent technical features.
The amount of photos taken daily has grown dramatically in recent years. In 2015, 657 billion digital photos were uploaded on Facebook servers. It is very likely that this number is greatly increased today, and we are only talking about photos uploaded online. More billions remain in people’s flash cards or computers and never end up online.
Photography has become simple and economical.
The threshold of access to publish photos and make them available worldwide has been lowered: once you needed to have a contract with a photo agency or a newspaper but today anyone has the opportunity to put his work online and with determination and luck, even to earn some honest money.
It seems like heaven, don’t you think? In fact, the panorama of digital images and their market seem to realize a dream of creativity: anyone can show his or her skills using means of expression that have a limited cost. Sometimes — in the case of mobile photography — the required equipment costs nothing, since the camera is included in the phone itself. And it is, again, a great camera.
Speaking of markets, however, we should not neglect the fundamental law of supply and demand: the greater the offer of photographers, the lower their market value. It is very easy to access a very crowded market but it is also very difficult to emerge and stand out, thus attracting customers.
There is also another thing to say: the average quality of photos is very high. Unlike decades ago when the best photographers in the world were a few dozen, today there are hundreds of thousands of very good ones. What in my opinion is harder to find today is excellence. Once upon a time there were extraordinary photographers on one hand and many amateurs with good skills but nothing more on the other. Today the average amateur is much better than that of decades ago, but really extraordinary photographers are few. In some ways we can say that the average quality has risen a lot and the excellence has flattened on average values.
Today there are many good photographers but very few extraordinary photographers. Quality is widespread and no longer concentrated in few isolated cases.
How can we find the connection between supply and demand today? How can you, in other words, sell your photos or make a living out of photography today?
Be original
The massification of photography, its free circulation and the advent of social media like Instagram have also created another phenomenon: uniformity. The photographic fashions of the past have now become trends that no longer concern a particular photographic treatment proposed by magazines but instead involve hundreds of millions of photographs produced every day. I’m talking about photographic trends: photos taken with certain compositional rules and with particular post-production treatments that in the end make them look alike, canceling the personality of the photographer.
One way to emerge in such a crowded market is to be original in order to stand out from the masses. Find your own language and pursue it with determination, hoping that you’d meet the general taste or at least someone’s interest.
Have something to say
You don’t have to be just different to be original. You must have something to say and say it with your own voice. Everyone knows the story of Snow White but the only way to make it sound different or interesting is to tell it as no one has ever told it. Here is the importance of the tone of voice, which in photography translates into a particular personal aesthetic that makes a photo unique. Everyone has his own voice and if you imitate that of others you are giving up your personality.
The basis of photography has not changed and remains the expression of a personal and inimitable point of view.
Market yourself
Another way to emerge, given that you have a very personal and original point of view, is to be published on websites or magazines and then be put in the spotlight. Contests are also an excellent method of personal promotion and advertising. “But I just wanted to take pictures!” someone will say at this point. He’s right but unfortunately today that’s not enough anymore.
The photographer’s job today is minimally occupied in taking pictures. The rest is personal marketing and public relations. Which, if you think a bit about it, is nothing humiliating: it is a matter of expressing a personal point of view, even if in this case with slightly different means from photography.
By now, taking good pictures is not enough anymore. We need to know where to publish them and, if their aesthetic strength is not enough, we need to help them by reporting them to the right places.
Which ones? We’ll find out very soon.
