This article on TechDirt about the future of wedding picture taking got me thinking : what would the nuptials lensman of the future calculate like ? Just off helping hand , I ’m think about all those little disposable cameras that have become de rigeur to put on the tables at the response . With digitals get inexpensive enough , a nuptials lensman could bring a duo 12 low - end point - and - shoots , then dump the contents on Flickr , tagged and bagged for perusal . alternatively of hiring a photographer to take the only pictures , the wedding shooter becomes a facilitator for the whole outcome , as well as being the go - to bozo for all those dreadful staged photos that everyone seems to want ( which are almost as hackneyed as the eternal rest of the industrial , meeting place - line wedding ) .
But I ’m not a nuptials photographer . Any professional shooters out there with some severely reform-minded idea about the hereafter of wedding photography — and how to keep making money from it ?
Another job Failing To Adjust : The Wedding Photographer[TechDirt ]
Update : Eric Welch offers some interesting counter - point after the jump :
You cognize , I ve ply into standardised doubtfulness to yours for years . How are professionals drop dead to be relevant when cameras are so easy to use ?
It first descend up , I m betting , when machine photo hit the scene in the late ’ 70 ( about the time I bought my first camera ) with the Canon AE1 .
And then when autofocus came about , who need sports lensman any more ? And at newspapers , they think they could just give camera to newsman and they could do away with the Prima Donna photojournalists who have all those vexatious ethics and standards , and require meter to make photo . ( I was one for 15 years . )
Over and over , along came new technologies , and each prison term ill - informed non - lensman asks why do we need school photographers any more ?
In a job audience with the picture editor of the Oregonian , he told me they would eventually be able to have people with the skill level of a take aim chimp go to events and swing the photographic camera around whatever event he or she was cover , be it a riot or a tea party . The photograph editor back at the desk would make a selection from the random simulacrum ( or picture ) stream back to the composition . That was about the strange locution of this crazy approximation that I ve ever heard . And it pissed me off this guy was making five times as much money as I was back at a modest Midwestern paper .
I ve had a destiny of the great unwashed say me they can make great pictures now that they have these new - fangled whiz - bang cameras that can do all the work for them . But as Ansel Adams once state , “ There is nothing worse than a crisp exposure of a fuzzy idea . ” Just because a television camera can give a properly focus , dead expose photo , it s still a bunch of one and zeros , or a little piece of gelatin on plastic unless the photographer making the pictorial matter knows what he or she is doing !
I know a lot of punk photography put across for professional wedding photography . But that s because masses are bargain hunters and will believe any dork with a photographic camera when they tell them they can take picture of their weddings . front at the work of Denis Reggie ( http://www.denisreggie.net/about.html ) and tell me if disposable cameras flip around the room , operate by the combining weight of trained chimp , could captivate those photos .
Yes , there is plenty of body of work for upright marriage ceremony photographers in the hereafter . And the people who don t need to pay for their skill will get fuzzy photos .
Then , Eitan Mendelowitz indite :
I ’m not a professional shooter but I am getting marry in a few months . After meeting with countless wedding photographer , I can tell you ( 1 ) they are already adapting to the new realism and ( 2 ) they will definitely be making money .
Many photographers are starting to shoot digital . This cut down on picture and processing cost ( which are significant when you are talking about 20 + roller of caliber film and maturation ) . Even those that are n’t shooting in digital are having their negatives scan so they can use a armed service like PICtage ( http://www.pictage.com ) – similar to your Flickr estimate . Pictage seems like a servicing to customer – everyone can see all the pictures quickly . But to the lensman its a Modern taxation stream – ANY Edgar Guest can now order pictures at a premium ( and who would n’t spend $ 10 to get a delineation of aunty Birtha in that ridiculous hat ) . And digital printing is less work – touching up a photo in photoshop is a to faster then head into the darkroom . Most photographers guard the negative / hi - reticuloendothelial system file , releasing them to their clients only after a few year or for a fee guaranteeing a revenue current from extra photo orders . ( How this became an recognized industriousness practice is beyond me . )
Wedding photographers will keep make money because the wedding party Industry has managed to make spending an unnatural amount of money normal . Many brides and stableman ( and/or their parent ) do n’t think double about discharge tens of 1000 of dollars on a day . A lensman only demand a little routine of that giving Proto-Indo European to do well .
lastly , I agree with Eric Welch . I carry just enough picture taking in high-pitched school to learn that a proficient television camera does not make a good photographer . I ’m sure enough people will carry on to acknowledge this to keep photographers in business organisation for a long time .
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