The biggest market in photography

It is beginning to appear as if the biggest market in photography is photographers. We are inundated with marketing to buy presets, software, brushes, cameras, and every other sort of gadget. We are also flooded with publishers and promoters seeking our photography not to be bought but to be submitted for the glory of being “accepted and published”.

While I know there is still a photography-consuming customer base it has dwindled. Sears, Picture Me, Olin Mills, Glamour Shots were virtually everywhere. I know many of these were not all that great but they often beat the “on-location” natural light portraits we see so much of today and yes, I’m guilty of those types of portraits as well so shame on me too.

I’m not sure we can ever go back to the heyday of photography when newspapers and print magazines had staff photographers or when studio portrait photography was on the street corners and shopping malls. I’m not sure I would want to either but I do believe we need to move the current trend of snapshotish (my new made-up word) looking portraits. Let’s move towards showcasing photography as the art it can become. Let’s make the term photographic artist mean something superior to a professional photographer. Who is in with me?!