The return of photography as a craft. I’m going against the trend here. For a few years, we’ve heard from former clients that they just bought a nifty camera and will send some engineer down into the shop to do their picture taking in house, but this past year we have noticed a return of many of these same clients coming to the firm with their hats in their hands giving us work back. Appeareantly they noticed that it ain’t all technology, it’s mostly skill.

I predict an upswing for photography as a buissiness.

A remnant of the digital evolotion is in my opinion unexperienced amateur shooters who make halfway decent shots and decide to start their own shops while lacking the needed bussiness skills and fundamental understanding of what the client wants (communication). These guys won’t make it far and I could almost say that they will hurt the industry as a whole.

Proper bussiness models is not something new – it has always been required to prosper in the long run.

2. What’s the biggest development in photo/video that affects us all?

In my opinion the whole video thing is blown out of proportion.

Video is not new, moving images have been around for ages. True, with the advent of streaming media video has gone where photography went a few years ago (web), But I still don’t think every stills photographer should invest in video equipment. If your field of work is such that you would benefit from it, sure, but I don’t think that stills are going away anytime soon.

The RED system looks great, but look at it this way: Some say that you could an entire soccer game with just video and then pull sellable still from the reels that those cameras produce. Thats what, 24 pictures a second for 90 minutes. You now have 130000 pictures to sort through to find those winner stills. With the way the market is looking for speed in delivery and low post costs, thats kinda backwards to me.

I think a worthwhile answer to this question is figuring out a good way to price images that end up on the web, and developing metadata standards even further to protect our work. Imagine being able to program a delivered image so that after it’s lease has run out, it will turn black?

But even more so, I belive that the biggest development should be us taking back our craft and claiming our role as photographers. Show the buyers that we produce far better results than having Christine from accounting take the pictures for their website, ad campaing or whatever.

3. What’s the most under-reported trend in photography that you think deserves more attention?

Print. Everyone is so focued on web and streaming and shit at the moment. I once again go against the current here and proclaim that I belive in printed images and magazines.

Multi-media and cross-platform to me means a campaing thats uniform across print, web and television.

But hey, I’m just a dude working a small family owned firm in Sweden who does mostly industrial work, our work is probably different from what most other dudes and dudettes are doing so a different set of rules probalby applies to them, but those are the trends I’m seeing.

This one is difficult for someone like myself that see the industry from the outside even as I follow it, but it seems to me that is the commodization of the industry, which is already taking place, in many forms (one stop services, microstock, etc) and this is a real challenge for photographers that offer a complete and rounded service.

2. What’s the biggest development in photo/video that affects us all?

Clearly right now are the convergence devices which we had talked a lot these days and how not only the enable a seamlessly switching between stills/video but how the newer technologies streamline the whole creation flow.

But we have to think further, the convergence is much more than devices is the mix of audio/video/internet/computing.

3. What’s the most under-reported trend in photography that you think deserves more attention?

Popularization of photography once again, I have never seen so many cameras and people taking photos than nowadays (go to a park an just watch)

While I think it’s cool, the RED camera doesn’t do much for me. Now you can go to a sporting event, set your camera on video, record the entire thing, and then pull out the exact frames you need. To me, that’s not photography. I’m not sure what it is.

Some people will totally dig it. And without a doubt, there will be amazing images that come from it.

However, I feel that part of the art of photography is going away. And that’s what I fell in love with in the first place, is the art. And though I’ve been impressed by gadgets, I’ve yet to fall in love with one.

2. What’s the biggest development in photo/video that affects us all?

3. What’s the most under-reported trend in photography that you think deserves more attention?

————–

1. Technology over Talent.

2. Technological breakthroughs that ‘controls’ one’s talent rather than controlling the technology by the talent.

3. Talent.

In my opinion, these two T’s are the ones clashing in almost all of the issues regarding photography. Just my 2 cents..

Slow incremental improvements to quality and speed of current systems. This won’t stop the major players coming out with 10 new models each year to confuse us even more than we already are.

2. What’s the biggest development in photo/video that affects us all?

Full frame sensors migrating to point-and-shoot systems with dSLR and pro level cameras moving to medium and large format.

2. Photography as a business. It’s always been difficult but success in this industry is equal parts, photography skill, marketing and making the right investments. The photography industry is great about selling photographers the next gadget or solution and the savvy business has to decide what investments actually serves our clients best.

3. For me, it’s the intangibles of working with people both in the context of consultations and working with models (as examples). These are soft skills so I don’t expect it to be “reported on” and only comes with mentorship, experience and community.

2 – Unlike a lot of people I’m not sure that video will take over photography at least not entirely and certainly not anytime soon. Fine art is a field that come to mind as a safe heaven for still images.
If we are talking about sports, it’s possible and maybe even likely that video can take over still – why would you pay a photographer to stand on the side line when you can extract a perfect high res still image from a video camera footage and use that ?
If you are a wedding photographer, maybe it makes sense to capture video of a wedding and extract still images from your hi res video. You can sell both to your client.
But… if you intend to create an editorial ad for publication you will still use a still camera. The problem to me is not what device you pick to produce the images but the intended use of those images and the way they will be viewed. People will keep hanging frames on their wall, not everything is made to be viewed as video. The amount of time we spend in front of a TV, the number of TV channels, the amount of video consumed is not infinite. I do believe there is still a lot of room for still images, not everything is meant to be video.

3 – The answer to this question is pretty similar to the answer to the previous one. I think that one of the most under-reported (or mis-reported) trend in photography is to make everybody believe that because you have a camera that shoot 1080p HD video you can do movies. To that extend I think that Vincent Laforet short movie produced with the new 5D was a brilliant achievement but totally misleading. It made every photographer believe that anybody can do that in a week-end provided that they own the camera. The work is stunning, no question about that. Unfortunately it takes much much more than a new camera to achieve that end result (not including the talent) – very few computers are actually powerfull enough to edit 1080 HD video, most of them are not even powerfull enough to simply view it. It requires huge fast hard drives. And once your nice little movie is done what are you going to do with it ? Send it to your friends ? No way, the network is not powerful enough to let you do that. View it on youtube in a 400 pixels wide tiny window with crappy image quality ? Well, big news guys, every camcoder sold in the last 15 years can produce that kind of crappy video. You don’t need the last 5D. I’m sorry to rain on the parade, but so far and probably for quite a while, we don’t have any easy way to show to the world that great HD video in all its greatness. Look at what vincent had to do with his movie – partner with canon and smugmug to get the resources to host his movie and make it available – at 1/4 of the actual resolution.
How many of us will be able to do that ? It think that we are focusing on the specifications of the devices and we forget that we have no way to show our work in a way that make it accessible to a large public… unlike with still images !

1. What’s next for the photography industry?

As a result of social/industry networking there will be more collaboration, this will benefit the guy at the top in need of fresh ideas and the guy at the bottom fighting for her creative life.

2. What’s the biggest development in photo/video that affects us all?

You can now get HD quality for 200 bucks, the stream of consciousness that haunts the creative mind will be exorcised through the ability to bring these demons to life in an instant, in top quality. Sweet.

3. What’s the most under-reported trend in photography that you think deserves more attention?

Here it is – talent.

There are so many photographers trading off training (which we all need, all the time) but there are also so many without the flair and raw talent to go ‘somewhere else’.

My best example of this is composition – this is one of the main reasons that despite all the technological advances there will always be those doing it just that little better.

So, the most under-reported trend is that being a technological consumer doesn’t necessarily equate to being a great photographer.