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The Business of Production

The Demise of the Professional Photographer (and Videographer).

If the professional photographer is becoming an endangered species, it’s only a matter of time before Videography follows.

In a recent post commenting on Marissa Mayer’s “Professional Photography is dead” statement, Chuq Von Rospach posted Why Marissa Mayer was really right, even if you hate hearing that fact. Essentially the argument is that, because modern cameras make it easier to take a decent/good picture there’s less need for the professional.

I think we could replace “Professional Photographer” in that article, with “Professional Videographer” because the issues are very similar.

6 replies on “The Demise of the Professional Photographer (and Videographer).”

It’s a good call, but hold on a minute! Why didn’t that ‘iceberg’ float a little higher in the water? MORE photos, MORE videos being sold.

Also ‘videographer’ is an interesting name. My colleagues hate it with venom. I’ve adopted it because of the reaction of people who hire me. ‘Make me a video like you do’ they ask. Huh? I make videos. Shrug. ‘No, we want a Matt/You video.’

What I’m aiming at here is that professionalism isn’t about getting the technicalities right, it’s about getting the intangibles right. It’s about building value into your work that anyone with the same kit as you CAN’T do.

I still think the market has got way bigger and so that right hand triangle can float way higher.

We’re all re-skilling and offering more services to make our offering more straightforward – sorry guys, we have to work smarter or harder, your choice. So therefore there’s a huge blur between the red and the green. There needs to be a big orange stripe between them of the people who do ‘this and….’. Hey, if it’s easier, you should be occupying more brain cells in parallel. The ‘And’ is significant.

Whatever happens, we can’t sit around licking our bottoms or complaining that the world is going to hell in a handbasket. Adopt modern technology, use the time saved to offer more value to your clients, cherish and polish your craft and watch it grow. Or pluck chickens. Sigh.

Well, yes, they’re the points made in the article I referred to. Did you not read it?

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Yes – Greek Chorus. LOL. Reacting more to the OP’s point, not yours. Finding that ‘Pro’ is a bit of a misused term.

And whilst we’re doing the aphorisms, ‘the green lot practice until they do it right, the red lot do it until they can’t do it wrong’ – that’s worth something. Pros do it when they don’t feel like it. That’s my riposte to CVR and the grand hurrah to PH.

From the “How soon we forget” file: The same arguments about “pros” were made 25 years ago when the job of “professional typesetter” ceased to exist. Every one of them would have told you that no businessperson could ever make things as beautifully or as quickly as they could. They were right! And then they disappeared anyway.

Do good work, but learn to be writers and teachers and consultants to make businesses and individuals better at what they want to do, boys and girls – just in case those job categories vanish like Ms. Mayer implied.

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