The Reality
As with everything in life, the only constant is change. We would be foolish to accept that photography as a profession is indeed changing. It's subjective as to if the evolution of the industry is good or bad for the professional.
The Industry
In the past I've known several professional portrait photographers that easily made a great living by photographing families, seniors, and children. Two studios in my hometown had both existed for over 30 years and made a living by selling good quality work at industry standard pricing. Today, both of those studios are out of business, I suspect for slightly different reasons. Trying to investigate the reason for the failure would be somewhat challenging because in my opinion, it's not just one thing to blame.Back to the way the industry has changed, I know that one of the studios continued to do things exactly the same way they always had and that is almost never a recipe for success, if you don't adapt with changing technology and times, it's likely you will fall behind and eventually become irrelevant. But that alone didn't do it. Combine some bad customer service, aggressive sales tactics, and a lack of marketing, all the while with tremendous increases in number of competitors, and it shouldn't be too difficult to start to see why the business would begin having some problems.
Blame the WACs
Everyone wants to quickly blame the WACs (With A Camera, referred to as MWAC, GWAC, etc.) for flooding all the local markets with subpar work and cheap or free pricing.This has been a huge hot-seat topic locally in my area as there are well over 600 photographers in a town with about a 10 mile radius. It's seen as a double-edge sword to some, since many of us want to help like-minded folks, and let's face it, photography is a fun and rewarding thing to do. Teaching and watching someone grow is also a fun and rewarding thing to do. But I think we'd also be foolish to think that the newbies aren't affecting at least some of the professionals' client base. Many professionals (including one of the long-term studios I mentioned earlier) took the stance of "our work is better, and our customers will see that." That held true for some time, and you can't just always blame someone else when your business begins to have issues. But have the newbies hurt the industry? Some will argue they have, citing the flood of work across social media and word of mouth tremendously overpowering any other source of marketing.Technology advances have made it appealing for many new photographers to jump into the industry, and after awhile many newbies begin to charge (often too little) for the work, which in turn over the past few years has conditioned many customers' expectations to that of $50 sessions with all images provided on a disc. Whether you agree or disagree with this practice, I think we can all agree it does have some form of effect on the industry as a whole.
Help the Newbies?
This has been an interesting chapter in my career from when I started to where I am now. Full disclosure: I used to work as a retoucher for one of those long time established studios. Spending 50-plus hours a week with an older established photographer sort of molded me to have the same views on the newbies, amateurs, and the like. It wasn't a positive experience. For years I had the same attitude they did. I hated the newbies and I wanted to really make sure people saw my work quality and I thought I would be fine on that path. I was pretty dense looking back at the situation, and had I continued on that path acting the very same way I'd fail just the very same way. It was obvious a change was needed so I sort of did a reboot and looked at everything with fresh eyes.I now have a different view on the industry, and it has helped tremendously for the things that are in my power to change (me, basically). Being negative hadn't helped anything grow. I currently teach, and it has not affected my business in either way.
Established Versus Starting Out
Many of the successful studios have been established and solid in the community they've been in for years. Some will say that in today's market, becoming established or getting off the ground is much more difficult than it once was. Not necessarily impossible as there are new success stories, but I think we can all agree that the level of difficulty has certainly increased. I know many very talented photographers who are often more skilled than these established ones and they just can't seem to gain any traction.Having a reputation and established customer base can most definitely help keep a business going. Return customers and referrals are often the lifeblood of a studio. But where does that leave the new crop of talented professionals? Is it possible to still get established as a new studio, or has the industry crossed a threshold where there's no going back?It's not just photography. I was speaking to an established taxidermist who said the crop of new taxidermists flooding the market would make it impossible for him to get going if he were only starting his business now even with his same skills. He is very busy and successful, riding on his business of over 20 years. He cited another local taxidermist with excellent skills who could not make it due to the sea of competition and now works a regular job. Sound familiar? It's not just photography, but the way I see it we have two choices: we can stay doing what we have been doing or we can adapt and do what we must to keep the industry going. But my research has indicated that the photography industry is growing faster than almost any other industry. So that only perpetuates that same situation.
Part-Time Professionals
I have observed and learned that a great many of the professionals in the industry that I have always looked up to now have a main job, or secondary source of income. In an industry that was once booming with full-time professionals, I think it's an interesting shift to see highly-talented folks working regular jobs and doing photography "on the side." Has that in itself hurt the perceived legitimacy of the professional?
Technology
Technology has certainly given us some awesome new tools to work with: cameras with incredible low noise, low-light capabilities, lights that pretty much remove the sync speed with flash, lenses that are razor sharp wide open, beautiful touchscreen LCDs for zoom and checking on photos that were just taken. All those things are wonderful tools but they also make it that much easier for more and more people to jump into the industry. Again, just an observation. I am not stating this is necessarily a bad thing, just assessing how it may be affecting us all and our business bottom line.
Is There a Future for Full-Time Professionals?
So in summary, is there a future for full-time professionals in the industry?Personally, I think there is a future but we need to adapt and change to be able to sustain. Running things the way they always have been will almost certainly guarantee failure. This is a difficult pill to swallow because most humans like to keep things as they are. We are resistant to change, but learning to adapt is likely to be crucial to survival in an ever-increasingly saturated market.This certainly isn't meant to sound like a negative article, but rather observing and learning and making sure we are aware of the changes around us. It's often so easy to get lost when you are too close to the forest to see the trees. It's an elephant in the room that many photographers don't wish to discuss, but I feel that being aware is a vital element to continued success.What do you think? Is there a future for a full-time professional?
Story credit: fstoppers.com